Where I'm from

Although I was not born there, I grew up in a small seaside town called Bognor Regis. Not surprisingly, the further from Bognor I go - and I can’t get much further! - the fewer people have heard of it, despite it’s infamy.

A friend post this video on Facebook the other day. For those curious, this is what Bognor looks like from the air. Or, more precisely, what Bognor beach looks like from a drone.

Bognor Regis Feb 2015 from Sussex By Air on Vimeo.

It’s no Sydney, but it’s not a bad beach. There’s even some sand when the tide goes out! :op If you get bored (it’s a bit repetitive), skip to 2:10 or 2:50 and you can see my favourite bit: crazy golf by the pier. (There's a good kebab shop, The Sussex Frier, in the background too! If it's not closed down.)

Mary Anning (21 May 1799 – 9 March 1847)

Today’s Google Doodle is one of my favourites, celebrating the life (or 215th birthday) of Mary Anning, a paleontologist who discovered many fossils along the Lyme Regis coast, including the first complete ichthyosaur skeleton (at age 12 after her brother found the skull) and the first plesiosaur.

Lyme Regis is just down the coast from where we used to live in Southampton and it really has a fantastic shoreline, part of the Jurassic Coast. We paid a visit with a friend in 2011 and although we did not find any ichthyosaurs or plesiosaurs, there were plenty of ammonites to be found in the rocks. It is very humbling to look at something that died tens to hundreds of million years ago and has been sitting in a rock since, waiting to be found.

I think that there was a cast of Mary Anning’s ichthyosaur at the Lyme Regis Museum, which is sited on her birthplace (or it might have been Dinosaurland fossil museum, which is in her old church). Well worth a visit if you find yourself near the Devon coast!

Prof Bryan Clarke (1932-2014)

I was sad to read a post on the Evolution Directory (Evoldir) by my PhD supervisor, John Brookfield, that Professor Bryan Clarke died last month. Bryan founded the Genetics Department (later Institute and now Centre for Genetics and Genomics) at the University of Nottingham , where I did both my undergrad degree and PhD. He and retired when I was still an undergrad but, as Emeritus Professor, he was still heavily involved in the department for the rest of my time there.

Although I did not know Bryan well, he always had time for students and was an inspirational character - and that was before the Frozen Ark project was launched. I was particularly impressed by the way that he managed to combine ground-breaking basic science with regular visits to Pacific island paradise!

With permission, I have repeated John’s post below:

It is with great sadness that we have to report to the evolution community the death of Professor Bryan Clarke FRS on Thursday, the 27th February 2014.

Bryan Clarke was a leader in our understanding of the process of evolution for more than four decades. He made fundamental contributions, both empirical and theoretical, particularly in elucidating the forces that maintain genetic variation in populations, and in throwing light on the process of speciation.

Bryan was born on the 24th June 1932, and, following service in the Royal Air Force, was educated at Magdalen College Oxford, from where he received both his BA in 1956 and DPhil in 1961. From 1959 to 1971 he worked at the University of Edinburgh, starting as Assistant Lecturer and rising to a Readership. In 1971 he was the Foundation Professor at the new Department of Genetics at the University of Nottingham, and remained until 1997, when he became Professor Emeritus.

The Darwinian theory of evolution by natural selection identifies genetic differences in populations - polymorphisms, as the key to evolutionary change. It is of fundamental interest whether polymorphisms are affected by natural selection, or solely by genetic drift. Bryan’s research focussed on polymorphisms in snails, including members of the genus Cepaea, the shells of which vary greatly in colour and in their banding patterns. While some had naively suggested that this variation might have no effect on the organisms’ fitness, earlier experiments and observations, from Cain and Sheppard in particular, had demonstrated that these variants were indeed subject to natural selection. But, if there is selection operating on this genetic variation, why does the population not come to consist of only a single, best-adapted, type? The answer is that selection can, in some circumstances, maintain variation rather than destroying it. One mechanism for the maintenance of genetic variation is heterozygote advantage, which explains, for example, the high frequency of the allele causing sickle cell anaemia. Bryan knew that the patterns of inheritance of the polymorphisms in Cepaea could not be explained by heterozygote advantage. Rather, he was able to demonstrate that these are maintained by a different mechanism, frequency-dependent selection, in which the fitness of genetic types increases if their frequencies in the population diminish, thereby creating a stable equilibrium in which multiple genetic types are maintained. His studies of frequency-dependent selection were able to demonstrate the near-ubiquity of this phenomenon when visible polymorphisms are studied in wild populations, and also showed the selective agents which brought this about. The frequencies of polymorphic variants in snails can vary greatly in space, without any obvious environmental correlates. An important and influential step in the understanding of such “area effects” came from Bryan’s models of morph-ratio clines in his 1966 American Naturalist paper.

