Watching science launch like a rocket

Despite an exceptionally lazy weekend, I'm still feeling slightly breathless from a ridiculously active couple of weeks. Here's what I did for the first three days - October 11th to 13th, Monday to Wednesday.

Well, actually I'm not allowed to tell you exactly what I was doing on Monday; suffice to say that Jules, who moderates the Moon Zoo forum, and I went to Oxford to talk to Arfon and Rob about a new project. It looks terribly exciting. I think it'll work well.

I asked Rob why he calls himself Orbiting Frog, and he told me that frogs have been in orbit as well as chimps and poor Lassie. But they don't get the same sort of publicity. According to good old Wiki, the first creatures in space were fruit flies. Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana, etc. etc. In fact, Lassie is a lot better known than Albert II, a chimp who was launched into space in 1949, only to die on impact upon returning to Earth.

There's one random fact of the day, to take your mind off the tantalising mystery of what the new project is (you will probably like it, but it may come as a bit of a shock . . .). Here's another: Oxford is beautiful. It's got this sense of peace and restfulness, like a person in a comfortable home who is well looked after. Contrary to all my expectations, it's not at all snobby. I've yet to meet anyone there who hasn't been very friendly. What is clear is that an awful lot of work goes into making and keeping it so nice. That's worth doing. It probably keeps a lot of people in work, and how much better to have a city that the citizen feels they are part of, that they jointly own with everyone else - somewhere worth preserving. Jules
and I snapped quite a lot of photos. Hers will be considerably better than mine.







I'd been up all night preparing a lecture on Cassini (which is why I had to rush back to Wales on Wednesday evening!) so I ended up going to bed in the youth hostel at 6.30 and sleeping for over 12 hours! I was up and springing (unusual for me) at eightish, and went to get breakfast - it was pricey and not gourmet food, but it would do. I thought the chap behind the counter was giving me a funny look as he doled out beans, tomatoes, sausage, bacon and hash brown onto my plate (the eggs looked like crumbled polystyrene) and when I went to sit down, under the annoyingly blaring loudspeaker, an itch I'd felt on my neck for a while became intolerable. I thought my hair must be caught in my collar. I moved a hand up to rip it out and scratch it. At that point a butterfly flew off my neck and around the room. I was so surprised I couldn't stop thinking about it. Where had that butterfly come from? Had I accidentally packed it in Wales or something? Sadly I doubt it survived. I'd rubbed off half its scales (I forget what sort it was - something very pretty like an admiral or a peacock) and none of the windows were open. For some reason it flew up to sit on the vent. Maybe I'm a spontaneous butterfly generator . . .

It was generally an odd sort of morning! I hopped on a train to London and went to the British Museum - a mind-blowing place that it will take me many visits to see all of, much less take in. By the time I'd walked around enough I was hungry again, and craving fruit, which is almost as unusual for me as getting up early. I bought a ridiculously overpriced pineapple and smoothie. While eating, I noticed a funny taste in my mouth, just behind my top front teeth. I put my thumb there. It came out covered in blood. It bled for some time and was quite sore for a couple of days. Maybe that was somehow connected to the butterfly; I can feel a really freaky fantasy novel coming on now. Or maybe I'm old enough to accept coincidence for what it is - even I used to be reluctant to do that. Or maybe I should be more careful how I eat. Maybe I also shouldn't have spent such a ridiculous amount of money in the British Museum shops, but their Rosetta Stone mugs really are gorgeous. They're thin bone china, comfortable to drink from, large enough, delicate, elegant, and the hieroglyphs, cuneiform and Greek letters are painted on so you can feel them, and your hand makes a singing sort of noise as you run your finger over the symbols. No, I'm not secretly their advertising agency, just an over-enthusiastic tea and coffee drinker - and very particular about my mugs. I have far too many, and they're all lovely - especially these!

Thus loaded, I then set off on a nice walk south to the Thames. Central London is surprisingly compact; it doesn't take too long to walk, for example, from Euston to the Houses of Parliament. Only problem is, don't rely on Google Maps to get you there. I did, and I ended up outside the Treasury, where Dean and the others had been campaigning three days previously.

I, a born Londoner, didn't realise the Houses of Parliament was the same building as Big Ben is. How embarrassing is that?

Well, I found it eventually, and there were signs up all over the place telling us that tresspassing was a prosecutable offence under the dear SOCPA law and that we must have passes if we wished to enter. There was nobody I could ask who wasn't behind some kind of chain, barrier, or wall, so eventually I had to sidle up and do that. The chap who was letting people in, or not, looked like he might or might not have been a policeman, and didn't seem to know what I was talking about when I asked how I could get a pass. But when I told him I was there to lobby Parliament in Committee Room 10 at 3:30 he let me straight in.

There was a long metal ramp to queue on, with an additional ramp to the left, railed off, into which a chap behind me ducked to hurry through ahead of those politely waiting. I was ashamed of him, and doubly so of the people in the queue around me who encouraged him to do it. He was back in about 30 seconds, announcing that the folks seeing us through had told him "No chance". Apparently he was late for something . . .

They'd told us to try and get to Parliament by 2:45; due to my muddling around like a moron I wasn't queueing until after three, but it wasn't half past yet when I got to the front. There was a pair of footprints drawn on the floor to stand in. I was so busy looking at them that they had to explain to me to look up so that a camera could take my picture. I was given this to wear around my neck. They didn't want any ID or anything. I was quite embarrassed to be carrying my coat, rucksack and a bag of British Museum stuff, and was dreading not being allowed through since the website is pretty specific about no luggage. (I'd been to Charing Cross but they'd have charged me £8, to which my reaction was bollocks to that!!) But they were fine. What was less fine was that they also say no sharps, and for some reason there was a pair of scissors in my rucksack. What they were doing there I have no idea! That was dreadfully embarrassing, especially as I had to remove all my underwear and hold people up while I got the wretched things out. They were very nice about it, though. They just gave me a nice laminated bit of paper to carry around, and I left the scissors in a pigeonhole. Then it was out, briefly, into the open air, turn right, and into the House of Commons.

It looked like a huge entrance to a castle: great wooden doors, a vast stone hall, stained glass windows in the far distance ahead. Near the front was a tourist stand full of maps and leaflets. I asked a guide where Committee Room 10 was. She told me in great detail. People were astonishingly polite, telling me please to go this way madam, but not smarmy or sarcastic. I felt quite out of my depth, quite awed by the grandeur, and at the same time determined and proud that this was where our country had been governed for centuries and also where I, and any other ordinary citizen, could come to make our voices heard. This was our House of Commons, a common heritage, and I immediately felt that everybody ought to see it.

Committee Room 10 was upstairs on the left, at the end of a long passage - whose chequerboard-like ancient flooring seemed to be in the process of being restored - and then up a spiral staircase at which point I was met by a TV set telling us what was going on in the chambers, and one second later by Michelle Brook. Michelle is a frighteningly bright Twitterer who's done two degrees and is a core player in the Science is Vital campaign. She was quite unfazed by the grandeur while I couldn't stop gawping around! Committee Room 10 was almost full which, I gather, is not a frequent occurrence. We settled on one place to sit, then saw more people to catch up with and moved, then decided to go and sit in what to me looked like a little raised area with a rail around it and quite comfy-looking chairs but Michelle said was called "the dock". I joked about how we must be the criminals, then froze, considering where we were and how you can't seem to say anything these days without incurring suspicion. Nobody heard, though. I did attract the interest of a chap in a suit in front of me when I reached up and touched the wall to see if it really was made of crimson velvet, or whether it was just clever wallpaper. It was velvet. The fellow asked me if I was looking for air conditioning. I said no, wondering what on earth kind of air conditioning this might be.

