How I dissected a T. rex (it took chainsaws, feathers and lots of latex)

Prepare to meet thy chainsaw NatGeoTV

I dissected a Tyrannosaurus rex in front of television cameras.

That may be the most surreal sentence I’ve ever written. So let me explain. I’m part of a team that built a life-sized model of Tyrannosaurus rex and then cut it up. The spectacle is a bloody, gory two-hour television special called T.rex Autopsy. The premise may seem absurd. But this is a whole new way of communicating science to the public, and it has been one of the highlights of my career.

I’m a paleontologist who has been studying dinosaurs for more than a decade. I’ve dug up T. rex fossils in the western United States, travelled the world studying tyrannosaur bones in museums, and described some of T. rex’s closest cousins. It’s a pretty cool job, but it comes with something of a peculiar annoyance. Sometimes I get strange people ringing me up with their pet theories on how dinosaurs evolved from space aliens, or emailing me long screeds about how dinosaurs never existed.

I got an email like that last August from a television producer in London. At first it seemed like a joke: they wanted to autopsy a T. rex corpse in front of the cameras. Just another ambitious but insane young producer, I thought, wanting to make his mark in a television landscape where shows on Bigfoot and mermaids are now standard fare on networks that used to be dedicated to science programming.

But I agreed to hear him out, and very quickly my opinion changed. They wanted to dissect a T. rex alright, but by building the most scientifically accurate model possible, then using the pageantry of an autopsy to reveal how this most famous of dinosaurs actually functioned as a living, breathing, feeding, moving, growing animal.

They needed a T. rex expert to consult on the build of the model. I signed up immediately, along with several of my esteemed colleagues, and was later asked to expand my role and appear on-screen as one of the dissectors. That was how I found myself in the famous Pinewood Studios near London last April, next to where they were filming the new Bond movie, chopping up a 43-foot T. rex with chainsaws, dripping with synthetic blood. Not a normal day at the office for an academic scientist who spends most of his time writing grants, advising students, and lecturing.

I’m incredibly proud of the end result. We’ll probably be criticised by some internet cynics who feel we’re trying to hoodwink the public into thinking this is a real tyrannosaur, or who disparage the whole idea of doing a dinosaur autopsy as too over-the-top. But that would be missing the point.

We took the utmost care to make sure our tyrannosaur was completely in line with what we know from fossils. Everything we couldn’t reconstruct from real fossils was informed speculation based on careful comparisons with living crocodiles, which are close cousins of dinosaurs, and birds, which are their descendantsLINK?. And having four real scientists (a vet and three paleontologists) conducting the autopsy, without a script, made it even more authentic.

When I first walked into the autopsy room and saw the dinosaur, I was blown away. Yes I had consulted on the build, but the producers had deliberately prevented me from seeing the final model so I would be surprised. It was so realistic – pretty much how I think a real T.rex would have looked – but made of latex, silicone, plastic, corn syrup, and various other goodies. What the artists made in four-and-a-half months and 10,000+ man hours is surely the most accurate and life-like dinosaur of all time.

Inside rex

We go from head-to-tail on the dinosaur, cutting it up, talking about how each bit helps us understand T. rex as a living animal; what it ate, , how fast it moved , what injuries it suffered, what its metabolism was like and how quickly it grew, how it reproduced.

So what exactly did we learn? If you thought dinosaurs were dim-witted, overgrown reptiles, think again. T. rex had a huge brain, its eyesight was keen, it had feathers and it grew really fast. It was essentially a huge fluffy bird from hell.

Some of my favorite moments were spent inside the belly of the beast, as we removed the super-sized internal organs. We don’t know much about dinosaur hearts and lungs and stomachs, because these soft parts don’t easily fossilise. But they can leave signatures on the bones, and we can use birds and crocodiles for plausible speculation. That’s how we designed the size, shape, and position of the guts in our model.

The organs were remarkably life-like, and I say this as somebody who has dissected a lot of animals. In particular, the suitcase-sized heart really looked and felt like it had just been cut from a real T. rex cadaver. The heart had four chambers inside, just like a bird, a sign of high metabolism and consistent with evidence from bones that T. rex was a dynamic, fast-growing animal.

