Physics A-Level - Physblog

BBC reveals plethora of inanimate objects in space...

1/14/2019

After the wonderful discovery and imaging of Ultima Thule recently (the farthest object visited by a human space craft) I noticed that the BBC decided to describe the rock as a Snowman... In fact, a quick search online shows that many media outlets were guilty of this; namely, naming space objects after stupid things. I then tried to figure out "to what end" did they decide to do this. It's long been said that in order to make science 'more appealing' journalists need to make science more 'relatable', and who doesn't relate to snowmen (so the logic goes). Teachers are also told this and it leads to all sorts of funny syllabuses and schemes that we have to teach. I wonder if this is true, useful or helpful. I'll explain why...

Science is inherently interesting! Having discussed lesson planning with many teachers, I can safely say that scientists have a much easier job of making things interesting than other fields of study (that's not to disparage other fields of learning!). And yet, there seems to be a need among mainstream media outlets to dumb-down scientific content. It's no wonder that many people are disconnected from science if mainstream media regularly feeds us space junk in the form of inanimate objects. This, of course, is not the only factor making people disenchanted with science.

But, by comparison, media outlets make no shortage of highly convoluted technical jargon when it comes to the finance or business sections of news coverage! Dr. Ben Goldacre has been vocal about this for quite some time and wrote a great column in the Guardian for a decade demystifying science for public consumption. For example, he makes the (facetious) point that media outlets tend to sort all food items in to: "causes cancer" or "does not cause cancer"! Why do they do this?!

In short, don't get put off by media outlets dumbing things down. There are many great technical science magazines and other media formats for public consumption; some of which can be found on the links page. The internet is alive with good science content, I would highly encourage you searching it out!

So, without further ado, here are some examples of inanimate objects BBC found in space...

BBC, 2 January 2019
Nasa's New Horizons: 'Snowman' shape of distant Ultima Thule revealed

BBC, 13 December 2018

NASA's Jupiter Mission Juno Reveals Giant Polar Storms

BBC, 3 June 2018

What is Pluto's heart made of?

BBC, 11 February 2018

'Oumuamua: 'space cigar's' tumble hints at violent past

BBC, 24 September 2018

There is huge 'monolith' on Phobos, one of Mars's moons

For those of you who noticed... Monolith is a very relevant reference to the greatest science fiction film of all time: 2001 A Space Odyssey

I'm actually quite amazed that there wasn't a separate article in the BBC about the levitating spoon!

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Rare Repeating Energy Burst from Distant Galaxy

1/10/2019

An artist’s conception of the centre of an active galaxy where gamma-ray bursts originate. Guys... its just a drawing... Credit: NASA

The rarest of rare: repeating Fast Radio Bursts (FRB) were detected from the same point in the sky. But will we see it repeat again? “The answer is definitely maybe” said scientists conclusively in 2017.

This year, radio telescopes in Canada have spotted something strange in a rare astronomical event known as a Fast Radio Burst (FRB). FRB’s were first detected in 2007; they are high intensity radio signals lasting only a few milliseconds that emanate from distant galaxies. And scientists know exactly what their cause is… Aliens… nah just kidding, they have no idea! Yet!

Since 2007 about 50 – 60 such events have been spotted, however, this is only the second time that a repeated signal (5 times) was detected emanating from exactly the same place, in the space of a few months. The first time this happened was in 2012 from a galaxy 2.5 billion light-years away (with a few repeat signals from that point). So this appears to not be some accident of measurement. Intriguing…

So where do these FRB’s come from? The 2012 ‘repeater’ came from a star-forming region in a dwarf galaxy (there are different types but it’s basically ‘a small galaxy’). Scientists think that this is no coincidence as it is likely that the conditions for these bursts would arise from some extreme astronomical environment.

Some have suggested that FRB’s arise in magnetars, a type of neutron star with a powerful magnetic field that are thought to arise as a result of unusually large supernova explosions; thought to be prevalent in dwarf galaxies. Others suggest that supermassive black holes in active galactic nuclei (AGN) are the cause. AGN’s are high luminosity emanations of (normally) electromagnetic waves coming from the centre of galaxies. Sometimes the ejection from an AGN points towards Earth, making it look very bright (we call it a ‘blazar’). It has been suggested that streams of plasma emanating from AGN’s can interact (somehow) with pulsars (another type of neutron star, highly magnetized and rotating) to produce FRBs. Indeed, previously, a faint gamma-ray burst was observed coinciding with an FRB and may eventually help explain the origin of FRBs.

