Current alternatives won't light up Britain's broadband blackspots

Shed some light on the problem. Barta IV, CC BY

Despite the British government’s boasts of the steady roll-out of superfast broadband to more than four out of five homes and businesses, you needn’t be a statistician to realise that this means one out of five are still unconnected. In fact, the recent story about a farmer who was so incensed by his slow broadband that he built his own 4G mast in a field to replace it shows that for much of the country, little has improved.

The government’s Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) programme claims that it will provide internet access of at least 24 Mbps (megabits per second) to 95% of the country by 2017 through fibre to the cabinet, where fast fibre optic networks connect BT’s exchanges to street cabinets dotted around towns and villages. The final connection to the home comes via traditional (slower) copper cables.

Those in rural communities are understandably sceptical of the government’s “huge achievement”, arguing that only a fraction of the properties included in the government’s running total can achieve reasonable broadband speeds, as signals drop off quickly with distance from BT’s street cabinets. Millions of people are still struggling to achieve even basic broadband, and not necessarily just in the remote countryside, but in urban areas such as Redditch, Lancaster and even Pimlico in central London.

Four problems to solve

This cabinet is a problem, not a solution. mikecattell, CC BY

Our research found four recurring problems: connection speeds, latency, contention ratios, and reliability.

Getting high-speed ADSL broadband delivered over existing copper cables is not possible in many areas, as the distance from the exchange or the street cabinet is so far that the broadband signal degrades and speeds drop. Minimum speed requirements are rising as the volume of data we use increases, so such slow connections will become more and more frustrating.

But speed is not the only limiting factor. Network delay, known as latency, can be as frustrating as it forces the user to wait for data to arrive or to be assembled into the right order to be processed. Most of our interviewees had high latency connections.

Many home users also suffer from high contention, where a connection slows as more users in the vicinity log on – for example, during evenings after work and at weekends. One respondent pointed out that the two or three large companies in the neighbouring village carried out their daily company backups between 6.30pm-8.30pm. This was obvious, he said, because during that time internet speeds “drop off the end of a cliff”.

Connection reliability is also a problem, with connections failing randomly for no clear reason, or due to weather such as heavy rain, snow or wind – not very helpful in Britain.

Three band-aid solutions

With delivery by copper cable proving inadequate for many, other alternatives have been suggested to fill the gaps.

Mobile phones are now ubiquitous devices, and mobile phone networks cover a huge proportion of the country. A 4G mobile network connection could potentially provide 100Mbps speeds. Unfortunately, the areas failed by poor fixed line broadband provision are often the same areas with poor mobile phone networks – particularly rural areas. While 2G/3G network coverage is better, it is far slower. Without unlimited data plans, users will also face monthly caps on use as part of their contract. Weather conditions can also adversely affect the service.

Satellite broadband could be the answer and can provide reasonably high speeds of up to around 20 Mbps. But despite the decent bandwidth available, satellite connections have high latency from the slow speed of transferring data to and from satellites, due to the far larger distances involved between satellites and the ground. High latency connections make it very difficult or impossible to use internet telephony such as Skype, to stream films, video or music, or play online games. It’s not really an option in mountainous regions, and is a more expensive option.

A third alternative is to use fixed wireless, relaying broadband signals over radio transmitters to cover the distance from where BT’s fixed-line fibre optic network ends. These services generally provide 20Mbps, low latency connections. However, radio towers require line-of-sight access which could be a problem given obstructions from hills or woods – factors that, again, limit use where it’s most needed.

The only one that fits

All these alternatives tend to be more expensive to set up and run, come with more strict data limits, and can be affected by atmospheric conditions such as rain, wind or fog. The only true superior alternative to fibre to the cabinet is to provide fibre to the home (FTTH), in which the last vestiges of the original copper telephone network are replaced with high-speed fibre optic right to the door of the home or business premises. Fibre optic is faster, can carry signals without loss over greater distances, and is more upgradable than copper. A true fibre optic solution would future-proof Britain’s internet access network for decades to come.