Studies of visible polymorphisms were augmented, from the 1960s, by the study of polymorphisms in the amino acid sequences in proteins, investigated initially through electrophoretic detection of differences in the electric change on enzyme molecules. As with the visual polymorphisms in Cepaea, some assumed that the changes were invisible to natural selection. Bryan Clarke advocated the view that a large proportion of the changes were indeed subject to natural selection and demonstrated experimental support for this view, particularly for variants in the enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase in Drosophila melanogaster. The study of selection acting on polymorphic differences in amino acid sequences is a direct way to obtain evidence about whether the long-term evolution of the amino acid sequences of proteins is shaped by natural selection. Some believe that protein evolution is almost completely dominated by random forces in which the successful variants were so not because of the advantages they gave to their bearers, but as a result of genetic drift. Bryan Clarke was one of the main advocates of the view that a large part of the evolutionary changes in the amino acid sequences of proteins were indeed driven by Darwinian natural selection, a view that results from large-scale DNA sequencing are confirming in many species.

Bryan Clarke also played a large part in developing our understanding of the process through which species form. He carried out a long-term study of species of the land snail Partula on the South Pacific island of Moorea and neighbouring islands. He appreciated that, in the early stages of speciation, matings between members of populations undergoing speciation do not stop instantly- some hybridisation persists. Species stay distinct notwithstanding there being some gene flow between them. Thus, selectively important genetic differences between species, such as those determining form, colour and behaviour, are maintained as distinct and recognisable features, while the low levels of gene flow resulting from hybridisation allow genetic differences which are not selectively important to randomise themselves between the hybridising forms. These phenomena have been documented in Partula, where less important differences have been shown to be shared between species which live in the same geographic location. The ability to study these early events results from the choice of the Partula species, where speciation has been “caught in the act”. Increasingly, similar phenomena are now being documented in patterns of DNA sequence diversity in other species studied at these early stages.

Through these diverse achievements at the cutting-edge of understanding of the process of evolutionary change, Bryan Clarke was a great mentor and role-model for younger scientists in evolutionary genetics, and supervised more than thirty research students, at least six of whom are now professors. He was a co-founder of the very successful Population Genetics Group, a meeting for population geneticists from the UK and Europe that has been running for almost fifty years.

He was co-founder and trustee of the charity “The Frozen Ark”, which preserves, in the form of DNA and cell lines, the genetic material of endangered animals, to allow future scientific study.

Honours and awards for Professor Clarke reflected his outstanding role in modern evolutionary genetics. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1982, became an International Member of the American Philosophical Society in 2003, and a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2004. Medals and awards include the Linnean Medal for Zoology in 2003, the Darwin-Wallace Medal of the Linnean Society in 2008, and the Royal Society’s Darwin Medal in 2010.

Bryan leaves his wife Ann, his son Peter and daughter Alex.

Picture from Bryan Clark's obituary in The Telegraph.

Goodbye Darwin, hello Echidna

Darwin is soon to disappear from the Bank of England £10 note but he’ll be found in British wallets, pockets and purses for some time to come - not just on tenners but also the special release £2 coins from 2009 to mark 200 years since Darwin’s birth. For obvious reasons, it was one of my favourite coins to get in change. Since moving to Australia, the chances of getting a Darwin coin in my change have susbtantially diminished. Instead, however, there is a fair chance of getting one of my favourite animals, the Echidna, which graces the 5c coin.