So that’s a brief journey through some high energy astrophysics terminology (!): gamma-ray bursts (most energetic explosions in the universe, from supernovae), active galactic nuclei, quasars, blazars, magnetars, pulsars, FRBs, neutron stars, etc. (more on these another time).

But no one yet knows why FRB’s are only momentary and seem not to appear again. Perhaps more time is needed to see if repeated FRB’s are more common than previously thought, or a signature of some new interesting phenomenon in astrophysics. Will it happen again… “the answer is definitely maybe”!

The Giant Peanut in Space

1/2/2019

Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI; sketch courtesy of James Tuttle Keane

On new years’ day, the world was witness to new images from the “most distant object ever visited by a spacecraft”. NASA’s New Horizons space explorer set out in 2006 and has only now flown past a mysterious rock named Ultima Thule and came to within 3,500km of it (although at the time of writing this article, a day later, we’re now at…. 1,665,527km!). New Horizon’s has flown past Jupiter and Pluto (more on this in a later post) and arrived somewhere in the Kuiper belt; a rock and ice ‘filled’ region believed to hold the key to understanding the origins of our solar system.

Scientists working on the New Horizon’s project have been looking for a suitable object to study in the Kuiper belt ever since the launch in 2006. Ultima Thule was discovered only in 2014 and the Hubble Space Telescope was recruited to track its trajectory. Interestingly enough, in 2017, Ultima Thule blocked three background stars (known as an ‘occultation’) on its journey tumbling through the Kuiper belt region. Data from five different telescopes gave strong indications that Ultima Thule was an odd shaped object with two uneven lobes.

The object’s strange shape has now been confirmed by data during the close fly-by and shows that Ultima Thule is bowling-pin shaped* and rotates on a similar axis as a plane’s propeller. Its size is about 35 by 15 km. The shape was mainly determined by following the object’s shadows, rotation and trajectory, in much the same way as ‘Oumuamua’s shape was found (see previous post).

Regarding its shape, there is some speculation as to whether the object is one continuous body or, in fact, a contact binary. This is where two objects have come in to contact with one another through gravitational attraction and merely touch; but eventually fuse and coalesce. Either way, this could shed light on how planets form, through the accumulation of rocky material.

Another great discovery at the far reaches of our ever-mystifying Solar System!

*when I first saw images of Ultima Thule, it looked more like peanuts in their husk than a bowling-pin (as reported by most Media agencies!), and thus, I refer to it here as the Giant Peanut in Space

********** UPDATE - 03.01.19 **********
New high resolution image of Ultima Thule:
(~33km long)

Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

Finally, An Interstellar Visitor – But where did it go?

12/10/2018

Our first interstellar guest made its appearance last year in October (2017) when telescopes searching for near-Earth asteroids noticed an object with an odd trajectory. Following the discovery, astronomers turned their telescopes in the direction of the aptly named ‘Oumuamua (Hawaiian for “first distant messenger”, being detected in a Hawaiian astronomical observatory).

As data came in it became apparent that this is no ordinary rock. Large variations in the object’s brightness suggested that ʻOumuamua was rotating and tumbling and that its shape was highly elongated; with as much as a 1 to 10 (diameter to length) aspect ratio i.e. think ‘long grain of rice’. When ʻOumuamua was pointing its long axis directly at Earth it’s brightness dropped significantly, when the flat side faced Earth the brightness was highest. A highly elongated shape was the only model fit that could explain the variation in brightness.

No object of such a description has been observed in our solar system before, calling in to question the object’s origin. It is dark red, showed no signs of a comet’s tail (although jets of gas have been observed emanating from it’s surface), has a high metallic content and is moving very fast. So fast, that it could not have originated in (or near) our solar system. SETI even spent time looking for radio signals down to the strength of one tenth of one mobile phone and heard nothing...

Furthermore, infrared imaging can give information regarding the objects temperature, from which its shape can be indirectly inferred. NASA’s infrared Spitzer Telescope was pointing towards ʻOumuamua for more than 30 hours but could not detect it, suggesting that the object was cooler (or more reflective) than expected. How so?