Like the House of Commons's debating room itself, this room's centre was its lowest point, all chairs pointed towards it, so there wasn't really much of a "stage" - Imran Khan took it, though, and he and Jenny Rohn made splendid speeches about why it made no sense - economic or otherwise - to cut funding for science. But something was niggling me: what were they doing making speeches to us, the people, the lobbyists, who'd come to say this to the politicians? I'd somehow assumed that the politicians would be there, and that we'd somehow know who they were. For all I knew the room could have been full of MPs without my knowing, though; I'm not a telly watcher and would probably not recognise most of them. We were joined by Julian Huppert, who'd only just got back from Gaza, and by a fellow who was there to read out Vince Cable's reply to us, seeing as Vince Cable was at that moment busy making important announcements about tuition fees. His deputy said that he would do his best to be Vince Cable by pulling his glasses down his nose. What he said sounded fairly encouraging. Annoyingly, I can't remember any specifics - there was just too much going on.

I had further cause to be proud of our democracy - yes, we do still have one - when we were told that, if our MP was not present and had not replied to our letters, we could nip downstairs and sign a "green card" asking them to come to Committee Room 10. I did that, along with a stampede of others; I had to ask to borrow somebody's pen! My MP, Stephen Crabb, did not appear; nor has he yet replied to my letter - but that's no excuse not to do everything one can. I was there, I did my damnedest, and so should anyone who wants anything to change. I added to the numbers and I'm writing about it now.

Update: Brilliant post by Della on all the things the campaign has been doing, including a much more informed account of Tuesday than my own!

A few days later, Michelle, Della, Imran and others presented the petition to No. 10 Downing Street. As I write now, there are 36,159 signatures. 33,804 of these were in time to make it to No. 10.

That was Tuesday. On Wednesday morning and afternoon I attended the launch of ESERO, a project to encourage the use of space and astronomy as part of science, maths and technology teaching in schools.

I was very flattered to be asked along; I don't know how they heard about me - maybe just by finding this blog! They gave me a badge saying Galaxy Zoo; I chuckled to myself with some embarrassment that as I'm not an official paid member of the team, I was not permitted to describe myself as "from Galaxy Zoo" for my first formal lecture, at Intech Planetarium two years ago, and wondered what they'd say if they knew. (That is, I was requested not to, so as to avoid the hassle of them having to approve everything I said - fair enough.) It was a useful label, though. Quite a few people came up to me and asked "Galaxy Zoo? What's that?" But the teacher of one of the very enthusiastic schools who came along took one look at my badge and exclaimed, "Oh! Galaxy Zoo! I set that for homework all the time!"

The launch took place in the Institute of Physics, a modest little place within one of London's terraces. We were an interesting mix of people from various space related industries, museums, organisations, and I think five schools - eight or ten secondary school kids got to come along, some having travelled from the North of England to go. There was excellent coffee and I couldn't believe how friendly everybody was. When I stood around with a mug in my hand feeling gormless, people came up to ask me what I did. It was great to hear the buzz of space and astronomy talk all around me, to lap up the various ways it trickles into society and learning. It was both like coming home and setting out.

We then had a morning of talks, and a video from our British astronaut Tim Peakes - you can read more and see the video here. The talks were wonderfully frank and lively: space is an inspiring thing, it's what encourages people to go into science or technology, we should be teaching it - and this is what we're here to do. They were also pretty straightforward about Britain being a country of inventors and great science; it's good to hear that, when so many people around me seem to regard deriding Britain as the only respectable or politically thing to do, earning modesty points for themselves at the expense of a feeling of confidence, of progress, that you need in order to get anywhere . . . We then had a demonstration of some science experiments, such as making a comet nucleus (great mess and fun) with the same science teacher who set the zoo as homework and a couple of school pupils! All in all, it was a morning of smile generating. We got a free lunch too, and an exhibition of pupils' work.

I was emotional and gibbering. The kids were going on about spectroscopy and cosmic rays and enantiomers. They wanted to know this stuff because it was there, not to pass any exams. The teachers were showing them things for fun, for excitement, for the latest news. In other words, everything that had been forbidden to me in my PGCE, everything I was told was impossible because the kids "wouldn't understand it at their age" or that it was a waste of their revision time - it was going on. And they could do it. I felt as if something I had been the only one to believe had been proved right. Oh, if only those miserable, repressed, curriculum-driven teachers I'd worked under could have seen this!

The kids loved showing me their stuff, getting me to sniff beakers of different enantiomers (one smelled much sweeter than the other), and I told some of them freely about what my teaching year had been like. They were quite amused. Some sixth formers from one school showed me a machine they had to detect cosmic rays. I said that I thought cosmic rays were stopped by the atmosphere and they said no, there were some in the room right now. I thought - wasn't that neutrinos they were thinking of? But who was I to say I knew more than they did? I wasn't working on this stuff, unlike them.

I talked as much as I could to the teachers, and the friendly one offered me some work experience. She works in the north, but if I can get somewhere to stay I might well give it a shot! When I told her I had been thrown off my teaching course, she said, "Oh, try it again!" That day, believe me, I wanted to. But I was driven away too far from that, and am now on a different road - I'm doing too many other things. (For one thing there are so many adults who aren't getting all the opportunities that schoolchildren are to learn - yet adults are often so much more willing!) And yet, and yet - I do want to do more work in schools. I love the classroom, I love education, and I want to write about it . . . My head was buzzing!

My only disappointment was the question time. I put up my hand and got to ask the first one. I said that I'd been at the Science is Vital rally the previous day and that cuts of between 10 and 25% were expected in the science sector - would this affect projects such as ESERO and indeed British investment in the European Space Agency, and if so, what could we do about it? I fear this question rather threw them because they turned into uptight men in suits, waffling about how cuts needed to be made, but certainly not addressing any practical issues such as what we could do or what specific effects such cuts might have. Oh well. My question was asked. These fantastic kids (and doubtless many of their classmates who couldn't come) will not be too hasty in letting the next generation slide into scientific barbarity.

I picked up an awful lot of literature while I was there - now I must actually sit down and read it! To round off a perfect day, Sotira (who I'd also seen at the She is an Astronomer conference) and I found a delicious restaurant and indulged ourselves in coffee, profiteroles and chocolate fudge cake. Even though going home meant burying myself back in that Cassini lecture's Powerpoint presentation when all I wanted was to celebrate and sleep, you can imagine that after three days of different ways of bringing science to the people, things have never felt quite so . . . how can I describe it? . . . right.

Science is Vital!

I'm going to be missing a very special and important event tomorrow: a demonstration to tell our government that we need to keep up funding for science.

There are more reasons for this than "we want to go on with our jobs" and "we want to go on making cool discoveries". Science actually contributes to at least 30% of GDP, and if I recall correctly only takes up 1.8%. It was invention and innovation that sparked the Industrial Revolution, here in Britain. It was to scientists here in Britain that two out of three science-related Nobel Prizes were won this year. It's here that 8% of scientific papers are produced, from 1% of the population (I don't know if this means the world's population, or the percentage of working scientists worldwide, but it's a pretty nifty figure even so!). Science has given us nearly everything we've got in the modern world in health, technology, communications, transport, standards of living . . . not to mention serendipity, education, and joy. For me personally, it was science that gave me my life's work and almost all my friends and happiness.