Despite its expense, it is the only solution for many rural communities, which is why some have organised to provide it for themselves, such as B4RN and B4YS in the north of England, and B4RDS in the southwest. But this requires a group of volunteers with knowledge, financial means, and the necessary dedication to lay the infrastructure that could offer a 1,000 Mbps service regardless of line distance and location – which won’t be an option for all.

Patients will resist medical record sharing if NHS bosses ignore their privacy fears

Who's peeping at your files? files by Harry Huber/shutterstock.com

Can it really be that giving pharmacists access to their customers' prescription information, even those pharmacists based in a supermarket, is viewed as a problem? After all, when done so using their professional credentials and code of conduct, with your explicit permission to do so, it seems an example of sensible data sharing.

But in England in 2015, this exact scenario has been reported as “Now Tesco has access to your medical records”, with the implication the medical data will be used for marketing purposes. This looks like a serious overreaction – even though there are justified concerns about the introduction of this scheme and its operational processes.

One particular centralised NHS patient database is called the Summary Care Record, from which this particular use of medical data is drawn. There are some uncertainties on what data is included now and in the future, and on what consent patients have given. But these are not nearly as substantial as the many problems that already surround the – entirely different – care.data database.

And that is the problem: the painful, two year saga over care.data has significantly eroded public trust in NHS England and in the government’s capacity to treat people’s medical records responsibly and competently. Not nearly enough has been done to regain that trust before embarking on other ill-defined schemes.

No lessons learned

On the contrary, only this June the government sought to access GP appointment data including sensitive details, bypassing GPs and patients and instead going directly to the medical systems suppliers. The backlash on this move was effective and a U-turn rapidly followed, but it confirmed what many already suspected about the government’s cavalier attitude to medical confidentiality.

NHS England, meanwhile, has been running a year-long propaganda campaign for care.data. The Department of Health’s latest quango, the National Information Board, has just finished a series of public meetings, in which they have also been commenting on the care.data fiasco. A “failure to communicate the benefits” is apparently still the explanation – no progress there then.

The brand isn’t enough to make patients trust the NHS. comedynose, CC BY

Competence and good intentions

Rebuilding trust is not easy, and it never happens fast. The public needs to be convinced of both competence and honourable intentions within NHS authorities and the government.

So far, both are lacking. The fiasco of the NHS National Programme for IT, finally abandoned in 2011 at a cost of billions, still resonates in the people’s minds. Major data breaches are still too frequent, including of medical data, and thus security worries have only added to the existing doubts in this area.

The Partridge report in 2014 on NHS data sharing identified weak procedures and sloppy practices, concluding that “it is not clear if data has been released for appropriate purposes in all cases”. Following the scandal in 2014 where medical data was sold to insurance firms, tighter definitions of “appropriate purposes” had been expected. Instead, by limiting such use to “the promotion of health” in the 2014 Care Act, the government has made only the most vague constraints on data sharing. In terms of convincing the public of their respect for privacy, this was a missed opportunity.

Reports from the Health and Social Care Information Centre, which manages access to NHS data for third parties, show data continuing to flow to commercial customers such as data brokers and analytics companies. It’s unclear how this satisfies the principle that there should be “no surprises” for patients in how their medical data is dealt with.

Rebuilding trust with patients

Fiona Caldicott, appointed patients' National Data Guardian in November 2014. Crown Copyright

While the appointment of Lady Fiona Caldicott as the national data guardian should have been a major step forward, even this has been undermined by the postponement of the legal basis for her role, and the fact that the 52 questions she’d demanded answers from the government regarding care.data in 2014 remain unanswered.

Ultimately, what NHS England and the UK government should do is to face privacy and security risks head-on. Newspaper headlines and the public’s response reveal that these are not just the concerns of fringe privacy campaigners, worries that stand in the way of great health research and public service efficiencies. People are rightly concerned about where their medical data goes, and it’s about time the government and NHS authorities shouldered the responsibility of listening and doing something about it.

Oldest human-like hand bone may help us understand the evolution of tool making

Hands down amazing: nearly 2 million year-old pinkie bone. M. Domínguez-Rodrigo

It may not have quite have the same wow factor as a skull, but the discovery of a pinkie bone that is more than 1.8 million years old may help us solve the puzzle of stone-tool use among our early ancestors. The bone, which is the earliest modern human-like finger bone ever found, could come from a number of species that were around at the time, including Homo erectus.

