There's not many days in your life when you have two books come out. By coincidence, the UK paperback of 13 Things That Don't Make Sense, and a new book of mine - The Big Questions: Physics - are both out today. The day has gotten away from me, so I'm going to do little more than highlight them here - more (especially about the new one) very soon.

Yes, it really does have a moleskine-style elastic cover strap.

Here's what's on the back:

THE BIG QUESTIONS series confronts the fundamental problems of science and philosophy that have perplexed enquiring minds throughout history, and provides and explains the answers of our greatest thinkers. In Big Questions: Physics, Michael Brooks demystifies 20 mind-stretching questions about quantum physics, relativity and the true nature of reality.

• WHAT IS THE POINT OF PHYSICS?
• WHAT IS TIME?
• WHAT HAPPENED TO SCHRÖDINGER’S CAT?
• WHY DOES AN APPLE FALL?
• ARE SOLIDS REALLY SOLID?
• WHY IS THERE NO SUCH THING AS A FREE LUNCH?
• IS EVERYTHING ULTIMATELY RANDOM?
• WHAT IS THE GOD PARTICLE?
• AM I UNIQUE IN THE UNIVERSE?
• CAN WE TRAVEL THROUGH TIME?
• IS EARTH'S MAGNETIC SHIELD FAILING?
• WHY DOES E=MC²?
• CAN I CHANGE THE UNIVERSE WITH A SINGLE GLANCE?
• DOES CHAOS THEORY SPELL DISASTER?
• WHAT IS LIGHT?
• IS STRING THEORY REALLY ABOUT STRINGS?
• WHY IS THERE SOMETHING RATHER THAN NOTHING?
• DO WE LIVE IN A COMPUTER SIMULATION?
• WHICH IS NATURE’S STRONGEST FORCE?
• WHAT IS THE ULTIMATE NATURE OF REALITY?

Big enough for ya?

And here's the very nice cover for 13 Things - complete with some very nice people saying very nice things about it...

So it’s been a very long break from blogging, while I work out what’s coming next. I’m now focussed on a new book, provisionally titled The Nobel Prize for Anarchy. My aim with this is to show that science isn’t what most people think: in fact, it could be described as entirely the opposite of what most people think. Scientists – at least good scientists – defy all the stereotypes. To get science done, you have to be willing to break all the conventional rules: in fact, anarchy is built right in: the very core of science is about overturning received wisdom, proving your predecessors didn't have it right - and that you do.

In 1974 there was an article in Science that asked, “Should the history of science be X-rated?” The author, Stephen J Brush, argued that the idea that the scientist is a rational, open-minded investigator who proceeds methodically, is grounded in the outcome of controlled experiments and seeks objectively for the truth, is "a useful one”. If young scientists were to find out what really happened in the history of their subject, it might “do violence to the professional ideal and public image of scientists," Brush said.

I don't agree. I’m not out to do any violence. But surely the truth is to be celebrated? The book will look at how real science, as done by very human beings, happens. And this is good science. It is the way progress has been made.

So here goes – I’m going to make the argument that science is a lot more rock ‘n’ roll than you might have thought: there’s drugs, fraud, near-death experiences, religious mania, hallucinations… and, remember, these are not the “crazy scientists”, but the successful ones. It raises an obvious question: are we missing something when we describe science as a “beacon of rationality” in an increasingly irrational world? Is it possible that, in reacting to the perceived threat from an “anti-science” lobby, scientists are in danger of cutting themselves off from the source of many of their best ideas?

What I’d really like to know is, how does science actually happen today? Most of the juiciest stories seem to come out decades later; so what are you privy to? I’m not asking for whistleblowers to come out of the woodwork, but it would be useful to collect some reliable tales of what fascinating (and maybe a little bit scandalous!) things scientists are up to, things that they, perhaps, wouldn't necessarily want the funding bodies to know about. If you’re working in science, or know someone who is, perhaps you could spread the word and put some feelers out.

I’m going to start putting some stuff out on Twitter too (related to this, not what I had for breakfast, I promise) that I hope people will respond to. I reckon new technologies can provide a new way to research books – it can’t still only be about losing hours in fusty libraries, surely?

Anyway, check back soon, and look out for the Twitter feeds (drmichaelbrooks). Let’s see where this goes!

 

I haven’t yet been to see the new Pixar movie Up, but if this review in the New Statesman (of all places!) is anything to go by, it should be worth it.

Coincidentally – at least I think so; the PR people at Disney are good, but surely they’re not that good – there was a story out this week about something in science that Pixar have long known about.