It looks like it's going to be a huge event - they've been making hundreds of banners today, and are gathering distinguished speakers such as Simon Singh, and guess who else? Dean! Congratulations mate! I do wish I could be there. But next week is going to be ridiculous enough as it is. On Monday I'm off to Oxford to do something for the zoo which I'll blog about when I get the all-clear. On Tuesday, since I'll at least be in the right part of the country, I will be going to this, and have written to my MP to let him know:
On Wednesday I'm attending the launch of ESERO, which aims to use space research to boost teaching of science, technlogy, engineering and mathematics (now, please do not let this go to waste, government! . . .). As soon as that's finished I'm coming home, because I'm working again on Thursday, then heading off to do my second Tea with the Stars lecture on Cassini. Then on Friday I'm heading back to London again to go to TAM. And after that, it's the second Cardiff Skeptics talk with Ash Pryce (please coming along!), and staying in Cardiff that night, so I will arrive in work directly off the train. So you can imagine that I am in no mood whatsoever to spend this weekend travelling as well, even for science.

Indignation (expressed best in this article by Roger Highfield) and gloom and worry have, I'm glad to say, led to action. If you can attend either rally, please do so - it's up to us all. And please sign the petition!

Yes, it's accepted that cuts have to be made. Yes, others look extremely worrying too - take this hideous scenario of disabled people losing essential care. Should scientists stop whinging and accept that they're not above the rest of us?

Not if you realise how much science contributes. In earlier times of economic crisis, Finland and Korea actually increased their science budgets, and Germany and America are not cutting theirs now. The reason is that, as Sir Patrick puts it, "If we cut funds for science we'll be shooting ourselves in the foot." Science boosts the economy, alongside other things. Withdrawal of funds leads to people we've trained, and who we don't pay much, taking their talents abroad. Private companies and charities that invest their research here won't see the point in staying either. Recovery from that would take a long, long time.

I thoroughly recommend this open letter by Dr Evan Harris, this Guardian datablog which details some of the statistics, and the key messages page on Science is Vital. If you fancy something a little more heavy-going, try the Royal Society and its document "The Scientific Century". Or, if you understand government papers, try this one, co-authored by someone in the HM Treasury. (I confess - I'm struggling!)

And if by any chance an MP is reading this, please sign Julian Huppert's Early Day Motion to save science - and our future.

Thank you.

Tea with the Stars

A few weeks ago I blogged about two wonderful people here in Pembrokeshire, Steph who gave my charity a lot of equipment and Tony who offered me a free venue to hold a fundraising astronomy talk.

The fundraising astronomy talk has turned into nothing less than a fundraising astronomy lecture series, and we've named it Tea with the Stars. I'd like to invite anyone who lives nearby to pop along. I'm afraid we are charging - obviously, because it's to raise money for charity - but you get a free tea thrown in, and a telescope tour if the weather permits!

It's at Nant-y-Coy Mill, near the village of Treffgarne, which is on the road between Haverfordwest and Fishguard. If you're travelling north it's immediately after the especially wriggly bit of road around Treffgarne Gorge (by the way, the geology round there is fascinating!). The talks are on alternate Thursdays at 7.30 p.m. You can see Tony's PDF here, and their general events page here (Hayley might well be interested in the paranormal evenings, the last of which I understand continued until three o'clock in the morning!).

We launched on Thursday 30th September, so I can announce that I co-founded two lecture series within ten days of each other. My talk was about Galaxy Zoo. I thought, therefore, that I was prepared and it would only take a little while to adapt my old talk from Intech Planetarium. Wrong. I was up until 6am. That did not in any way aid me in concentrating at work. When I got home, I had time to go to bed for half an hour before heading off to Treffgarne - believe it or not, that actually did me huge good!

Now if you'll forgive me sounding like an advert for five minutes, Nant-y-Coy Mill, now run by the Pembrokeshire Tea folks, is an absolutely beautiful place. An ancient stone house with a water wheel behind it . . .


Up close:


Inside:



I was very flattered to see this, and apparently a lot of people asked about it:


(The piece of paper asks people not to touch the telescope and advertises a coming astronomy lecture series this autumn.)

Outside is even more gorgeous. Here's my least fuzzy dark photo of the woodland, and there are a few more on this page . . .


But there was no tme to appreciate all that on Thursday evening. It was getting dark and pouring with rain. I poked my head into the kitchen, failed to spot anyone, so went straight upstairs to the gallery. Tony heard me on the stairs. He'd arranged the gallery beautifully and had the projector all ready. It turned out the little remote thing you hold in your hand to make the slide change only works on Macs, and my laptop was constrained by very short wires, so we decided I'd simply sit with it at the back rather than stand at the front. Actually I preferred that!


Seven o'clock came. Tony got me a cup of ginger tea. It was very subtle, not at all like that choking powdery lemon and ginger herbal stuff in bright yellow boxes. Nobody arrived. The wind and rain lashed down and the blueness outside intensified. We stood at the door looking out, but realised getting wet wouldn't help. Seven fifteen. Nobody. Nothing. We wondered if we'd launched the whole thing too soon. We lamented not getting round to going on the radio or into the local rag yet. Tony'd been so busy - though he had found time to stick up a lot of posters. Tony asked me what I'd do if nobody came at all. I replied that I'd wait until eight and then go home in a bad mood. It sounded so straightforward, but it didn't stop me pacing around. By seven twenty-five we were ready to crawl into the dry stone walls. By seven twenty-nine I was ready to go home. At about seven twenty-nine-and-fifty-five seconds, a vanload of five people arrived!

We welcomed them in and brought them in for tea. It was one of their colleagues who had brought along various extended family. A few minutes later a sixth person arrived, a geologist who had driven twenty miles down from the Preselis. Tony and Michael got them tea and sold little cakes to those who'd eat them, and insisted that the lecture fee be given directly to me, not even reclaiming costs for the tea, bless them. The atmosphere was very friendly, as it so often is in Pembrokeshire, chatting away as if we all knew each other. (I got into some trouble when I spent a summer in Devon for forgetting that that isn't always the social setup.) I think they were quite disappointed to hear that the lecture wasn't going to be in that comfy room with the sofas, but upstairs. However, as soon as they reached the top of the stairs, the cries of "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaw!" began!


I knew we had to have stars and tea as our logo, plus some of my more colourful mugs, but it was my sister who thought of the Clangers. For anyone who doesn't know, they're an utterly adorable TV program about little creatures who live on a small planet out in space, and are able to take a musical boat out into space to catch things - here they are on Wiki, the BBC and as the world's cutest conspiracy theory. Actually they often point out useful scientific facts as well - when you're little, you don't immediately realise that "You don't see light unless it shines on something." Which makes a lot of things clear!

Perhaps I shouldn't have started the lecture by making Clanger noises, but I think people forgave me. I started by saying that as we were so few, rather than have a Q&A session they should interrupt me with questions whenever they wanted.

And off we went.