The international research team that made the discovery spent hours patiently excavating under the punishing Tanzanian sun at the famous Olduvai Gorge site. And luckily, they didn’t come away empty-handed. The finger bone they found is remarkably similar to those of modern humans, suggesting the ancestry of the modern hand may be much older than we thought.

The hand that rocks the evolutionary cradle

Our fingers have three bones, known as phalanges; the tip, the middle, and the basal one that connects to the bones of the hand at the knuckle. It is this last one that has been recovered from sediments dated to more than 1.84 million years ago.

Tiny but significant. Credit: Jason Heaton

The new specimen comes from the little finger of the left hand – a stunning discovery given that these bones don’t preserve as well as skulls and the bigger, more robust bones of the body. For that reason it is hard to find these types of bones from this time period.

The researchers describe the bone as “modern human-like” because it is straighter than the bones of apes and early hominins who typically lived in trees and therefore had more curved finger bones. This is another reason why the bone is so exciting – modern humans as we define them did not appear on the scene for another 1.6 million years or more.

Meet the candidates

So which species were around at Olduvai at the time that could have had manual dexterity in the palm of its hand? Paranthropus boisei was a very robust ape-like creature, probably adapted to eating the toughest fruits and nuts. Although by no means certain, the evidence suggests this species may have lived at least some of the time in forested environments. Hand bones from Swartkrans in South Africa have been attributed to this species, and some palaeolanthropologists have argued they show the right kind of manipulative ability to make stone tools. But others disagree, so the jury is still out.

The Homo habilis type specimen, which is the particular specimen against which all others are compared to confirm their identification, include a number of bones from the left hand. Researchers first analysing it in the 1960s thought of it as human-like partly because of its potential for a precision grip – essential for tool manufacture. But nowadays researchers are aware how long and curved its fingers are and see them as more comparable with apes.

However, the fact that Homo habilis did not have human-like fingers does not mean it couldn’t make tools, just like P. boisei. The earliest tools we have to date are 3.3 million years old – pre-dating the earliest examples we have of our own genus by perhaps as much as half a million years or more. Tool use is an adaptive strategy, and one that may have been experimented with by more species than just our own.

Excavation team. Definitely not all thumbs. Credit: M. Domínguez-Rodrigo

Homo rudolfensis is another species that may be contemporary with the new finger bone, and it is certainly contemporary with Homo habilis. However, while it is contemporary with Oldowan and Oldowan-like tools in Koobi Fora, Kenya, it has never before been discovered in Olduvai Gorge. There there really isn’t enough isn’t enough evidence to link the two.

Perhaps more promising is the final a candidate for the bone: Homo ergaster , as the earliest examples of Homo erectus are called. Some hand bones from Swartkrans in South Africa have suggested that it may have had the right kind of manipulative ability to make complex stone tools. But without any H. ergaster fossils from Olduvai from the same time as little finger, its still an open question.

The researchers, who have a justifiable reputation for scientific rigour, are not pointing the finger at one hominin or another – yet. However, I get the feeling they may just have a hunch about H. ergaster .

Could the little finger belong to Homo ergaster? Luna04~commonswiki, CC BY-SA

Not long after (in evolutionary terms) the time of little finger there was a major revolution in stone-tool making, including the invention of the handaxes of the Acheulean, which overtook the Oldowan as the main signature of stone tool production after 1.6 - 1.4 million years ago. The earliest dated Acheulean is about 1.75 million years ago from southern Ethiopia and from Lake Turkana in Kenya.

It would be exciting indeed if the team turn out to have identified early H. ergaster as the owner of the finger, perhaps just before they started making handaxes. Half a kilometre away from where the bone was found, and in the same clay bed, is the Oldowan site of FLK 22 Zinj, with abundant stone tools, none of them handaxes. Did the new tool type require a new kind of grip? Or, did forsaking a life in the trees inadvertently put new potential in the palm of their hands?