Experiments have shown macaques getting creeped out by CGI macaques who look quite real, but not real enough. Apparently, as you increase the realism in computer graphic renditions of humans (or monkeys), you reach a point where people (or monkeys) don’t like to look at them. It’s known as “Uncanny Valley”. The reasons given for the existence of Uncanny Valley are typical evolutionary psychology generalities: these non-humans look like corpses and remind us of death, and other pish (does anyone buy that?).

Anyway Pixar has long known about Uncanny Valley, and kept their cartoons well away from it. That’s why they give you fantastic creations such as WALL.E , and no creepy Polar Express Tom Hanks-alikes. And as for the weird Sean Bean/Ray Winstone hybrid Beowulf, well - that was even scarier than the monster he had come to kill...

I have an op-ed piece in this week’s Independent on Sunday: "The road to the Nobel Prize is lined with jeering colleagues". It’s based on the experience of the HIV researchers who announced their (modest) success this week – many of their peers thought this vaccine trial would be a waste of time, money and public tolerance. The argument is simple: science has self-criticism built-in, and scientists have to be willing to run the gauntlet of their peers' sometimes extraordinary hostility to get something new and interesting done.

I’ve already had some feedback, from a cognitive neuroscientist who wished I’d made less of the “hunch” aspect of the scientific method, and more of the fact that built-in self-criticism is science’s unique avantage over other fields.

I don't think the emphasis was wrong, given what prompted the piece. What's more, as Nobel laureate Sir Peter Medawar has said, “there is no such thing as the scientific method.” He also said there is no such thing as the “scientific mind.” In other words, this idea that science proceeds via some well-defined path is an artificial construction. It is the illusion that scientists want non-scientists to see as real. To quote Medawar again: the neat stories of sensible hypothesis tested by rigorous experiments leading to a firm conclusion “are simply the postures we choose to be seen in when the curtain goes up and the public sees us.”

Scientists don’t like this idea because it is helpful to think as science as transcending our natural limits, as something more than just another human activity. But there’s no evidence to support that view. Science may well be humanity’s best endeavour, but it’s still human – and it doesn’t hurt to stop and acknowledge that from time to time.
 

The New York Times Freakonomics blog recently picked up on my 13 (More) Things... stories in New Scientist, and asked what might get into the economics version. My favourite answer in the comments was "tipping a server after a meal in a restaurant in which you are not a regular." However, it has always seemed to me that economics doesn't work in quite the same way as science. The theories are guidelines, mostly, for how things happen. It's very clear, in the current world climate, that many of the "laws" of economics don't really apply. Some have suggested that physics-based models should replace economics, but I'm not convinced that will work any better...

Adam Savage of the Mythbusters (he's the one in the black jacket) is liking the "13 More Things" feature in New Scientist. He calls NS "the best magazine you're not reading" on his Twitter feed. I'm happy with that! Adam, have you read the book?

Joni Mitchell claims she has Morgellon's disease, an affliction that sounds horrible. Sufferers say their skin burns and itches, and strange fibres appear under it. The thing is, the medical establishment says it's not a real disease - it's all in the sufferers' heads.

This is one of a new clutch of mysteries I've written about for New Scientist this week: 13 More Things That Don’t Make Sense. It’s available online for free.

I'm not a big fan of sequels, but it wasn’t too much of a stretch to come up with another 13 anomalies – which surprised me, I have to confess. Physics is always a good source. Anyway, here’s the list. My favourite is the Bloop: a mysterious underwater sound. What’s yours?

1. Axis of evil
Radiation left from the big bang is still glowing in the sky – in a mysterious and controversial pattern


2. Dark flow
Something unseeable and far bigger than anything in the known universe is hauling a group of galaxies towards it at inexplicable speed


3. Eocene hothouse
Tens of millions of years ago, the average temperature at the poles was 15 or 20 °C. Now let's talk about climate change


4. Fly-by anomalies
Space probes using Earth's gravity to get a slingshot speed boost are moving faster than they should. Call in dark matter


5. Hybrid life
The fusion of two distinct evolutionary lines is not supposed to work – but the seas are teeming with chimeras that prove it can

6. Morgellons disease
Fatigue? Do you feel insects under your skin? Seen any strange fibres sprouting from your body? Then you've got a disease that's not supposed to exist

7. The Bloop
During 1997, US undersea monitoring equipment heard a series of sounds far louder than any whale song. They were never heard again

8. Antimatter mystery
The big bang should have created matter and antimatter in equal amounts – so why didn't the universe disappear in a puff of self-annihilation? 