I focussed on the early doings of the Zoo - how it began because of Kevin having 900,000 objects to classify and how successful it was; the clockwise/anticlockwise results, the Voorwerp, the rings, the peas, the irregulars, and finally the red spirals/blue ellipticals result. It was a very beginner audience, who had no idea what a quasar or a spectrum was, or why some stars were blue and others red, so I hope I answered their questions properly and didn't go over their heads too much. I told them I'd be doing a lecture on exactly what a spectrum is (it'll be called "starcodes"); and I guess I can use the Black Holes lecture this November to talk about quasars. I used a saucer to demonstrate quasars and ring galaxies (the geologist very nicely lent me hers!).

Anyway I don't think it went too badly, because there was the occasional gasp of "It's so beautiful" during the lecture, and afterwards, "I'm overwhelmed!" They all said they'd come to the next one and tell other people about it. The attendance may have been tiny, but it did mean each one got plenty of attention.

Afterwards I carefully put away my things - not only my laptop and its bits and bobs, but also my work newsletters, leaflets, cards and so on. Then I realised I'd lost the bag I'd brought them in. I also couldn't find my two copies of the September edition of Astronomy Now, which I'd brought along to show off, I mean give people a chance for further reading (where's the spade?). I spent about half an hour looking for them. Tony, who had also seen that bag, helped me, and in the end gave me a spare and promised to arrest it if he saw it.

When I got home I found the plastic bag which had contained the work stuff in my laptop case, the magazines on the sofa and that I'd left my mouse behind instead. Well done Alice . . .

I went and picked it up on Saturday, showing my mum around the beautiful walk instead. When we arrived in the building, I found I needed ask no questions: Michael called from a little office behind the counter, "Hi Alice, I'm using your mouse!" I'd left it on the projector.

But at least I did not do what I did just before my first ever public lecture at Intech Planetarium, namely, walking into one of the instruments projecting the Hubble Deep Field onto the planetarium ceiling and knocking my glasses off in the process!

I'll be talking about Cassini on October 14th, black holes on November 11th, the Zoo again in the New Year, and spectra in February. Tony, meanwhile, will be talking about telescope design on October 28th, non-standard cosmology on November 25th, and astronomy and art in the New Year. We're keeping a few slots open for local astronomy buffs, and have already had an offer to do dark matter.

If you live in Pembrokeshire, I hope to see you there.

They Protest!

OK, this is going to be a bit of a lazy link round-up, but I've been following two amusing but worrying stories over the weeks - those concerning our guests of honour at Cardiff Skeptics. One of these stories has just ended, and I wanted to put together an update.

First the one that isn't: the MMS saga, known on Twitter as #bleachgate. Although the hero of this saga is of course Rhys, I think the best place to start is Noodlemaz's in-depth investigation. It's pretty frightening. For more on the early episodes, check out LizDitz's link round-up (now we need a link round-up of link round-ups . . .).

To summarise, MMS, "miracle mineral solution", is basically bleach. People are sold it as a "cure" for anything from AIDS to Crohn's Disease, and are told that when they feel nausated that is the "toxins being released". Actually, when they feel nauseated it's because it's doing exactly what it does to everything else: oxidising it, which basically means destroying living tissue. Supporters who understand this much chemistry claim that it somehow magically selects pathogens in our bodies and leaves our own tissues alone. They also repeatedly claim that "THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE HAVE BEEN CURED WHY DON'T YOU LISTEN TO THEM YOU BIG PHARMA SCOURGES" (etc), though have not provided any links to such stories - and obviously not to scientific studies.

That's because there aren't any. This is how they go about things - again, credit to Noodlemaz for finding this:

Do you understand the power that a church has that hasn’t given up its power? Look at the Catholics. Their priests have been molesting women and children for centuries and the governments have not been able to stop it. If handled properly a church can protect us from vaccinations that we don’t want, from forced insurance, and from many things that a government might want to use to oppress us.

I will let you form your own opinion of the above.

Martin Robbins wrote this brilliant article about MMS - both the forum incident and the worldwide state, both of which attracted a lot of comment. Several folks from the Crohn's Forum came along to offer their defences, and the replies to them made highly amusing reading. On a larger scale . . . look what's happened as a result, again by Martin Robbins.

I feel terrible about Africa when I think about it. I know it has a lot of problems of its own - the stories of mass rape in Darfur and children being killed as witches - and yet I can't help but feel that if it wasn't pushed into treaties that kept it as a recipient of aid rather than a participant in trade, among so much more, incidents like these would be fewer. Countries themselves, drawn up by Europeans, have very little to do with the people that populate them, who think of themselves as members of their tribe rather than citizens of their countries. (If anybody thinks I'm patronising anyone by saying this, it's not unique - I give you as a more local example certain folks in Cornwall who would boast for half an hour at a time about their Cornish ancestry and surnames as a means of putting me in my place when I lived there. I haven't got a direct link to source my Africa/countries comment, but a close relative lived in Africa for many years, and I recommend this in which it's mentioned - though it's hardly the focus.) That also makes Africa the perfect haven for those who wish to market their untested products and ideas which would be promptly stopped in their own countries, from anti-condom propaganda to MMS.

Onto more cheerful subjects, look what Rhys Morgan has done! Not a bad thing to start off such a huge campaign before even reaching 16. You can also hear him on the radio (if I remember rightly, about 17 minutes in) here. He's got a link round-up too (see what I mean about link round-ups . . .). The BBC report that there's now an official safety warning in this country, too. Those MMS adverts which keep appearing on Wordpress sites whenever the product is mentioned - I wonder how long they will stay?

All this has seriously rattled Jim Humble himself. Or at least, someone posing as him - you never know. Check out these comments early on in Rhys's blog . . . it's really quite surreal. Note that the first thing he does is advise Rhys not to speak publicly any more.

There's no point trying to convince him or his fanatical supporters, though. The best thing, in my opinion, is to try and educate the consumers and regulators. It's always the hardest, most costly solution, I hear a few people cry, isn't it? To round up as many people as possible, which will take the most time and the most resources. You could say the same of a scientific trial. Yet it seems worth it to me a thousand times over. Because putting in lots of time, money, resources and people is going to have thousands more good effects than just encouraging people not to drink bleach. Because this is very tied up with some of mankind's greatest problems, and there are no quick fixes to those.

(Humankind if you prefer, but I write it meaning the same thing.)

That story might only be just beginning. But here's one that's ended, at least this part of one. Councillor John Dixon's #stupidscientology tweet has been deemed to be in a private capacity. That is, he is entitled to tweet an obviously personal rather than Cardiff Council representing opinion.

WalesOnline and the Guardian have also reported on the case, and the latter has a brief follow-up on the disagreement of the Ombudsman. (You can read the Ombudsman's report a little way down Jack of Kent's blogpost here.) I recommend the comments of the Guardian website. I couldn't resist inserting a cheeky idea - the one about how, if he was representing his constituents, he was probably doing so quite accurately. A couple of comments above mine is the remark that whether John Dixon was cleared or not is beside the point for the scientologists - their aim was to make councils worry and waste their time, and therefore to discourage freedom of speech, rather than to punish John Dixon particularly.

The story coincided neatly with a Panorama documentary on scientology. I didn't watch it, and understand that while it was revealing about some of the strangeness of the cult, it didn't go into its practice of harrassing its critics. Why We Protest has revealed a most interesting e-mail sent around to scientologists on how to handle criticism on websites. I don't suggest this represents scientologists as a whole, and you know what? I also don't think it's likely to be terribly effective. (The tired part of me wonders if any comment on any news-related website is ever effective.)