Everything was designed to be as life-like as possible NatGeoTV

The lungs had balloon-like extensions called air-sacs. These store air during the breathing cycle to make the lungs extra efficient, also just like birds. We know about these from the traces the air-sacs have left on T. rex bones. The stomach was also incredibly bird-like, with two chambers. This isn’t total speculation either: there is one spectacularly preserved tyrannosaur fossil with stomach contents that helped us in our design.

It’s easy to think of T. rex as a monster, a villain in movies, a terror in our nightmares. But it was a real living breathing animal, a great lost wonder of the world. If our programme gives people a sense of what this creature was really like, it will have been well worth the hard work.

Explainer: how does an experiment at the Large Hadron Collider work?

Supersize symmetry Maximilien Brice/CERN

It’s not every day my Twitter feed is full of people talking about flat-tops, squeezing and injections, but then Wednesday 3 June was not an average day for the Large Hadron Collider.

The LHC is the world’s largest particle accelerator and lies in a tunnel below CERN, the European physics lab just outside Geneva. And on Wednesday it was restarted after two year break for repairs and upgrades, ready to push our understanding of the universe to new limits.

As my fellow physicists crowded into the control rooms and waited for things to get underway, I was at a workshop in France. But I was able to follow the switch-on online. Here’s how things went down.

8.09am. Injection: Billions of protons are loaded into the LHC.

The LHC is a ring roughly 28km around that accelerates protons almost to the speed of light before colliding them head on. Protons are particles found in the atomic nucleus, roughly one thousand-million-millionth of a metre in size.

They are easiest to get from hydrogen, the simplest atom with just one electron orbiting one proton. The LHC starts with a bottle of hydrogen gas, which is sent through an electric field to strip away the electrons, leaving just the protons. Electric and magnetic fields are the key to a particle accelerator: because protons are positively charged, they accelerate when in an electric field and bend in a circle in a magnetic field.

Big data M.Brice/CERN

9.45am. Ramp: Once the LHC is fully loaded, its two proton beams are slowly accelerated up to collision energy, now a world-record 6.5TeV per beam.

Accelerating billions of protons to close to the speed of light, directing them all the way around the LHC, and then colliding them head-on, is a delicate balancing act performed by high voltage equipment and giant magnets. This is an amazing technical achievement. Indeed one of the main applications of particle physics research is in the industrial applications of the technology it develops along the way, from proton therapy cancer treatment to the world wide web.

But for me, the excitement is in the science: the LHC is exploring the universe at the smallest scales. Everything we have learned so far is formulated in the Standard Model, a theory which describes the universe made of tiny particles, and gives the rules for how these particles behave. By smashing some of these particles together at high energy, we are able to test these rules and make new discoveries.

The LHC “Run 1” (2010-2013) provided enough data to test the Standard Model to new levels of precision and discover the Higgs boson. This particle was predicted in the 1960s and plays a central role in the Standard Model. But it was almost 50 years before we had a machine powerful enough to discover it. As well as high energy, it needed lots of data: the Higgs boson is a rare thing, and fewer than one in a billion collisions at the LHC produce one.

Tense moments Laurent Egli/CERN

10.12am. Flat top: Beam energy levels off after reaching the target.

These were tense moments for the CERN team on Wednesday. The LHC was operating at the highest energy ever achieved in a particle accelerator. “Run 2” will collide protons at 60% higher energies than Run 1 by pushing the magnets and accelerators to the limit. We hope this extra reach will allow us to tackle some of the big questions in particle physics.

One of the main topics is dark matter. This seems to be a new type of particle spread through the entire universe. And with the LHC Run 2 we hope to make it in the lab for the first time. But if the Higgs boson is rare, dark matter is even rarer, and we will need to sort through a lot of collisions before having a hope of finding it.

Worlds collide CMS/CERN

10.17am. Squeeze: The beams are fine-tuned, and focused at the four points around the LHC where they cross, and the experiments will record the collisions

Almost there. The experiments now need to wait for the all-clear before they can start recording, and we begin studying things that have never been seen before. Still, many of the collisions will not be interesting, as the protons just smash apart without doing anything exciting.

To make matters worse, the rare new particles we are looking for also tend to be very unstable, and decay too quickly to be seen directly. So the job of the experiments is to measure whatever particles do come out of a collision and try to reconstruct what happened, looking for evidence of something unusual.

As well as dark matter, there are many other ideas to test, such as supersymmetry, new gauge bosons, quantum black holes and heavy neutrinos, all of which we could reconstruct from the LHC collisions. Part of the joy and pain of science is that a new discovery could come in a matter of days, or a matter of years.