It is suspected that as the object passed close to the sun it could have developed an icy coating, removed dust and refreshed the surface which would have increased it’s albedo (basically its reflectance), making it undetectable to Spitzer. This is highly unusual, although sometimes detected in comets (although ʻOumuamua has no comet tail, despite coming close to the Sun). Rocky bodies like this, travelling for (possibly) millions of years unimpeded will be very cold in interstellar space, possibly only a few degrees above absolute zero. In fact, the likelihood of even coming close to our sun is quite stupendously low, hence, astronomers being rather excited*! Another observed phenomenon was outgassing which is often seen in comets. This is when gas is released through the surface of the object as it heats up as pressure builds up within the object (like a pressure cooker releasing steam). Is it a comet or an asteroid or a space-faring alien-craft hell bent on invasion? Nobody can say for sure. However, ʻOumuamua has undergone somewhat of an identity crisis as scientists still aren’t quite sure how to classify it.

And as quickly as it came, ʻOumuamua is disappearing. This odd object is gravitationally misbehaving i.e. it’s not following it’s predicted gravitational trajectory. A number of theories have been suggested to explain this, such as outgassing jets that push the object around and/or solar wind (essentially photons) being responsible for the added acceleration. All this adds to the mystery of this most intriguing object! The likelihood is that soon it will be lost forever… au revoir ʻOumuamua.

*I make note here that alien enthusiasts have had a very exciting time following ʻOumuamua’s discovery. You've got to love alien enthusiasts (keep up the good work!)

Photo from NASA Getty images.

Is General Relativity the Final Stop?

11/18/2018

100 years on (or so) is General Relativity the only player in the game?

I recently attended a lecture by esteemed physicist Prof Clifford Will in honour of Einstein's landmark contributions in understanding how gravity works. The title of the lecture was "was Einstein right?", now that's a catchy title! However, being relatively (no pun intended) up to date in the field I was trying to see whether there will be any new information around that's not caught the media attention. And, I'll say, some things were quite surprising, other things, merely consolidating.

As far as theories go, General Relativity has stood the test of time to describe (and predict) relatively accurately, many phenomena that are observed in the universe. Some of the parameters that the theory predicts come out extremely precisely. Prof Will spent quite some time explaining some experiments that have really honed in on the precision of many astronomical measurements to confirm many of Einstein's predictions. Recent measurements of gravitational waves which led to the Nobel Prize in 2017 and the discovery of the Higg's Boson (and subsequent Nobel Prize in 2013), have contributed to a renewed excitement in the whole field.

In the lecture by Prof Will he spoke about a whole host of added effects that General Relativity predicted but were too difficult to measure, until recently. These do not discredit the theory at all, but make small corrections to Relativity; think of them as small perturbations to the theory. This is done in many areas of science: you take some standard model for something and make small corrections to account for some factor and refine the theory over time. I'll give a layman's example:

You input your current and final destination on Google maps (or Waze... or take your pick) to find out how long it will take to get from X to Y by car. "Simple" says Waze, "take the shortest path and the speed limits of those roads and calculate the travel time"... "hold on a minute" says Waze, and will then adjust this time for actual average speed, traffic, unexpected events, road closures, cars stopped in the road, accidents, police presence, donkey in road, etc. etc. So you have a general rule (accounting for distance, velocity, time), but then many perturbations to make the final result more accurate (correction: you cannot currently enter 'donkey' in to Waze).

So, it seems, that General Relativity, can now account for frame dragging, rotating bodies, wobbling/spinning giant bodies, and others. But, does this fundamentally change anything in Relativity itself? Probably not, says Prof Will. What is remarkable however, is how Relativity has stood the test of time and, as far as I can tell, also stands up to the predicted perturbations that the theory could never measure when it was initially formulated.

This is a key ingredient in science: predictive power. A good theory needs to be able to predict the outcomes, and path the way, for future observations and discoveries. So in this regard, General Relativity is doing pretty well. Are there many unanswered questions? Plenty. Is General Relativity the final stop? Probably not.

I went up to Prof. Will after the lecture and asked him whether there were other contending theories that could usurp Relativity, or totally change our paradigm (much like Einstein overhauled Gravity, in the wake of Newton). Prof Will was unsure. However, there are plenty of very very (and also VERY) unknown things in the universe to date. There is currently no knowing how big a part those things will play in the sum total of our understanding of the universe at large. Some players include: quantum gravity, dark matter, dark energy, the edges of the observable universe, inflation, black holes, etc. We cant know, maybe you do?!

In any case, one very very (and may I say VERY) subsidiary positive that has come out of all of this is that major blockbuster films like Interstellar can make excellent graphic work of gravitational lensing around supermassive black holes (see image)!