On a lighter note, the Daily Mash and Crispian Jago have thrown their oars in for a good laugh. But best of all is John's guest post on Jack of Kent, which goes into the Paul Chambers case and Rhys's campaigning too.

It looks like the Internet is shaping things up for quite a lot of coordinated fighting from both sides of all controversy. Well, I suppose that's better than nothing . . .

An article about an article

Here's a brilliant spoof by Martin Robbins at the Guardian's Lay Scientist - how to write a science article of thoroughly mediocre quality that gives science its current illustriously stupid and confusing name.

The comments are also a good giggle, and don't forget to move your mouse over the links at the end to see what they really are. (You don't have to click on them.)

I hope you laugh as much as I do. And rap my knuckles if you catch me doing any of it.


If it made you grin, you might also chuckle at the "Daily Mail Reporter"'s tweets, too. (If you're not in the UK, the Daily Mail is one of Murdoch's many tabloid newspapers and is not famed for its sense of civilisation, proportion, rationality, or . . . well, you get the picture.) I first noticed this guy (or girl?) when they tweeted: "Have you ever known, met or slept with anyone famous? The Daily Mail would like to hear from you." Scenes of a mass bombardment on the way . . .

Update: Martin has followed up his post with a serious look at what could be done to improve science journalism, also very well worth a read.

We did it.

Skeptics in the Pub arrived in Wales on Monday night. I'm absolutely gobsmacked at how many people came along. And I'm pretty sure it's going to grow fast.

Dean had the sense to nip over to the Promised Land earlier that afternoon to arrange rows of chairs. I arrived some time after six with Ray, who's set up the West Wales Skeptics, and was on the same (delayed) train as me from Swansea. We were bemused to find a sheet and bag of drawing pins on the windowsill, but put it down to Dean's mysterious comedy routine.

It turned out Simon wanted them. He preferred to project his talk onto a sheet rather than use the rather giant TV-like screen. We had to wait until it got dark, as the daylight shone through the sheet. Oh well. Each to their own. (For those who can't see the big grin on my face while I type, the TV-like screen wouldn't have shown some of the gloriously funny detail on Simon's slides!) Simon and Dean looked highly amusing pinning a sheet up to the window.

They got their revenge, though. I was grabbing a bite to eat while they were doing the heavy work, and Dean said, "Don't tire yourself out, Alice." That did make me feel guilty, looking at all the rows of chairs, the microphone in place . . . Oh well. I'd had an entirely out-of-proportion fight with the Mac and printer to print off some sweet little tickets (not something I'd ever seen at a Skeptics in the Pub before, but I thought they'd encourage people to pay up!), and came with a big plastic jar to collect the money in.

I was beginning to wonder where everybody was when one of the bar staff popped upstairs to say: "Some people arrived a while ago, shall I start sending them up?"

After that it was a steady trickle - with the occasional whooshing flood that kept half a dozen folks at a time queueing on the stairs while I fiddled with change and tickets. After a while I had to fish between notes to get out change (what a good job my nice mum had given me a little float of £1 coins!). There wasn't much time to think clearly between the meeting and greeting, judging who needed reminding that they needed to pay, who needed reassuring that we'd be friendly, who needed urging to rush and grab a seat, who I ought to recognise . . . Looking back, my memory supplies me with lots of members of both sexes, lots of various ages, and lots of different colours. I couldn't be more pleased with this. Skeptics are coming in for a lot of bashing these days, mostly from ourselves, and one of the criticisms is that there seems to be a white male majority. The other thing that excited me was so, so many folks arriving who I didn't know. They weren't coming to please me or anything. They'd heard about us and were interested. Which is so much better!

One of the first people I knew was Rhys Morgan plus his dad. Then there was PaulNUK2O1O, Hayley, Andrew Holding who will be our January speaker, Rhys Philips who interviewed me and Dean on the radio for Pythagoras's Trousers, and - albeit late due to council activities - Councillor John Dixon whose #stupidscientology hearing is Tuesday 28th (oh, and if you haven't seen Crispian's take on #stupidscientology, it's a must! Sorry, any scientologists reading this, but . . . .). Who else? I bet I've forgotten someone. What I'll never forget is that even my parents came along. It was a long journey for them, especially after a working day at the hospital.

We were sadly missing the illustrious Jack of Kent, whose legal work was consuming all his time - it would have been a long journey for him too. He'll come and give us a whole talk another time. Dean and I filled in for him. After the fire alarm had finished going off, that is. I'm still uncertain why it went off, other than that it got exceptionally hot in there. The windows didn't open far and the road was being dug up (yes, at eight o'clock in the evening!) - reminiscent of Alicia's first Maths lecture in "A Beautiful Mind". The first time it went off, everyone just looked around uncertainly and, well, sat there. There was no commotion downstairs either. There was a cheer when it stopped, and a roar of laughter when it went off again! I think they put the air conditioning on after that!

Dean did the official health and safety routine, warning us about the elephants in the loos or something like that, and reminding us to leave the building if there actually was a real fire. Then I made a prat of myself trying to explain what Skeptics in the Pub was by telling silly stories about it and keeping on remembering one more thing to say. My parents did not look at me while I did. Afterwards my mum said sympathetically that it was a good thing that I got Dean to do most of the speaking and that I would eventually get better at it. Well, I wasn't helped by a dear friend of Dean's who decided to spend a few minutes howling pitifully on the stairs!

Dean then took over again, shortly followed by Simon, who told us that he'd been a troublemaker for a long time and gave us an example of a complaint he made to a supermarket because their "Taste the Difference" Cumberland sausages all tasted the same. Then things descended from there. Even though I'd seen his talk before, I was slightly miffed to miss even five minutes of it by sneaking downstairs and asking if they could turn the music down. I'd love to blog about it in detail as I did Jourdemayne's, but . . . they're different. Jourdemayne's is special whether you've read it or not. Simon's contains a lot of special surprises which I don't want to spoil by revealing! I can't resist one more snippet, though. A thoroughly ridiculous, misleading and generally illegal product was defended on the grounds that it conformed to standard this stroke that stroke the other stroke thingummybob. Simon looked up said standard, and found that it was only part of a huge list of such standards to which it should also conform. The single one to which it did was merely that they'd filled out a form about it . . .

Anyway, general hilarity reigned! Rhys Morgan (who got a special cheer - he's been written about by Martin Robbins now, and the Kenyan newspapers are issuing warnings about that horrific pseudo-medicine being peddled there) was picked as a prop for a demonstration. A lot of people were standing, and a couple of them were chattering away distractingly at the back (but I think Dean had a Quiet Word with them). I was near the back and it was hard to hear. Bodies absorb an awful lot of sound. I tried sitting on the floor but I was the only person who did, so it felt silly. (Not to mention worrying among all those legs, and I couldn't hear a thing). I wonder if we can borrow twenty-odd folding chairs or so. Perhaps some kind fan might have some . . . ?