As the discoverers are at pains to note, until more fossils are discovered to clarify these questions, we can only guess. But until then let’s give the team a big hand, they deserve it.

To service global trade, today's ships and cargo are smarter than ever

Federico Rostagno/Shutterstock

A glance at the objects around you at home or work will reveal objects brought from across the world, from the bagged salad in your fridge (Kenya), to the computer or smartphone upon which you’re reading this article (Taiwan, China, the US), or the table upon which it rests (Sweden). The enormous volume of global trade that brings us products from all over the world has been made possible by a profound technological revolution occurring behind the scenes.

The world’s biggest container shipping firm, Maersk, estimates the cost of transporting an apple from a field in New Zealand to a cold store in Europe is eight US cents. Logistics experts talk of “landed costs”, the sum of all of the various costs associated with freight. There is also an environmental cost, of course, for example bringing vegetables from afar rather than from local farms. But the landed costs of many products have fallen such that it’s usually cheaper to transport many items halfway around the world than to produce them locally.

Much of this fall in costs comes from the efficiencies ushered in by containerisation which, since it was introduced in 1956, has had a greater effect on globalisation than all the trade agreements signed in the past 50 years.

The largest container ships today, such as the CSCL Globe and MSC Oscar carry around 19,000 TEUs (20ft equivalent unit – a standard 40ft container is two TEUs). But ships are not likely to greatly grow beyond 20,000 TEUs for the foreseeable future – much as the Airbus A380, currently the world’s largest passenger aircraft carrying up to 853 passengers, is probably as big an aircraft as we will see. If a ship or aircraft is so big and expensive that nobody can operate it (in terms of costs and system constraints) then it’s of little use. So while there have been remarkable achievements in speed and scale, today it is the communication technology that links systems together that has the greatest logistical impact.

The network is the unseen hero

The internet of things (IoT) refers to small, internet-connected sensors that can detect and transmit information. Network technology company Cisco extended this idea to the “internet of everything” (IoE), in which the sensors talk not to a central hub but to each other, exchanging data and making decisions autonomously based on that data. The four components are data (how it is gathered and used), people (how they are connected), things (network-connected devices providing data for intelligent decision making) and process (delivering the right information to the right person or machine at the right time).

Increasingly it is not just control processes that are growing in intelligence but the ships and cargoes themselves. For example: by law, ships above a certain size are obliged to transmit updates on their position via Automatic Identification Systems (AIS). It is possible to see this information online, a real-time snapshot of global shipping.

Connected ships perform better. For example, by taking smart routes around bad weather, and allowing remote monitoring of ships for safety. Smart container technology can monitor temperature and humidity of containers for changes that could damage the contents, or to change the environment so as to, for example, prevent the spoiling of fruit in transit due to delay.

Details concerning individual shipments are transmitted before the ship arrives at port, allowing customs authorities time to profile and sometimes pre-approve incoming cargo. To the same end, eFreight initiatives cut down the paperwork associated with freight: the International Air Transport Association (IATA) once estimated that there can be up to 25 separate documents accompanying an air freight shipment.

Containerisation: a revolution in a box. Port by hxdyl/shutterstock.com

Better data brings more automation

An improvement is the “single window” online portal approach to which all those involved have access. This is regarded as the key to making freight movement easier, giving those across the supply chain the data they need, meaning product deliveries can be sped up or slowed down so that cargoes arrive at the time and place they’re needed – the “gearbox approach”. Why have a warehouse at the arrival end? Just deliver the product exactly when required, straight into waiting trucks.

On arrival, container handling is done by automated cranes, which are cheaper and safer than human operators. Better cargo tracking means freight is traceable from setting off through to final destination. Less product is lost and damaged thanks to more accurate handling, which means lower incidental costs. Many warehouses now use automated pick-and-pack systems based on barcodes and RFID radio transmitting smart tags rather than human handlers. Once considered science fiction, robots in the warehouse are becoming affordable, while warehouse staff are equipped with augmented reality applications and smart glasses.

Technology improvements have also found uses in the trucking industry – and convoys of wireless-linked, semi-autonomous, driverless trucks (known as “platooning”) are a possibility in the near future.