Champagne flowing Mike Struik/CERN

10.43am. Stable beams: The LHC is now running smoothly, the beams are behaving as expected, and the experiments can start recording data.

Run 2 has begun! Champagne is flowing at CERN. Now the attention moves to analysing the new data, and it’s time for the rest of us to get back to work.

Is this the end of particle physics as we know it? Let's hope not

An artist's impression of the much-searched for magnetic monopole Heikka Valja/MoEDAL Collaboration

Physicists around the world (myself included) are hoping that this week will mark the beginning of a new era of discovery. And not, as some fear, the end of particle physics as we know it.

After 27 months of shutdown and re-commissioning, the Large Hadron Collider has begun its much-anticipated “Season 2”. Deep beneath the Franco-Swiss border, the first physics data is now being collected in CERN’s freshly upgraded detector-temples at the record-breaking collision energy of 13 teraelectonvolts (TeV).

Much has been written about the upgrade to the accelerator, the experiments, and the computing infrastructure required to handle the fresh deluge of data from the new energy frontier. There has also – quite rightly – been a lot of attention paid to the crowning achievement of Run 1: the discovery of the Higgs boson.

But the “elephant in the collider” is this: we knew that Run 1 had to find the Higgs boson – or something like it, and it did. With Run 2, we don’t know what we’re looking for.

OK, so maybe that’s bit of an over-simplification. We certainly have a good few guesses as to what’s beyond the Standard Model of particle physics, our current best understanding of matter and forces at the fundamental level that was essentially completed in July 2012.

One of the leading contenders is supersymmetry, a theory that provides a candidate for the dark matter that supposedly makes up some 23% of our universe. As it happens, my PhD was based on the first results from the LHC Run 1 that said we hadn’t found evidence for supersymmetry.

To date, I have not had to write an embarrassing addendum to my thesis. But, while there are many compelling arguments for supersymmetry, it is not required in the same way the Higgs boson was. The Higgs was a missing piece in our current physics jigsaw; supersymmetry would represent a new puzzle entirely.

Scientific wild-goose chase?

Does that make Run 2 a waste of time? Are we pouring money into an extra-dimensional wild-goose chase? Are we, in fact, staring down the barrel of the end of collider-based particle physics?

You’d be forgiven for thinking so, if you had no knowledge or understanding of the history of particle physics (or how science works, for that matter). After all, science is arguably at its most boring when you 1) know exactly what you’re looking for, and 2) find it.

It’s much more fun to consider physics in the middle of the 20th century. You could pretty much describe all of known physics, chemistry, materials science, and biology with electrons, protons, neutrons and photons. Yet advances in particle detector technology – Wilson’s cloud chamber, Blackett’s triggers, Powell’s photographic emulsions – led to the discovery of completely new particles outside of this comfortable model of nature.

Vehicle of discovery Daniel Dominguez, Maximilien Brice/CERN

At the time, cosmic rays – particles bombarding our atmosphere from outer space – had far greater energies than the particles laboratory-based accelerators could produce. They represented a new energy frontier for physics, explored by the heroic particle hunters of the 1930s and ‘40s who trekked up mountains, launched high-altitude balloons, and flew aeroplanes in search of their quantum quarry.

They were rewarded for their efforts with, among other things, strange particles, a completely new type of matter that defied the predictions of the time and opened the door to a veritable zoo of subatomic building blocks.

The second half of the 20th century saw a trans-Atlantic race to build bigger and bigger particle accelerators to artificially produce cosmic rays in the controlled conditions of the laboratory and tame the particle zoo. This race was, arguably, won by the LHC. As we approach the new, unknown energy frontier of Run 2, we are therefore once again in need of a new generation of particle hunters. We need experimental physicists who are able to painstakingly pore over every byte of data in search of “what’s next”.

Monopole mission

Personally, I have eschewed supersymmetric searches (been there, done that) and, along with the students of the Langton Star Centre, joined the MoEDAL Collaboration. This experiment is looking for Paul Dirac’s hypothesised magnetic monopole. Based in the LHCb cavern at Point 8, MoEDAL (Monopole and Exotics Detector at the LHC) will use a number of novel detector technologies to look for tracks generated by the heavy, highly-ionising magnetic monopoles that could, in theory, be produced in the proton-proton collisions.