Simon got a very big clap and we had a break to grab a drink before Questions and Answers. In Manchester he'd got some tough questions such as whether his crusade against scam products ever made him feel guilty for those who were trying to earn a living, and whether it was morally right to deprive people of placebos. The questions in Cardiff were, to my surprise, all very supportive. Somebody asked him: "Given the events of the last few days, would you say you're a militant atheist?" which got a roar of laughter. Simon suggested that Dawkins is actually doing a useful job by being what seems to many of us aggressive, because he demonstrates just how moderate most atheists are by comparison - and therefore what "moderate" actually means. In fact, he suggested that there is a continuum between religious fanatics and atheists, with religious fanatics at the most warlike end, atheists at the most peaceful, and "moderate" religious folks in between. Food for thought there. You can make up your own mind what you think of that one.

It was actually my mum who pointed out one of the nicest things about Simon's talk and his questions and answers: that his answers were so incredibly honest. For example, someone asked him what his family thought of his crusades, and he simply told them. No soundbites, no dodgings, none of the evasiveness and condescension we're so used to. Just honesty. And fun.

Another question was "Don't you ever worry that you might wake up with a horse's head in your bed?" Simon told us a story about a rather huge and aggressive-looking aromatherapist who nearly attacked him in public - Simon was examining this chap's wares; the chap asked him what he was looking for and got the reply, "Oh, I was thinking of reporting you to Advertising Standards, actually."

When the questions were over, Simon got a big round of applause - and then was kind enough to raise one for me and Dean for putting this all together. I remembered to remind everyone of the next one: How to be a Psychic Con Man with Ash Pryce, 18th October, same time, same place. Then it was time for beer and photos!

View from the back (standing at the front include Rhys Morgan, Cllr John, Andrew and I think the Aberystwyth folks):

View from the front:

According to Dean, Simon and Cllr John must have been debating about who's caused the most trouble of the two of them . . .

. . . but they seem to have reached an amicable compromise!

Here are Dean and Andrew, whose huge number of chemistry corrections for my #Bleachgate post I really must go through one by one:

The three woo botherers debate best tactics . . .

And everyone here in this picture is a Skeptics in the Pub founder!
(Andrew is Cambridge, Ray is Swansea/West Wales, and Simon is Leicester.)

My mum told Simon he reminded her of one of our cats, Izzy - small, lithe, innocent-looking and absolutely impossible to discipline. That must be one of the more unusual compliments Simon has received in his time!

One of the best bits was Simon coming up and asking me how we managed to get so many people - he's been to Skeptics in the Pub in larger cities that have been running longer, with far fewer people. Judging by our takings, we got an audience of about 60. I honestly don't know how we did it. We've got our webpage, and we went on Twitter and Facebook, and I am sure Dean spread the word around Cardiff. I'd be fascinated to know how you heard about us - do let me know!

I think Andrew was the person who came from furthest away, namely Cambridge. (He very kindly timed a holiday in Wales to coincide with this!) We also had folks from Aberystwyth and Swansea, who I thought to get to wave at each other so they could all join up and discuss things later. In fact, one of the folks from Aber came up to me after Simon's talk and said, "That was brilliant! I've decided, we've got to do it in Aber!" There are rumours of Skeptics starting in Bangor too. I have an image in my head of several lines of dominoes placed across Wales . . .

Sadly, I had to go earlier than most, so as to get back to Pembrokeshire. We then managed to miss the last fast train and had a half hour wait, and got home just before two in the morning. It was a long time after that that I got to bed, because lots of great messages were already waiting on Twitter and Facebook! The best included: "Great talk last night on quackery and being an alt-med-botherer by Simon Perry. Well done @CardiffSITP", "Looking forward to more jam-packed Cardiff Skeptics meet ups, great talk from @Simon_Perry" and "Very much enjoyed @simon_perry talking at the @CardiffSITP event this evening. He is the @markthomasinfo of the skeptic world! Hilarious." Despite very little sleep, I woke early next morning still grinning my head off.

Dean put some of the meeting (not Simon's talk, obviously) on youtube. One of my colleagues found it and played it at top volume in the office yesterday. I ran and hid in the kitchen. I haven't dared watch it, but he tells me I fidget too much, which is probably true and useful to know. I've lived in Spain you see, and picked up the habit of waving my hands around when I talk! At any rate, that's my excuse!

Anyway, you know? I've been a teacher and I've learnt to care a lot less how I look when I talk. The thing to do is just get on with it. None of us got covered in eggs or rotten fruit, and all in all, as Dean put it, "I think that worked."

I hope to see you next time!

Welsh Skeptics head west

Is "sorry I haven't been blogging lately" the most tedious way to begin a blogpost? Probably. I'm writing an article about Cassini. This is exciting in a different way from my Galaxy Zoo one, because this is a subject I know very little about. Which is a great challenge, and allows me to prove my worth as a researcher of new things. I never knew I could get so fascinated with the intricacies of elliptical orbits and dust damage prevention . . .

Anyway, wonderful news: it looks like Wales is suddenly getting very interested in skepticism! Look - there's now a West Wales Skeptics, who have also set up a blog. These folks will actually be easier for me to get to (harder for speakers, though, I fear) than Cardiff, which of course is mine and Dean's. I am thrilled, folks - many congratulations, please use me as a speaker (I have a topic brewing . . .); and if you're in west Wales and could attend or indeed be a speaker, do please get in touch with them.

Here's their current logo, though they're looking for more - among other things. You can follow them on Twitter at @SITPWestWales. Now that Skeptics in Wales is actually splitting into regions, we've renamed our @WalesSITP twitter account to @CardiffSITP.

And Cardiff? We kick off five days from now! I'm beginning to get nervous. But realistically I shall be genuinely surprised if the night doesn't turn out to be wonderful. We'll have Simon Perry and Jack of Kent as speakers; we'll have Councillor John Dixon of #stupidscientology and Rhys Morgan of #bleachgate as guests of honour. (Cllr Dixon, have you got a preferred link for me to use to describe you? There's a lot more to everyone than who decided to launch stupid complaints about them!)

If much of the above might as well be in Outer Mongolian to you, don't feel left out, please just come along anyway - Simon's talk is absolutely hilarious; you'll learn a lot about science, evidence, trials, and how to be evil; and it's a nice social evening too. You can chat or just listen as you please. I'll make every effort to come and say hello. Dean is also a great comedian, even if he is planning to fling Rhys out of the window if he repeats too many counterarguments. You can have dinner while you're listening to the lecture (or before or after, of course). It's £3 per head, which we hope to reduce with time - we're getting two speakers in from far away and may have to pay for the room too, so right now we need to get some funds in!

On another totally unrelated subject, today's Internet trophies include a funny-smelling planet and a bunch of animals that want to join in sports games. And the Zoo limericks are starting to involve Biblical adventures. More seriously, if you haven't yet, you should read about the proposed science cuts. A great many other countries are not doing this because science is a major contributor to the economy - 45% according to Brian Cox! I have nothing to say besides what's already been said by so many people; the only new angle I can possibly come up with is this: although I want projects like the Zooniverse to become even more a part of science and education than they are, I hope they won't be expected to pick up the pieces. Because then we'd probably have to be cutting costs and jumping through somebody else's hoops. That's my gut feeling. I could be wrong.

Yes, my life is as chaotic as this post right now. Random, I know. I haven't given up plotting with the Pembrokeshire Tea Company either . . .

Hope to see you on Monday evening. 7.30 p.m., the Promised Land pub, Cardiff. We'll keep slightly better on topic than this post has. Maybe.