"Formidable" Flying Seeds

10/24/2018

A new mechanism of flight has been discovered… in plants! Plants find all sorts of ingenious ways to disperse their seeds. This work, spearheaded by Naomi Nakayama of the University of Edinburgh, landed them a paper in Nature. The paper describes and explains the fluid dynamics of a mysterious vortex that is generated above a falling Dandelion seed. This vortex is purported to assist in its flight and is the first of its kind to be seen.

You can read the abstract of that paper here. An abstract is the blurb that comes at the beginning of every scientific paper that summarizes the work in a nutshell, or a seed shell (sorry bad joke, I know!). Normally the abstract is open source and available to all. I thought I’d provide commentary on that abstract in a fuller prose. Here’s my expanded version of that abstract:

“There are a huge variety of methods of dispersal of plant seeds, from microscopic to very large. Fungus’ disperse their ‘seeds’ via spores, and pollen in flowering plants are microscopically small. Compare that with large seeds of fruits which are distributed by falling or by animals eating them and releasing the seeds, somewhere far and wide, in their feaces. Somewhere in the middle you have seed dispersal through adaptive flight mechanisms… seeds with wings! The common dandelion uses a bundle of bristles which enhances it’s drag and keep it aloft to be carried by the wind, which is effective “over formidable distances” i.e. ‘far’ (but its catchy to write “formidable distances”!). BUT… nobody knows how on Earth this happens (or anywhere else, for that matter). Here, for the first time, a vortex is visibly detected above a dandelion seed in flight (in it’s ‘wake’). Air passes through the bristles causing the vortex to emerge as a separated entity above the bristles themselves. The vortex left in the wake, being separated, serves to stabilize flight; unlike a solid disc whose wake is normally ‘attached’ to the body-in-flight. Two factors affect this separated vortex formation: 1) size/radius of the disc of bristles, 2) density of bristles (which they call ‘porosity’) i.e. ability of air to flow through it. These two are precisely ‘tuned’ to maximize the amount of seed that can be carried (“aerodynamic loading”) whilst using the least material (i.e. using bristles and not a solid disc). This new discovery is evidence of a new class of fluid dynamic behavior and could help explain the methods that living things utilize to carry seeds and other biologically relevant material across stupendously FORMIDABLE distances.”

This work was (almost certainly) inspired by Inspector Gadget, but I somewhat doubt that he knew how his flying-thingy worked. I think someone should tell him.

(The dandelion photo is from the paper in Nature here, and can be found on a google search! Inspector gadget from here, from DHX media)

Unmasking Jupiter: Peaking within...

10/16/2018

The striking banded zones of Jupiter were observed (and drawn!) 300 years ago by Cassini, shortly after the advent of the telescope and Galileo’s pointing of it skyward. The mystery of the origin of these belts have subsisted ever since. Questions surrounding them, and the eminent ‘red spot’, have given rise to more sophisticated formulations of those earlier questions: What is the dynamics of the storms that rage in these bands? Why are they different colours? How deep do these jet-streams go? What causes them to flow? How does their structure change over time? What is the internal structure of Jupiter and is it related to the structure of these bands? Can some basic principles be used to model the experimental data to forecast how other gas giants may behave?

I recently attended a talk by a scientist working on the (FABULOUS!) Juno project, spearheaded by NASA. In light of new data from Juno, a number of these questions can be tackled for the first time.
Interestingly, Jupiters’ jet-streams run across the gas giant in bands than flow in opposite directions (antiparallel) and are asymmetric in the northern and southern hemispheres. The size, speed of flow and number of bands are related to the radius and mass of the planet. Current modelling of these parameters gives insight to the internal fluid dynamics of the gas planet, but lacking the necessary data regarding Jupiter’s interior, much speculation still remains.

Now though, close fly-bys allowed Juno to collect the necessary data near the surface of Jupiter to detect subtle differences in gravity. These differences in gravity are highly correlated with the inner workings of Jupiter. The deeper the jet-streams, the more mass they contain, the greater the gravitational field signal. They were able to correlate the gravity data with the dynamics of the weather layer and found that the weather layer goes much deeper than expected. On Jupiter (radius ~ 70,000km) the weather layer is about 3000 km deep and contains about 1% of the total mass of Jupiter, compared with Earth’s atmosphere which makes up 1 millionth of the Earth’s mass.

Another finding was that, underneath this weather layer there was a layer that rotated as a rigid body; and work is underway trying to determine the interplay between these two layers. What came first and how do they interact?