So next time you receive the wrong delivery it’s quite likely to be your fault (for ordering the wrong thing), and the company who sold the item will have the data trail to prove it. On the other hand, whether we need and can afford the vast array of goods that global logistics systems deliver cheaply and efficiently to our door – fresh fruits and flowers all year round, for example – is another conversation worth having.

Explainer: how dangerous is the sodium cyanide found at the Chinese explosion site?

Reuters/CDIC

Officials investigating a huge explosion at a warehouse in Tianjin in China have discovered a store of 700 tonnes of sodium cyanide – more than 70 times the legal limit allowed. Cyanide has a particularly unpleasant reputation and finding it at a major disaster site is far from welcome. However, if officials act fast they should be able to limit its damaging effects.

What is sodium cyanide?

The term cyanide is clearly understood in the public consciousness to be almost synonymous with poison itself. This is largely because of its use as lethal suicide pill (L-pill) in World War 2, most notably with the suicide of Nazi army officer Erwin Rommel. The cyanide used in the L-pill was potassium cyanide but the properties of sodium cyanide are nearly identical.

An inorganic and very innocent looking white solid with deadly properties, sodium cyanide (NaCN) can be fatal at amounts as little as 5% of a teaspoon. It is produced from the equally dangerous gas hydrogen cyanide (HCN) in a simple process with sodium hydroxide.

Why would a company want so much of it?

Sodium cyanide is used industrially across the globe, most frequently in the mining of gold. Although most of us have the traditional imagery of a 19th-century gold miner panning for nuggets, this isn’t the industrial method used today.

Most of the world’s gold is not found in nugget form but as very fine gold powders in rocks. In fact, our cultural demand for gold forces us to mine in rocks that can be as low as 0.005% gold. This means we need industrial extraction to separate and purify gold from all the other materials.

After mining and milling, the crude rock mixture is turned into a fine powder and added to a solution of sodium cyanide. The gold forms strong bonds with cyanide molecules and can then be separated from the rest of the minerals because it is then soluble in water. It then reacts with zinc and turns back into a solid. Finally is smelted to isolate the gold and cast into bars.

Deadly smoke Reuters/China Stringer Network

How dangerous is it?

As with the very similar potassium cyanide used in the L-pill, sodium cyanide is extremely toxic to humans. Although there are risks with skin absorption, the biggest risk is ingestion. Inhaling or swallowing sodium cyanide blocks oxygen transport causing serious medical problems and ultimately death.

However, the safety of sodium cyanide changes if it is present during an explosion. Avoiding oral ingestion should usually be relatively simple but an explosion can cause it to be inhaled as a fine powder (this danger should have passed quickly – and face masks will also prevent fine powder inhalation). The biggest fear is the formation of hydrogen cyanide upon exposure to water or high temperatures. Hydrogen cyanide, as a gas, is very dangerous if inhaled.

What if the remaining store leaks?

Contamination of water supplies could be a concern but is easily tested for. The Chinese authorities seem to be treating the spill with hydrogen peroxide, which forms significantly less dangerous fulminates. Waste water and other areas could be simply treated with sodium hypochlorate (bleach) to remove cyanide ions.

The spill is (but more significantly was) very dangerous, especially at these levels. But the nature of cyanides means we can detect them easily and monitor the process of cleaning up. The clean-up should proceed as quickly as possible. The other heartening factor is that after the short-term – albeit very seriously deadly – effects, there should be no slow-onset ramifications, as you would get with a carcinogen or something harder to deal with.

All previous spills have been dealt with easily with no long-term effects and the procedures are well known, so all the hydrogen cyanide in Tianjin should now be gone. The solid sodium cyanide is not so dangerous in passing: you can open a bottle with 3,000 times the lethal dose without any problems (without letting it react with moisture and convert to hydrogen cyanide). The advice for anyone nearby would be to avoid drinking the contaminated water and stay out of the area while the hydrogen cyanide is processed by natural biochemical pathways and climate dilution to safe levels.