Echidnas are one of the iconic animals of Australia. Neither a placental mammal nor a marsupial, the Echidna is a monotreme like the playtpus. Monotremes lay eggs like reptiles and produce milk for their young like mammals but have no nipples. Today, we paid another visit to the Australian Museum (for their Tyrannosaurs: Meet the family exhibit), which uses the Echidna for their main logo. As you would expect, they also have a few specimens in the museum. The one below really looks like the one on the coin - I wonder if it was the inspiration!

I have been lucky enough to see an echidna in the wild once. When on holiday in 2004, I was out for a walk in Mission Beach, Queensland, and I chanced upon the guy below who snuffled across my path. One of the highlights of the trip! Hopefully, it won’t be my last wild encounter.

Alfred Russel Wallace unveiled

I’m still not sure why Alfred Russel Wallace always has his middle name used, like the assassin of a an American president, but his statue has just been unveiled at the Natural History Museum. Wallace was not forgotten and Darwin did not cheat him out of due credit for Natural Selection. Nevertheless, his contributions to biology were numerous and important and his independent realisation of the mechanism Natural Selection should be no less applauded just because he was second. It is therefore great that he now has a statue at the Natural History museum.

You can watch a video of the unveiling below (unless it gets pulled - the source is unclear). It is great (and somewhat refreshing) to hear David Attenborough emphasise the comradery and friendship of Darwin and Wallace, rather than (as others are prone to do) spouting conspiracy theories that diminish both men.

RIP Fred Sanger (1918-2013)

I opened my email this morning to the news that Fred Sanger had died. This was not entirely surprising, given that he was 95, but still sad. Although I have never met him, I think it is fair to say that I am one of many scientists whose careers have been shaped and influenced by the work of this great scientist.

I still remember sitting in lectures as an undergraduate and discovering how “Sanger” sequencing worked - like many of the ideas that change the world, it was gloriously simple and yet spectacularly clever. And, I think it is fair to say, it changed the face of biology forever.

Indeed, that was back in 1977, and Sanger sequencing is still used all over the world today, even in the face of stiff competition from “Next Generation” methods. It was the sequencing method (albeit in a much tweaked and automated version) that got us the Human Genome and one of the world’s leading sequencing centres - the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute at Hinxton, outside Cambridge - still bears his name.

The centre has a press release about the “remarkable man”, which has been written by greater wordsmiths than I:

“Fred Sanger, who died on Tuesday 19 November 2013, aged 95, was the quiet giant of genomics, the father of an area of science that we will explore for decades to come.

His achievements rank alongside those of Francis Crick, James Watson and Rosalind Franklin in discovering the structure of DNA. We are proud that he graciously agreed to allow our Institute to be named after him.

In research marked by two Nobel Prizes, he developed methods that allow us to determine the order of the building blocks of DNA and of proteins. This technique allowed the languages of life to be read.

Because of Fred’s work we have been able to interpret those languages and to use that knowledge for good.”

There is more, including quotes and links out to other resources about his work, at the site.

I remember thinking in those lectures back in Nottingham how I wished that one day I might have an idea as good as Sanger sequencing. I doubt that I ever will; instead, I will just have to settle for trying to do the best I can with all of the amazing sequence data that now exists as a result.

Hanging out with the cousins at Monkey World

Continuing the ape theme, back in May we paid a visit to Monkey World in Dorset. It was a visit that was long overdue, as we became quite avid followers of Monkey Business (since superceded by Monkey Life) when we were in Dublin and it had been on our list of places to visit since moving to Southampton. As often happens, I think, the impending move to Australia has motivated a flurry of postponed activities and a birthday provided the final excuse for a visit.

Monkey World is a fantastic place, providing sanctuary for a large number of rescued primates - a shocking number of which come from the shameful UK pet trade - in carefully crafted enclosures.