Scientists await crucial data that will be able to tackle another long-standing question regarding Jupiter: what is the nature of it’s core, if it even has one?! Current understanding suggests that Jupiter contains a diffuse core, one that does not have a well define boundary, but rather extends from the centre of the planet and is somehow mixed with other layers. However, the way things are going, and with the regular surprises that Juno is delivering, we’ll have to wait and see.

This is groundbreaking stuff! Looking forwards to hearing more from Juno and their team.

Follow Juno on Twitter

"Scientists, what are your dirty secrets?" (part 3/3)

9/16/2018

Part 3 of 3 ...

Some scientists mentioned that there are some initiatives underway to make all data available on big data servers. By making all data available (the good with the bad, the logic goes), this would make the field more transparent… I personally think this is a difficult idea to swallow since a very large data set would need an accompanying document of instructions that is so large it becomes prohibitively undo-able. One theorist present, for example, uses a 3 month continuous slot on a super computer to calculate some energy/electrical consideration for a highly complicated surface/molecule/interface/interaction… Good luck sending that in to the ether… Scientists would then have to contend with merely being heard above the background noise.

One scientist said that science should be presented as a ‘narrative’ story. It “needs appeal”, otherwise it wont gain traction. This appeals to basic human instinct. If a scientist ‘takes me on a journey’ in a lecture or a scientific paper it is not only easier to follow, it helps parameterize the whole field in context of other works. Some erred on the side of caution: “we don’t need to tell stories, those who are interested will read it anyway”… I personally don’t think it works like that.

The scandal of ‘authority’. Everyone agreed that ‘authority’ is meaningless i.e. your reputation as a scientist has nothing to do with the number of papers you publish and in which journals. Rather, on the science that you do. Everyone knew, from reading the literature in their own field and in conversation with scientists themselves, who were the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ scientists in their field.

The issue of ‘h-index’ is a really sour point. H-index is a modern analysis technique that ranks a scientist’s impact in the field based on how many citations they have per publication (more or less). This index is (partially) socially constructed, and follows algorithms, which leads some scientists to play the game of “how do I boost my h-index” without necessarily being a good scientist. One scientist told me afterwards that both extremes of the h-index are suspicious i.e. you could have an h-index of zero which could mean that you are a closet genius with the best science ever but no one has ever heard of who you are (and never publish your work) or you are a loser in your mother’s basement. Conversely, you could have the highest h-index in the world which could indicate that something must be going wrong i.e. you wrote one paper which, for trending reasons, people are citing and re-citing, but you yourself are not actually the greatest scientists in your field.

All of these discussions led some scientists to demand the ‘abolishing’ of h-indices (that will never happen… computer algorithms exist, get over it) but others merely said that we should just ignore it – and that’s what most scientists do. H-indices have SOME meaning, but it shouldn’t be the final arbiter of any faculty position decision.

HOWEVER, and a big however it is… young budding scientists are facing a problem. They NEED to publish in high-impact journals to get positions at universities and in many institutions, they have to play this game. It’s mostly the ‘better’ research institutions that can see past this. A few scientists present admitted that this is exactly what happened to them. Hmm, what to do?

One scientist said that researchers need get out of the habit of only using your own highly specialized technique. Perhaps the best way of ensuring that your results (as) closely (as possible) resemble a scientific ‘fact’ is to approach the problem from multivariate angles, methods, techniques and theories. The sum total of all of these should paint a clearer picture for everyone. Promisingly, good scientists do this, although it did serve as a warning to everyone.

A number of scientists commented on the difficulty of the review processes. When a scientific paper is submitted to a journal, the journal asks experts to critically review the work. There is normally an amount of time that they get to work on it. This is hard. Some papers need real consideration, and its not always possible to check every single word, figure and reference. Do you not review this paper? Review it poorly? Or spend more time on it that you are paid for!? These are difficult questions, and the pressure lead to mistaken outcomes. One scientist commented “I received a paper to review and another reviewer let the paper sail through because he respected the researcher…”, alarm bells ringing anyone?! People need to wake up!

High impact journals (like Nature and Science) don’t guarantee that the work is great quality. Some scientists admitted that their best papers were in journals that were more specialized, with a unique readership.

All in all, it was fascinating to hear about these issues. So many of which may seem subsidiary, and out of the remit of science, but they present real problems that serve to bottleneck the scientific endeavor. Its why budding scientists need to be pragmatic and smart about their science.