Four problems the revamped Google should tackle now it's free to innovate

Reuters/Steve Marcus

Google is seen as a world leader in innovation, an important backer of tech start-ups and a pioneer in all our futures. The corporation, which is financially the size of a mid-range country, just reorganised its structure so that it can continue to invest in experimental technologies – such as drones, driverless cars and unusual medical devices – without worrying shareholders.

But many of Google’s current publicly reported innovations seem to be aimed at encouraging us to spend even more time connected to the internet. They are “technology-push” innovations, products that require the creation of a new market because there isn’t an obvious existing demand. Google Glass, the wearable optical computer that has now been discontinued is a good example. It didn’t appear to be rooted enough in a genuinely understood need.

On the other side there are “need-pull” innovations that respond to existing needs and are the result of humble enquiry. Developments by Google in security devices, and modular smart phones all appear, on the surface to meet needs. But are they the genuine result of humble enquiry?

The problem with Google’s moonshots is that they are fired at the Moon. And there’s no one on the Moon (not yet anyway). Many real needs are social, cultural and environmental, not rooted only in a hunger for the next wearable gizmo. Here are some real-need challenges that Google could put its mighty innovation machine to work tackling and improve the world in the process.

Digital dealmaker Shutterstock

1. Making money more secure

In a world of identity theft and online fraud, there is a huge need for more secure ways to transfer money and carry out transactions. Various ways to simply move money around, for example between smartphones, are emerging but other innovations could vastly improve security. “Smart contract” programs could ensure both parties stick to their side of a deal. For example, if you buy something online then a smart contract could take the money from your bank account only when it receives notification from the delivery company the product has arrived.

Virtual or cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin are starting to incorporate such technology but these systems still carry suspicion due to their use by black markets. Google has so far just hovered around the edges of Bitcoin but it has the opportunity to lead development and help make the technology mainstream.

To do so, however, it may also have to fundamentally rethink its approach to privacy, which is an inherent part of Bitcoin but largely absent from the way Google currently operates thanks to its widespread data-gathering operation.

Online jungle. Shutterstock

2. Creating a safer online world

Google’s Project Vault will give us a digital safe in which to securely store our smartphone’s personal data and messages. Another useful gadget no doubt. But instead of developing security devices and making gadgets less stealable, I’d like to see Google support us in becoming more secure in ourselves.

Existing innovations came about as a reaction to the insecurities of a hacked world. But there are opportunities not only for creating new digital safes and padlocks, alarms and security guards but also to begin an exploration of how to create preventive and naturally safe virtual and physical environments. These environments would be less about protection and defence and more about assurance and trust.

The new windows Shutterstock

3. Making technology less intrusive

Smartphones are constantly diverting our attention from the real world. Integrating technology more seamlessly into our lives could free us from their grip. Wearable technology and smart clothing could be one way of doing this, but better would be technologies that rely on and develop our tactile relationships with the world and each other.

This may well involve finally dispensing with the “screen” and the gadget as the required focus of our attention. A big question is how can Google create technology that doesn’t require us to “look”, instead of having us squint at screens of different sizes, flashing us into trance states and harming our eyesight.

Some experiments in less noticeable technology may involve an initial intrusion, for example, digital implants for communication, enhancing our senses or even curing physical conditions. But it is not guaranteed people will want to become cyborgs. A big opportunity is to create technologies that arise and pass away as needed, that are temporary, emergent and that enter our lives when we truly need them and leave when we don’t.

Flying turbines Makani/Google

4. Changing the way we produce energy

Energy is one of the biggest challenges for the whole planet. What if Google turned its weighty innovation might towards generating truly clean energy? Others in Silicon Valley have already started making inroads into the energy sector – see this gadget that allows consumers to access solar energy through smart tech, without buying expensive panels. Electric vehicle and battery technology such as Tesla is making also continues to grow and innovate.

But country-sized corporations such as Google could do even more (perhaps they are behind closed doors). There are some crazy-sounding, alternative forms of energy emerging that might just work. Solar roads, sewage waste and even high altitude wind energy might benefit from some Google kickstart resource (the latter just has). Ok, Google! While you are up high in the sky, installing wifi balloons, why not harness some free energy for us all?