Magnetic monopoles are the magnetic equivalent of single electric charges – like a magnet with only a north or south pole, and not both - and their discovery would shake physics to its electromagnetic core. It’s a high-risk, high-reward search – but by providing alternatives to the traditional detector methodologies of CMS and ATLAS, we’re ensuring that as many bases are covered as possible.

We don’t know what we will find in Run 2. It could be monopoles, dark matter, micro-black holes, extra dimensional excitations, gravitons or something else entirely. What’s certain is this: if we are to find anything, we are going to have to be incredibly clever about how we go about it. We may even need your help. If we don’t find anything, it might be the beginning of the end of what terrestial, collider-based physics can tell us about the Universe. But even a null result from Run 2 would still be a result, and an important one at that.

So, it is the dawn of a new era for particle physics. It is time for the experimentalists to once again outshine their theoretical friends. It is open season for the particle hunters.

Shopping mall design could nudge shoplifters into doing the right thing – here's how

Taking decisions Shutterstock

Shoplifting is a serious problem. Although it is often perceived as an “ordinary crime” due to its supposed victimless nature, in fact it costs the UK’s retail industry £335m a year. And part of this cost is passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices.

The way buildings and streets are designed can help reduce shoplifting, and architects, city planners and law enforcement teams have a range of techniques to help them do this. For example, Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) strategies try to maximise opportunities for official surveillance and restrict people’s access to certain areas while directing them to others.

Such techniques appeal to rational thought in potential shoplifters by trying to make the costs or risks of crime outweigh the benefits. But other elements of retail design appeal to unconscious decision making, encouraging you to do things without realising, in order to increase the chances of you making a purchase. We believe the same ideas can be used to deter shoplifters.

A retail environment can be described as “a bundle of cues, messages and suggestions which communicate to shoppers”. This has an ability to manipulate people’s behaviour and make them more likely to buy something.

Impulse purchase. Shutterstock

Have you ever wondered why you have to walk all the way to the far end of a shopping mall to access the next set of stairs or escalators? While dictating the flow of visitors around the shopping centre, it also ensures people are exposed to the maximum number of stores and products, increasing the chance of an impulse buy.

Because “all buildings imply at least some form of social activity“, the arrangement of wall partitions, doors and other features can affect, amplify or curtail social interaction. For instance, a designer can create specific areas such as access lanes where people can come into contact with each other. It is this ability of a retail environment to influence choices that is at the heart of our proposition to tackle high-street crime.

Nudge theory

The nudge theory is the idea that people make most decisions unconsciously and non-rationally and so people can be encouraged to do things without having to convince them logically.

Under this idea, we believe potential shoplifters can be encouraged to do the right thing using environmental signals that target the non-rational parts of their brains. Nudging provides an interesting antithesis to conventional approaches because it is not dependent on a rational judgement by the criminal (for example, deciding security cameras make a theft too risky).

We believe that nudges can either be developed to target shoplifters specifically or to foster an environment that affects everyone in it by enhancing natural surveillance. For example, we can imagine a store that earmarks a certain amount each year for charitable work and another amount as shoplifting costs. What if the store displayed signs indicating that money saved by reduced shoplifting would be donated to charity?

By presenting this cue we are not threatening prosecution. We are offering a choice that allows a potential criminal to contribute to society by not stealing from the store. In this manner, the tenets of nudging are employed as cues in the environment to present their choice very differently from conventional means.

We are enhancing the benefits of not committing crime as an alternative to enhancing the cost of doing so. Although this approach still relies on some rational thinking on the part of the criminal, it is inspired by nudge theory because it alters the way choices are presented to criminals in order to encourage them to do the right thing.

The more non-rational elements of nudging could also be employed to produce playful environments that encourage natural surveillance. If people want to interact with their space, for example if it includes art installations or technology, they may be encouraged to unconsciously watch their immediate environment (see video below). Such playful interactions with goods or other customers in a retail environment, (if designed correctly) would present a harder target for criminals and at relatively low-cost.

We want to encourage a shift from conventional approaches from punishment to prevention when tackling high street crime. To do this, we think designers and architects should experiment with nudge theory to produce innovative thinking in this space, augmenting conventional crime prevention methods such as CPTED. We have already tried incarceration for centuries and people are still found shoplifting. Perhaps alternative ideas could help reduce crime.