Don’t stick to your comfort zone. Try many things. Understand that politics is unfortunately interwoven with science in many ways, and that to get ahead you need to be steadfast in your scientific convictions.

"Scientists, what are your dirty secrets?" (part 2/3)

9/13/2018

... So what were my observations .....

Reproducibility. This is desirable all across science and there are a number of reasons that make it important. Experiments stand or fall based on whether they can be reproduced. However, often, the precise conditions of measurements are not clearly stated (and often absent) in scientific papers. This, as well as the inappropriate control measurements. Some scientists complained that (like the current status in popular media) 'new science' is sexy and journals will often publish something very exciting at the expense of quality. Essentially, time is the arbiter of whether a piece of science gains acceptance. One person suggested that a repeat experiment (of another group) should be published in an open source format (very simple to do), and builds on the credibility of the experiment or theory.

Nothing is measured in isolation! Whether you’re measuring the conductance of a single molecule or the vibrational modes of a crystal or the reactive nature of an enzyme you are using tools and instruments. Those tools are limited and in some cases, in certain fields, measuring the ‘same thing’ in a different set up can yield different results. A scientist’s job is to be transparent about methods. Some groups, however, when publishing breakthrough work, withhold methods to block others from entering the field; it gives them a grace period before others can be involved in that same niche of experiments. It’s important to control for your experimental method, by measuring in different ways.

Practically speaking, scientific groups, however, cannot publish a repeat experiment of another group (no journal would do that). This is where conferences are important and scientists DO tell other scientists "we cannot reproduce your results". The result of this is either: 1) more details are needed in that experiment, or 2) the experiment was flawed. Both are possible...

Issue: every scientist will select interesting data to publish. But don’t think that scientists are being misleading by doing this; most/many (?!) are responsible and publish what their experimental yield is, so you can judge for yourself. "Yield" is essentially what percentage of the time does your 'stuff' actually work, but must be carefully defined (!) e.g. “my experiment showed cool stuff 10% of the time” is different to “of the 100 experiments, 10 showed something but only 1 showed cool stuff” –both could be presented as “10%” yield: be careful. ‘Yield’ is also analogous in our everyday lives: How much of your own work day was productive that you would report it in a minute-by-minute report of what you did?

In science, often the things that DON'T work, are very very important. In my own work, I'm quite certain that I've repeated failed experiments of scientists of the past, which was perhaps avoidable had I known that it’s been tried before. In fact, I remember finding an old lab book from 15 years ago (in our lab) and finding details of a failed experiment that I was just about to do myself! This is why its important to speak with others who are in the field to see what they’re doing, what they’ve tried and paint a vision for the future.

...... to be continued

"Scientists, what are your dirty secrets?" (part 1/3)

9/12/2018

(Part 1)

"Ok everyone, gather round", said a conference organiser to the lecture hall of scientists. "We'd like to end by doing something different today. There is some really high quality science coming from all around the room, but I'd like to open a discussion in to those things that we never talk about"... "lets say... what could be considered to be the 'dirty secrets' in your field?"

I attended a scientific conference this week on the topic of surface spectroscopy and electrical phenomena. Experts from around the world presented their work in quite a wide range of experimental and theoretical topics. It was one of hundreds of small, specialized conferences, that unassumingly occur all over the world. However, from my judgement, in discussions with other scientists and general reading, the outcomes at this conference seemed rather ubiquitous in scientists’ criticism of… science.

So how does ‘science work’, practically speaking? Peer reviewed journals are a great way of getting good science out in to the scientific community; other experts anonymously review your work, and with the appropriate additions and corrections you can publish and advertise that to the world. Conferences serve as another great venue for science. You can share ideas, collaborate, network, present your finding and get a critical analysis of your work. I've been to some conferences where the question and answer sessions were pretty brutal. Normally, in the good spirit of science, this is positively encouraged, and is mostly done well.

But is there anything really 'off the table' that cannot be (or isn't) discussed in a scientific setting? Are there dogmatic truths about the way science is done, published and disseminated to the masses? Is all data published? SHOULD all data be published? Is there an issue with reproducibility? What if two lines of solid experimental evidence directly contradict each other? What are the external factors hindering good science and how can they be addressed? Should we expect scientists to be moral? With whom does the burden of checking for faulty science, lie?

All these questions (and more) were posed at the conference that I attended. I would say that most of the scientists knew exactly what was being referred to... And always with many disagreements! Some of my conclusions will follow shortly...