Darwin's theory may be brilliant but it doesn't explain everything

Evolutionary robots? FWStudio

As evolutionary scientists, we devote much of our working lives to exploring the behaviour of humans and other animals through an evolutionary lens. So it may come as a surprise that our show at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe is named Alas, Poor Darwin …?, borrowing from one of the most searing critiques of evolutionary psychology ever written. We’ve added a question mark, but still – it’s no simple tale of how our minds evolved.

Evolutionary theory is a bit like a chocolate ice cream in the hands of a two-year old: it’s going to get applied everywhere, but will anything useful be achieved in the process? The central tenets of Darwinian theory – variability, heredity and selection – are as beautiful as they are compelling. They completely revolutionised biology.

But applying these principles to the study of human behaviour has caused far more controversy. The evolutionary explanations for human behaviour that grab the headlines can often be neat; really neat – like tightly-plotted narratives in which everything works out perfectly in the end, usually with a guy getting a girl, where everything happens for a reason.

Real life rarely makes for such a neat story. We’ve all seen enough action movies to notice that the more satisfying the ending, the more plot holes you have to ignore as you walk out of the cinema. Neatness makes a good story, but it’s not enough for good science.

Ovulation meets evolution

One good example of this problem is the story of how women’s preferences for masculine male partners shift throughout the menstrual cycle in a strategic way. It goes like this: at the time of ovulation, when “good genes” are most important, women are attracted to more masculine men. For the rest of the menstrual cycle when faithfulness and cooperation are paramount, the opposite is true (we’re glossing over some subtleties that are explained here).

‘Don’t blame me’ Everett Historical

In a similar vein, there’s an elegant account of male violence. It says that men are more likely than women to behave aggressively everywhere in the world because in the Pleistocene epoch (between 10,000 and 1.7m years ago), humans had a polygynous mating system, meaning one man mating with several women. The men who succeeded in aggressive competition with other men had more partners, and therefore more children, and so more of their genes got passed on.

These stories prompt some awkward questions. For example does a change in women’s attraction have to be directly selected for? Could it be the by-product of some other evolutionary process? Can we be sure that the preferences reported in the lab by female undergraduates in 2015 are a good proxy for the real-life choices made by women 100,000 years ago? What evidence is there that our ancestors were polygynous? What selection pressures were acting on women while the men were all busy fighting? (Women’s genes also get passed on to their children, in case anyone had forgotten.)

You begin to find that very accomplished scientists who know an awful lot about evolution and human behaviour disagree. Vociferously. And there’s a good reason for this: they’re scientists. Destruction-testing of ideas is very much in the job spec.

The reality of scientific enquiry

In our own work we don’t generally find neat, satisfying stories that are easy to tell, hard to critique, and make everything fall into place. We tend to end up with tantalising hypotheses, really interesting ideas that might be true but we haven’t quite gathered the data to nail down beyond all doubt. We find theories that are dazzling in their elegance but multitudinous in their caveats.

We find that the mind steadfastly refuses to behave like a collection of perfectly adapted units, each with a single function that afforded a clear evolutionary advantage at some weirdly specific yet curiously under-specified time during human evolutionary history. Instead the human mind seems to be full of compromises and by-products, highly flexible, and intricately intertwined with this weird thing called “human culture”.

Yet having been drawn to evolutionary science for its extraordinary elegance and having found a thousand times more questions than satisfactory answers, we persist. Because if you expand your ideas about what “evolutionary” means – if you cease looking for the neat stories and embrace the fact that it’s going to get very, very messy, you can start to get somewhere really interesting.

Culture and evolution are not opposites. Evolved doesn’t have to mean adaptation. It might or might not mean “useful under some circumstances”. (It certainly doesn’t mean – and has never meant – good or right).

Refuting one evolutionary hypothesis about human behaviour doesn’t invalidate all of them. That would be like saying that evolutionary theory is felled by the old question, “But if we evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?”

Arguing about the how, when and why isn’t a sign of science denialism, nor a reason to scrap the whole line of investigation – it’s healthy disagreement and we’d like to see more of it. Being an evolutionary scientist is a bit like being Dirk Gently: you might not get where you were hoping to go, but you’ll probably end up somewhere it’s worth being.