A real sonic screwdriver isn't such science fiction after all

Turns out a real sonic screwdriver is more than just a plastic torch. danny_k1m, CC BY-NC-SA

Doctor Who employs his fictional sonic screwdriver in a vast range of situations that includes opening locks, breaking into computers and cash machines, defusing bombs in addition to rotating screws. However, research suggests that this iconic science fiction device is at least partly based on science fact.

The idea that sound waves carry energy seems intuitively reasonable – think of the physical feeling we humans experience when we get close to powerful loudspeakers with heavy sub-bass found at concerts and clubs. Sound can be felt physically and not just heard. A fantastic demonstration of this phenomenon can be found in acoustic levitation experiments: if the distance between a loud speaker and a reflector is adjusted so that a standing wave is formed, objects can be levitated and held aloft at low-pressure regions known as nodes.

While this looks like spooky action at a distance, it’s purely down to the fact that acoustic waves, like their electromagnetic counterparts, carry momentum. This means they can apply a force, usually called the acoustic radiation force. If the force is stronger than gravity, objects can be levitated. Loudspeakers generally produce linear momentum, so that they can push objects in straight lines.

This may be of great use for repelling Daleks, but useless for turning screws. This is where acoustic vortices come to the rescue: these are acoustic waves with wavefronts shaped in a spiral pattern, called a helix (like one strand of the DNA double helix). This spiral pattern provides acoustic vortices with rotational, rather than linear, momentum. If this momentum can be transferred to an object – such as a screw – the result is a sonic screwdriver.

The first to get close to a real sonic screwdriver was a research team from the University of Dundee who in 2012 created an acoustic vortex with a special medical ultrasound transducer designed for destroying tumours. They used this device to rotate a large disk made from a material which absorbed the rotational momentum of the waves. This was impressive, but it doesn’t replicate many of the sonic screwdriver’s capabilities. We’ve gone a step further by showing that similar devices can be scaled down and used to manipulate microscopic particles.

We created the required swirling sound waves using a number of tiny ultrasonic loudspeakers arranged in a circle. This device, only 10mm in diameter, created acoustic vortices of around 1mm in size. In turn, these tiny acoustic vortices were able to rotate objects measuring between one and 100 microns – about the width of a human hair. If the size of the objects was just right, the acoustic vortex acted like a tiny tornado.

Accoustic vortex, seen in the experiment (top) and in the theoretical predictions (bottom), showing how mm-scale accoustic vortices spin 0.5 micron tracer particles. Colour indicates the rotational energy of the vortex. Bruce Drinkwater/University of Bristol, Author provided

For example, when a mixture of household flour and water was placed in the device, the flour particles were drawn into the vortex core where they were spun around at high speeds. Conversely smaller particles just moved slowly around in circles and were not attracted to the vortex core at all. This millimetre scale means that we now have what could be described as a watchmaker’s sonic screwdriver, potentially capable of undoing the very smallest screws.

So while it’s great to go some way to grounding the imagination of Doctor Who’s scriptwriters in sound science, do these acoustic vortices have any uses in the real world? The answer is yes, but perhaps not in the ways that that Doctor Who might imagine. For example, they could be used to create microscopic centrifuges for sorting biological cells, or for water purification. What makes these possible is that this latest study has shown how different-sized particles behave differently when exposed to tiny acoustic vortices.

Now with more sonic, and more nanoparticles. krupptastic, CC BY

More exciting is the knowledge that the particles' motion is also extremely sensitive to their material properties, such as stiffness and density. This could lead to new methods for medical diagnostics. If, for example, healthy cells can be distinguished from unhealthy ones (cancerous cells are thought to be softer then healthy cells), these detections could be possible on a very small scale – perfect for medical diagnostics and for forensics.

In short it’s likely that acoustic vortices will join existing methods as a new tool for the controlled manipulation of tiny and microscopic matter. So sometimes science fact is just as interesting as science fiction – now if someone could just reverse-engineer the TARDIS…

Jumping to blame social media for eating disorders is dangerous

Social pressures Shutterstock

The number of hospital admissions for UK teenagers with eating disorders has risen by 89% in the past three years, it was reported today. While this is clearly of concern, so too is the quick jump some have made to link this rise with social media.