 

9. The lithium problem
The universe only contains a third as much lithium as it's supposed to

 

10.MAGIC results
High-energy radiation from a gamma-ray burst reached Earth 4 minutes later than the lower-energy rays. That's not how Einstein said it would be

11. The elusive monopole
Why do magnetic poles always come paired as north and south, never alone?


12. Noise from the edge of the universe
Are dud signals from a gravitational wave detector evidence that the universe is a holographic projection?

13. The nocebo effect
A diagnosis of terminal illness can come true, even if it's wrong

Just after I praised them for finally doing something right, I have to congratulate the Met Office for a spectacular gaffe. In April, they promised the UK a “barbecue summer” (well, not in the small print, but who reads that?). Now they’re saying a Barbour waterproof might be a better investment than a barbecue (see what I did there?). That's three summers in a row their long-term forecast has been wrong - sorry, I mean misleading.

Anyway, I was sat in the New Scientist office this afternoon, and a few of us decided that “Barbecue summer” is going to be the new euphemism for anything not to believe. Where you might have said “it’s the new cold fusion”, now you can say, “yeah, right, that’ll happen just after the barbecue summer.”

Any takers? Have we been beaten to it?
 

"NOBODY likes to be ridiculed, but for some people it can become a matter of life and death. Take Robert FitzRoy, the founding father of the UK's Meteorological Office and captain of the Beagle during Charles Darwin's five-year voyage. A keen amateur forecaster, he enthusiastically applied the science of his day to weather prediction. Much good did it do him. Instead of hailing his tentative prognostications as a useful first step, politicians, newspapers and other scientists harangued and mocked FitzRoy whenever he got it wrong. Depression quickly set in, to fatal effect. One Sunday morning in 1865, FitzRoy cut his throat in despair… "

We've all said some not very nice things about weather forecasters in the past. My friends and family know how miffed I can get when the forecast is wrong, or so vague as to be useless. One of the big problems is that they simply don’t give us enough information. So, while they’re never wrong, they’re also useless. But I’ve had a revelation. The BBC weather site now gives me enough information. I’ll try not to be rude about weather forecasting again.

One of the big problems has always been the heinous over-simplification. To sum up a day’s weather in terms of a picture of the sun part-obscured by a fluffy cloud is (in Britain at least) ridiculous. We have moments when the sky looks like that, followed by hours when it’s cloaked in grey clouds. Followed by rain, then bright sun. It’s weather, you see: it changes.

The Met Office knows this, of course, It knows that a better (I mean more useful) way to forecast is to say “X% chance of showers”. But, apparently, this gets misinterpreted. A decade or so ago, a study showed that the general public viewed people giving a probabilistic forecast as incompetent, ignorant or even lazy. A forecaster’s “50 per cent chance of rain”, for instance, gets misinterpreted as if it were a simple 50-50; in other words: "I don't know what the hell is going to happen tomorrow."

Thank the (cloudy) heavens, then, for the BBC’s new dynamic whizzy satellite/computer model view of the weather. It’s available online. Ignore the simpleton-targeted info at the top, and scroll down to the picture of your area (sorry if it doesn’t cover you – feel free to look at my weather, centred on Newhaven, England).

 I can scroll through the day and say – as I did today – well, it’s gonna rain here this morning, but it’ll clear by lunchtime, and then remain sunny (with a couple of cloudy intervals) all afternoon.

And do you know what? That’s exactly what happened! Now everyone can be a weather forecaster. All you need to know is that the dark patches are clouds, the blue patches are rain, and the slightly sunnier colour means it’ll be sunny.

Was this information really so difficult to share? Had I had it before, I wouldn’t have been led to write this article for New Scientist (I think it’s subscription only), which got me into some quite unexpected hot water.

The interesting question now is, have they let the cat out of the bag? Is forecasting for any particular area quite easy, really, given the computer models? And if so, why has it been so poor for so long?

OK, I'm back. Heinous deadlines are receding into the past, and I might just start blogging properly again. For now, this.

Who knows what Pammy's reading in this pic? All I know is it's not 13 Things That Don't Make Sense. But maybe on her next break she will be: the Sunday Times just laid out the 100 best holiday reads, and 13 Things... made it as one of only three science books. The list is here.

By the way, the above picture contains a whole physics project. See the way Pammy's chest defies the pull of gravity? Study hard, boys...