Some very big thank yous

I'm feeling very emotional this evening!

A week ago, the charity I work for was burgled. The thief or thieves kicked down our front door and broke the cupboard which contained our safe in order to make off with it. It was locked, of course, but I suppose they'll get into it . . . It contained all our donations, all the hire fees and deposits people had left for equipment they're using, our paying in book, and various useful records kept by our Queen of the Wheelchairs (as I call her). Not only that, but also several of the keys to our mobility scooters (so they can't work now!), all our stamps, and the biscuit tin!

We were all pretty shocked as you can imagine. I've lost count of the number of people who've told me of their disgust that someone would choose to do this to a charity. For my part, I feel a huge amount of personal loyalty to my current workplace. (I'm employed by them - I can't afford to volunteer!) Not only because it's a charity and one very much used by locals and holidaymakers, but also because the people working there are terrific and they mean a lot to me. We've only just had to stump up a large sum to be at the Pembrokeshire County Show and coped with major cuts to our budget - etc., etc., etc.

Anyway, I'd been thinking for a while of giving some fundraising astronomy talks, and had gone so far as to ask the local library about the price of hiring their gallery (which has held some great exhibitions and events such as a Writers' Day). Following this break-in, I found myself possessed with a major drive to get on with it.

I asked on Twitter if anyone knew of any good cheap venues, explaining what it was for. Stephanie (@stephmog) pointed me to the Pembrokeshire Tea Company. A couple of e-mails later and Tony, who works there, gave me a call to offer me their upstairs gallery for free!

I was gobsmacked. I told the others in my office with great excitement. Then, today, I paid Pembrokeshire Tea a visit. They're based at Nant-y-Coy Mill in Treffgarne Gorge. Pembrokeshire is mostly full of steep rounded hills, and its roads have rather unique hedgebanks. Driving along them can often feel like driving on top of the world: you see the banks and the hedges, and beyond them, just sky. Treffgarne Gorge, however, is a huge deep crevasse of sharp-looking rock, with spiky formations hundreds of feet above the winding roads, the River Cleddau well hidden behind bushes and trees. (The geology of Pembrokeshire is stunning - Pembrokeshire and Cornwall, I believe, have far more variety than the rest of the UK put together!) Just beyond the village of Treffgarne is Nant-y-Coy Mill, and that is where the Pembrokeshire Tea Company and some other small businesses are based. Besides tourist attractions such as a nature walk, a water wheel and (less touristy) tea plantations up the hill, it's a collection of beautiful old stone houses. It appears out of the cliffs quite suddenly.

Tony met me at the counter and showed me the gallery upstairs. It's currently full of textile artwork and is an interesting shape (for example, it seems to have a boarded up hole in the middle of the floor with banisters round it!), but it has a projector and tables and enough seating room. It also has a computer with delicious sound-effects: converted-to-audio radio waves! Tony offered to play that as people arrived, presumably drinking Pembrokeshire tea. I hope there'll be a way to let them all know what it is, but even if anyone misses that, it'll be very atmospheric. There'll also be wi-fi, so if I can get enough people to bring a laptop in, they can start classifying galaxies right there.

The idea of just giving a talk about Galaxy Zoo (which I should mention is in no way affiliated with my workplace - I'm simply talking about it because that's my expertise) promptly expanded hugely . . .

It turned out Tony is an astronomer - a real one, far more learned and professional than I am. He's worked on Sir Patrick's books, and lectured in the UK and US about non-standard cosmology. To cut a long story short, this subject suggests that the Big Bang, the expanding universe and (I think) relativity are wrong interpretations of what we've observed. "Human life has a beginning, a middle and an end, and that's what the theorists have imposed on the Universe," Tony explained as we and an artist chatted outside - that, or something along those lines (correct me if I'm wrong, Tony!). I asked him how we account for the abundance of hydrogen in the Universe and he suggested that perhaps this was simply how things naturally occur. I then asked about redshift and Hubble's constant, and his response was that we cannot prove redshift is due to an expanding Universe. It might be something getting in the way of the light and "tiring" it. It did occur to me that photons' energy is greatly sapped during their journey from the centre of the Sun to its surface, and indeed that visible light reaching the Earth is often absorbed and re-radiated as infra-red. I've no idea whether that is what Tony or non-standard cosmology has in mind. But Tony's very keen on using as many observations as possible.

Well, he will have ample opportunity to tell me a lot more about non-standard cosmology. As of today's introduction, I'm certainly not convinced (and haven't asked him quite a lot more questions, such as about the Cosmic Microwave Background!), but he did make two extremely good points with which I can't disagree. One was that the Big Bang leaves a lot of questions unanswered, such as how it happened - how "something" came out of "nothing" (and that the laws of physics break down at the point of a singularity). Secondly, he reminded me, just because an expert scientist says something is true, that does not make it true. The human race is still learning about a lot of things. Cosmology seems to be being turned upside down every few decades with the latest astonishing finding, and who says we aren't in for a lot more of those?

Ample opportunity, I say . . . Yes - because we've decided to hold regular public astronomy gatherings! Probably on Thursday nights, we'll start with a talk and, weather permitting, go on to an observing session, open to all. He's got telescopes, a meadow, and beautifully dark skies. I will do some talks, I expect Tony can do some, and you never know - perhaps more people will want to give them too. We'll probably advertise on the local radio, and I'll look into where else will do it affordably. And Tony's quite happy for my charity to benefit financially from these evenings. "Oh, I'm not worried about money, I make enough running Pembrokeshire Tea. And I want to help," he told me in his upstairs office just behind the gallery. Well . . . suffice to say, I have few words. I was quite blown over, and hope very much that Pembrokeshire Tea benefits greatly as well!

The only snag is that the gallery does not have disabled access. That is a big nuisance, considering what charity I work for! Tony is also interested in making life easier for the disabled, and has been in a battle to get planning permission for some kind of stairlift to be installed. Because it's a historic building, however, this permission keeps being refused - even though nothing would show on the outside. This seems like misplaced priorities to me. We hope our events raise awareness of this as well as astronomy . . .

I drove back to Haverfordwest feeling thrilled. I can't wait to get started! Pembrokeshire is a place where astronomy should be celebrated - we have some of the best skies in the UK. As soon as these events start taking place, I'll let you know - if you live in or near Pembrokeshire, I hope you can make it.

In Haverfordwest I stopped at the Pembrokeshire Mobility store. Today was its last day - not enough of their stock was being bought, and they were selling off everything they could. (Pembrokeshire Care, which shares its premises, is not closing.) Steph, who I mentioned earlier, is one of the staff. She told me they'd far rather see things go to my charity than to a shed for several years, and gave me what must have been hundreds of pounds' worth of equipment to take along! Wheeled walkers, a bath hoist, a walker with two trays, spare scooter keys (in case they fit any of the key-less scooters), a wheelchair, a special perching chair to allow you to sit without bending your legs and not have to stand up again, bath chairs, toilet raisers, crutch bags to carry on your scooter, and equipment to get you from your wheelchair to the bed and vice versa . . . these all went into my car. I had to make two trips. There seemed so much, so many things, so many lovely brand-new items. I felt even more speechless than at Tony's generosity. It is awful to think of the amount Steph's family's business is losing - and very emotional to think that rather than auction it they are happy to give it to the local community through us.