Although nothing new, the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ suggestion, quoted by the BBC, that “much of the increase is down to social pressure made worse by online images” is troubling. It risks undermining the lived realities of people with eating disorders by conflating two issues that are not so neatly linked.

Images of sculpted, sucked-in and slimmed-down female bodies across Instagram and Facebook, for example, as well as in the news media, are deeply problematic. They give women of all ages the message that to be of value in contemporary British society they should look a certain way. And, habitually, that way is thin.

This society-wide obsession with the thinness and supposed perfection of female bodies is dangerous. It has the potential to define the boundaries of girls’ ambitions, limiting their sense of self to bodies alone.

However, to cite such imagery as a root cause of eating disorders is too simple. It both undermines and genders the condition, making it simply about female bodies, and ignoring men who may be living with these illnesses.

Listening to sufferers

Recent qualitative studies, have suggested that to understand eating disorders, their causes and possible relationships with social media, it is imperative to listen to the stories of individuals themselves.

I first met Miriam in 2007 during the course of PhD research into eating disorders – specifically anorexia – and pro-anorexia websites. Miriam had a diagnosis of anorexia and, during the course of her interview, it became increasingly clear that she was angry. She felt that her illness was misunderstood due to the association widely made between eating disorders and the media.

There’s lots of people who think it’s just a vanity thing like, you know, anorexia is just the thinness and wanting to look thin but it’s not a vanity thing, it’s not at all. People go: ‘Oh, everyone’s trying to copy this size-zero trend.’ And it’s not, it’s not! You don’t open a picture … look at a picture, and say: ‘Oh, I must look like that girl, therefore I must lose weight, therefore I’m an anorexic!’ It’s absolutely nothing to do with that.

In pursuit of perfection Shutterstock

To understand Miriam and the illness she lived with, we first need to acknowledge that she was not obsessed with being thin and that she never had been. Rather, Miriam discussed how her anorexia caused mental and physical anguish, but also fulfilled a role for her. She had fallen into it as a way to cope with pressures in her life at a particular time, rather than through dieting.

In a 2013 interview from an ongoing research project at the University of Birmingham, another participant, Nita, said that her anorexia had: “been a safety net for so long, removing it is the scariest thing in the world … I think that’s what has stopped me getting better completely and being fully recovered, is that it’s a safety net that I don’t want to remove”.

She continued, “it becomes so much a part of you". Without it, she asked: “what would I be?”

Coping mechanisms

There is no doubt that eating disorders are dangerous and also profoundly distressing to individuals, their families and friends. Yet narratives such as Miriam’s and Nita’s highlight the need to acknowledge that those affected may recognise the suffering that eating disorders cause while also viewing them as integral to how they cope with being in the world.

One participant, Leila, described her anorexia by saying: “It looks after you.”

That these illnesses can be an (extremely painful and not necessarily chosen) way of coping with life events – from exams to bereavement, work stress to sexual assault – has been recognised in studies that have looked into the causes of eating disorders.

This means we should reconsider the relationship between body image – and therefore social media imagery of bodies – and eating disorders. Individuals’ stories suggest that, although not necessarily a primary goal, thinness may become important to people when already in the grip of an eating disorder. It becomes a visual marker of the continuing presence of this illness that “looks after you”.

While this suggests the need for more research that listens to the voices of individuals themselves, it also highlights a different relationship between eating disorders and social media than the one-dimensional relationship cited by the Royal College of Psychiatrists.

If thinness is not necessarily a goal of people with eating disorders, then looking at online images of thin people is not an underlying cause of those conditions. Rather, as research has suggested, this may be a way of motivating oneself to continue to self-starve when already in the grip of the illness.

This does not take social media out of discussions about eating disorders but it does suggest that we need to be framing these differently. This would involve reflecting on how our societal obsession with thinness and so-called “perfection” may be harming individuals both with and without eating disorders. But not, perhaps, in the ways we might assume.

Pseudoscience and conspiracy theory are not victimless crimes against science

Pseudoscience: we should know better by now.

News of anti-vaxxer movements, demands to teach creationism in schools as science, and dubious claims for the health-giving properties of strange diets is enough to make you wonder if some people have forgotten or forsaken the scientific method entirely.

Astronomer Carl Sagan once said:

In every country, we should be teaching our children the scientific method and the reasons for a Bill of Rights. With it comes a certain decency, humility and community spirit. In the demon-haunted world that we inhabit by virtue of being human, this may be all that stands between us and the enveloping darkness.