Glorious Gibbons

Some of my favourites are the various gibbons and the keeper talk was really interesting as they all have quite distinct personalities. Fox (I think it was), for example, is a real show-off and liked to brachiate back and forth at speed in between hanging out at the public end of his enclosure whilst the keeper talk was going on. Fox is a Mueller’s Gibbon - all furry limbs and muscle (above). As anyone who has seen the TV programmes knows, many of the tales of the individual animals are quite touching. If I remember correctly, Nike, a Lars Gibbon (left), for example, was prone to panic attacks following whatever ordeals he experienced in his former life. His mate in Monkey World, however, will come over and give him a cuddle until he feels better.

Watching these animals and seeing how similar to humans they can be in terms of their poses and behaviour (not to mention anatomy), I simply cannot conceive how anyone can seriously doubt that we share ancestry with these magnificent animals.

Lovely Lemurs

One of the best bits of Monkey World is the lemur enclosure. (Ironically, perhaps, as lemurs are not monkeys. Purists will argue that apes are not monkeys either, which is taxonomically true but not really evolutionarily true - monkeys are “polyphyletic” and apes sit in the middle of the two main monkey lineages - Old World and New World. In other words, apes and Old World Monkeys are more closely related to each other than either is to New World Monkeys - so I have no problem in being called a monkey or comments that we descended from monkeys! Anyway, lemurs are actually prosimians and split off from monkeys around 75-80 million years ago.)

The great thing about the lemur enclosure is that you are in there with the lemurs - clearly something that you cannot do with apes - which allows for some really close encounters and views. When we were there, for example, the ruffed lemur (above) was quite happily walking along the fence next to the path, whilst a troop(?) of ring-tailed lemurs were in the trees overhead.

A great day out

Other things that really impressed me about Monkey World were the keeper talks (we went to three!) and how child-friendly the whole place was - they have some awesome playgrounds! The only real disappointment was the food, particularly after visiting Dublin Zoo in the meantime and experiencing their top-notch nosh. There’s a lot of space for picnics and I think that this is the recommended option for a visit - a visit that itself is highly recommended!

The 2nd Law of Rocking

The 2nd Law is the 6th album of Muse and my initial reaction after a few listens is that it is one of the best. It's a pretty eclectic miss.

Supremacy is a good a Muse song as you will find anywhere, full of orchestral/classical influences as well as their rock genius. Madness is Lady Gaga meets Queen (plus Muse, of course). In Panic Station, they out-Darkness The Darkness. For me, it's the difference between being great musicians and being great song writers (and musicians). Survival was one that I had already heard from its Olympics release but it actually sounds much better in context, I think. (The previous track, Prelude, sets it up nicely, as the name suggests.)

I've always thought that Muse had a touch of Radiohead about them and this is never more obvious than in Explorers, which has more than a little No Surprises about it in my book. (Not a bad thing.) Another band that I really enjoy is The Qemists and The 2nd Law: Unsustainable reminds me a bit of them, in a good way. It is a bit of a departure for Muse vocally, as they seem to have a Cylon doing guest vocals. I like it, though! (I think their interpretation of the 2nd law of thermodynamics is a bit flawed though - it's the same mistake that the Creationists make: the Earth is not a closed system. All the time that we get energy from the Sun, continued growth is indeed sustainable (in theory)!)

Overall, in The 2nd Law, I think Muse have achieved something quite unusual. Somehow, it contains both a wide range of styles but also an overall coherence that all fits together well. And it rocks! A definite contender for my favourite Muse album to date.

Apocalyptically loving Slash

When I bought my MacBook and received an iTunes voucher with it, I am not ashamed to say that the first thing I bought with it was the most recent offering from that most excellent of British rockers, Slash. I've previously endorsed Ain't Life Grand from when he was part of Slash's Snakepit and, I must admit, I am a general fan of his. Not everything that came out of the Snakepit, or Velvet Revolver (or Guns 'n' Roses for that matter) is fantastic but every album I own has some gems on it.

Apocalyptic Love raises the bar and has now solidly cemented itself as one of my favourite albums - certainly of the year and probably of all time. It's a grower too, which is always a good sign. If you like Slash at his best, go buy it! Now!

Five Minutes with Ben Goldacre

After yesterday's post about an interview with Richard Dawkins, author of two of my favourite books - The Selfish Gene and The God Delusion - it seemed appropriate to post today about an interview with the author of another of my
"must read" books, Bad Science.