I arrived an hour before closing time, and decided to give them that last hour to see if any more stock could sell and use the time to obtain chocolate and iced latte and give piggyback rides to a seven-year-old! I don't feel I can even begin to repay this huge debt - I guess the best way will be to use it all well. There are always people in need - it's a matter of letting them know we're here, and doing our best for them.

I hope to see people use our new equipment, and lots of people come to the astronomy talks at Nant-y-Coy Mill!

Things are certainly going to get busy in Pembrokeshire in the next few weeks!

Tony, Pembrokeshire Tea, Steph, Pembrokeshire Mobility, you've done some wonderful things:

Getting into the health pages

It intrigues and amuses me that, while it took three years of devoted care and learning to get anywhere in the field of astronomy communication, all I have to do is annoy a couple of people by pointing out that homeopathy doesn't work and next thing I know I'm grinning like a moron in a newspaper.

The first time was in my local, as part of the Ten23 campaign. The second was in the Western Mail a couple of weeks ago. Upon the birth of Cardiff Skeptics, Dean and I were contacted by a very friendly, straightforward lady named Kirstie McCrum, asking us for more information. Her editor is not (yet) interested in running a piece on us - though we have had some interest from a new radio program - but we did pelt her with information about our skeptical acvitities in the hope that she could use it somehow. I was pleasantly surprised when she got back to me a few weeks ago to let me know she was writing up a piece on the pros and cons of homeopathy to go in the health section of the Western Mail.

It came out on Saturday 14th August. I wrote to ask if there was a link. It never did make it online, but Kirstie has kindly sent me a PDF and given me permission to put it here. As luck would have it, I can't upload PDFs, but I've taken some screenshots which with luck you should be able to expand. (Click on them and then click again.) I can also e-mail it to you if you ask!

The full page spread:


The "yes" column:


The "no" column:


Thanks to my sister, incidentally, for coming out into the sunny garden with me to take this photograph at two minutes' notice!

Now you may be interested to know, if you don't already, that things have a great deal of room for alteration between the time they get said or written to the journalist and the time they end up in the paper. Kirstie offered to interview me by telephone, but in the end we decided that I would write a 600 word article and she would write with any more questions. I did, and she asked me how I'd got into skepticism in the first place and a few other good ones that got me thinking and drew out a lot more information.

The only thing that really snuck in on its own was the point that my parents were doctors. I mean, they are, and she asked and I answered, but the article gives the impression that that is the reason I'm a skeptic. I'm a skeptic because I've spent three years working with scientists and dealing with large amounts of data and working on the communication of that data, and I've seen how easily the mind and eye can be tricked by exceptions or led by other people's interpretations. I'm a skeptic because I joined Twitter and learnt what was going on with Simon Singh and the BCA, and I learnt through that just how much misinformation there is out there. My parents certainly encouraged me to learn and to think scientifically, but alternative medicine is not a huge interest of theirs, pro or con! But if that's the only inaccuracy, then all's certainly well.

It was of course just my luck that I warn against homeopaths who believe that all conventional medicine is evil, and then it turns out that my "opponent" does not say this at all. Elaine Weatherly-Jones is definitely a moderate - not at all typical of the sort whose voices are loudest on the web - which makes me look a little hysterical by comparison. I expect some of the readers will have come across less moderate homeopaths, however, and that many homeopaths would villify her for her moderation! Not to mention her referring to clinical trials as "the gold standard". Note her careful wording, though. She does not say that they prove homeopathy works, only that some people like it and believe that it has worked. She can't say otherwise, and what she says does not refute my statement that the sugar pills are effectively all the same and swapping them around unknowingly would have no effect at all.

Anyway, Kirstie and I agreed that a great way to start would be the story of my overdosing on arnica, and here is the text of what I originally wrote for her . . .

On a snowy day in January, I swallowed an entire bottle of homeopathic pills. They tasted nice, of crunchy sugar. They allegedly also contained arnica.

Spread on the skin, arnica is an effective traditional herbal remedy. It works by encouraging dilation of nearby blood vessels. If swallowed, this leads to gastrointestinal bleeding and danger.

I felt no effects, good or ill. Whatever arnica had been in those pills had been so diluted that I would have had to take millions to consume one molecule of the stuff.

Homeopathy is not a natural herbal remedy. It is a a multi-billion pound industry using an 18th-century idea which contradicts basic science. Jacques Benveniste claimed that water "remembered" antibodies, but no scientist has been able to reproduce these effects when experiments are carried out in an unbiased manner.

Water molecules move around freely until frozen; they readily collect around dissolved substances; they then continue on their way.

Banging them ten times against a leather and horsehair contraption, as Samuel Hahnemann, the founder of homeopathy, suggested, does not magically cause them to swim back into the (gigantically larger) shape of a molecule a person wants - physically or metaphorically. Sorry.

The manufacturers had got another principle of homeopathy confused when they marketed the pills, anyway. "Like cures like" is the dogma, such as caffeine for sleeplessness. But this arnica had been sold for its healing properties of the skin. The packet certainly contained no information about the difference between that and swallowing it, nor any warnings about the dangers of swallowing arnica. I looked those up.

It did contain some extreme specifics, such as not touching the pills with your hand and dissolving them under the tongue. No reasons were given. One might feel proud of accomplishing this fiddly activity. It would be easy, later, to atrribute your recovery from illness to that achievement. "Our medicine stimulates the body to heal itself." But bodies heal themselves anyway. Next time you have a cold, make sure you wear red socks every day. You'll probably get better then, too.

Homeopaths occasionally try to get round this by claiming: "If you feel worse temporarily, this is your body excreting toxins," but are never able to say what these toxins are. Again, your body naturally excretes waste that would be harmful if it built up. Think a) jaundice, b) going to the toilet.

When you're ill, it's a comfort to feel that someone is doing something about it. An industry with plenty of money, homeopathy can offer a listening ear and a great specificity of choice between diluted substances - none of which prove any more effective or specific than another when swapped around.

Effectively, it's hope, and the illusion of power over your fate. Perfectly harmless, until you actually need medication.

Gloria Thomas was only 9 months old when her eczema killed her. Doctor after doctor revealed that her life could have been saved even hours before her death, but her parents refused. They treated her with homeopathy alone. Diabetic Nakhira Harris died when her insulin was replaced with homeopathy. Both sets of parents doubtless meant the best for their children.

Belief in homeopathy may boost your sense of well-being. But it also demands a belief in the evil of conventional medicine and the "Big Pharma" that also manufactures it (read the label). Nasty little stories are spreading of people being advised not to be vaccinated for malaria before going to the tropics, or to give up their medicine for heart trouble.

There are things wrong with "Big Pharma" - but my great love, science, sides with neither. It does not tell, but shows. It'll show you what's really going on with all those beautiful little water molecules, with the complexities of biology and our bodies. And it'll show you what medicine works, even if it's not what you want to hear.

I guess not all of that would have fitted onto the page spread!

Many thanks Kirstie for being helpful and interested and appreciative throughout, and I hope I can persuade her (among many others) to come along to Cardiff Skeptics' opening night.

If you're in the mood for something from a bigger newspaper, there is a wonderful article - "Government ignored our advice" - in the Independent, backed up by brilliant columns from David Colquhoun and Julian Huppert. How sad that Julian Huppert is the only scientist left in the House of Commons, and science is such an essential part of the world now. We can but keep trying to get it out there!