Despite the progress of education and living standards, the world must seem like a scary place for many people – full of chemicals in the sky, aliens trying to abduct us, and government or corporate conspiracies. As Stephen Hawking drily remarked: “If governments are involved in a cover-up, they are doing a much better job of it than they seem to do at anything else.”

What’s the harm in ‘alternative’ science?

What’s the harm in applying alternative medicine to treat cancer? Why should others care if I don’t vaccinate my children? Such decisions are all too often based on a poor understanding of how science works – and usually guided by someone’s commercial interest.

For example, US blogger Vani Hari, known as the Food Babe, claims to research and reveal problems with food (while receiving sponsorship from “natural” food companies). Among her profound research conclusions were that, when studying the effects of microwaves:

Microwaved water produced a similar physical structure to when the words “Satan” and “Hitler” were repeatedly exposed to the water.

The truth is that in science there are no authorities. There are experts at most, and even their opinions can be challenged by anyone – so long as there’s evidence to back up the argument. When some people are taken as “authorities” and their claims, however wacky, believed, then the subsequent decisions that millions of people may take could harm them or even bring a premature end to their lives.

If that sounds outlandish, consider two “wellness” bloggers from Australia. Belle Gibson punted her wholefood recipes and alternative therapies (available as a book and smartphone app) as a “natural” weapon in her fight against cancer – a cancer she later admitted she’d entirely fabricated. Or Jessica Ainscough, the Wellness Warrior, whose very real sarcoma was not hindered by the “natural healing” pseudoscience she advocated on her blog. Ainscough died in February 2015.

Cancer is terrifying for those facing it and their families. What some of these “wellness” bloggers do whether misguided or for the sake of personal profit is not only an insult to these people and those that have lost loved ones to the disease, but also an irresponsible act.

Similarly, the misinformation and ignorance of science of the anti-vaxxer movement not only endangers their own children but also affects the lives of the rest of the population.

The spread of pseudoscience can kill, and that’s exactly why we should be doing more to spread understanding of the scientific method, to equip others to apply scepticism in the face of extraordinary claims.

1940s electro-metabograph, claiming to cure ailments with radio waves. No scientific basis of course - but doesn’t it look good? akuchling, CC BY

The demon-haunted world

But instead of teaching children how to critically analyse the world around them for themselves through a lens of healthy scepticism, the educational system is based on arguments from authority, encouraging them to accept what they’re told. Over time, this may develop into a deep ignorance of a scientific approach resulting in a huge difference in outlook and approach to the world between the scientifically trained and everyone else. Into that gap steps mistrust, charlatans and conspiracy theories.

The world we have is bound up with science and technology, yet very few of us understand that science and technology. This is a recipe for disaster, and in the 20 years since Sagan’s book: The Demon-haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark was published, the situation has not improved.

It can be difficult for someone without a university education – or even without a scientific degree – to understand and interpret scientific results. Even those working in one scientific field can struggle to understand developments in others, due to the extent of specialisation required for further progress. Mastering this specialisation requires time, of which we humans have only a limited amount. Gone are the days of all-purpose geniuses such as da Vinci and Leibniz, whose expertise stretched from maths, mechanics and invention, to philosophy, politics, anatomy and medicine.

Scientific enquiry, in a nutshell. Whatiguana, CC BY-SA

Closing the gap

Lucky for us, knowing all is not a requirement for scientists, nor even for scientific thinking. In fact truly scientific thinking echoes Socrates' words, that the wisest of men is he who knows that he knows nothing. “There is no shame in not knowing,” Neil deGrasse Tyson said. “The problem arises when irrational thought and attendant behaviour fill the vacuum left by ignorance.”

The only requirement for scientific thinking is to learn how to apply the scientific method to what we encounter in our daily lives. That is what scientists should be teaching others – science is the only approach to the truth we have, error-correcting machinery connected to self-criticism that tests our ideas against the real world. And the proof of its veracity is all around you – from the scientific principles that underlie the screen you’re reading this on, to the manufacturing processes and materials required to build it, and the electricity that powers it.

Science might not be perfect but it is the best tool mankind has developed to understand itself and the world around us. With a grasp of the scientific method the world is suddenly revealed not as a place to be feared, but to be understood. As Carl Sagan also said: “There are wonders enough out there without our inventing any.”