A bit shorter than the Dawkins interview, Five Minutes with Ben Goldacre is a quick-fire tour of:

"bad science", dealing with critics, the importance of randomised trials, whether God exists and Twitter.

I particularly liked Ben's description of himself as an "apatheist". Due to my background, I have quite an interest in religion and think quite a lot about my atheism (although I don't quite consider myself as a "New Atheist") but I think it is always useful (for strident atheists and religious types alike) to remember that there are people out there who really don't care and don't consider it to be that important.

Ben's real passion is clearly science and how to do it properly - particularly in relation to medicine - and I really cannot recommend Bad Science highly enough. Although bordering on ranting at times (but always in "righteous anger"!), the early chapters in particular provide an excellent and accessible introduction to why science - and proper use of statistics - is so important. It is the number one book I recommend to my first year tutees studying Biomedical Sciences, as well as A-level students at Open Days.

Ben now goes beyond being a sterling advocate of evidence-based medicine, however, and also has some interesting ideas regarding "evidence-based policy" and how randomised trials can be applied to government policy. My reading list is quite long at the moment (particularly with the recent ENCODE release) but I think I will be adding his Cabinet Office paper: Test, Learn, Adapt: Developing Public Policy with Randomised Controlled Trials.

The whole Five minutes with series is really good and Matthew Stadlen is an excellent interviewer. I am surprised by the breadth of topics they manage to cover in five minutes without it actually feeling superficial. I guess there is often something to be said for "cutting to the chase".

I only recently discovered the series (thanks to my lovely wife) but another notable episode is that with my most recently discovered heroine in Five Minutes with Caitlin Moran. There's a whole host of others, though, and I look forward to working my way through (most of) the list! (Another BBC triumph!)

The Life Scientific of Richard Dawkins

Richard Dawkins is one of my personal heroes. Although I do not always agree with everything he says, I usually agree with most of it and he has been a source of inspiration at many points in my life. Reading his classic book on gene-centric evolution, The Selfish Gene, was like having a light switched on. I was fascinated in evolution and genetics before then - I was in the first year of a degree in Genetics at the time - but suddenly it all just made sense. It's still a book I recommend.

Another one of my favourite books of all time is The God Delusion. It sums up the position of a rational agnostic atheist incredibly well. A lot of people argue against it, and vilify Dawkins because of it, but I have never actually seen a good argument against what he writes. (Usually, people are arguing against something that he didn't write. I sometimes wonder whether any of the anti-Dawkins crowd have actually read anything by him.)

If you are one of those people - or a fan, like me - then I strongly recommend downloading this week's episode of The Life Scientific and listening to his half hour interview with presenter Jim Al-Khalili. I am always impressed about how calm and rational he is, and not at all strident as his detractors proclaim in ignorance. This is a man who clearly loves nature - the magic of reality - and loves science - the "poetry of reality". Another great BBC podcast.

Putting Greenwich at the centre of the World

If, whilst watching the Equestrian events at Greenwich Park, you wonder how Greenwich got to be home to the Prime Meridian Line - and thereby determine both world time and world longitude - you could do much worse than Episode 91 of A History of the World in 100 Objects, which features the ship's chronometer from HMS Beagle.

It represents technological advancement that didn't get a mention in the opening ceremonies but was arguably much more important than putting men on the moon (as Steve Jones did argue) or robots on Mars. (As undeniably cool as those things are!)

I've been slowly working my way through the episodes of this great series over the past few months - there are a lot of them! - and was particularly pleased to listen to this one yesterday as Darwin and Deep Time both get a mention. (I'd just been updating the MapTime Organic Evolution TimeLine and Keywords.)

So, if you are in London and looking to kill some time between events, download the podcast (or read the transcript) and then visit the British Museum!

Olympic Highlights VI: Lighting the Cauldron

I'm ashamed to say that I was still stuck in cynicism when the Olympic torch was going round the country, so I didn't really pay it much attention. Looking back, I am not really sure why this was. I suspect that it was a combination of not really enjoying the last two Olympics that much and the standard negative press coverage of everything that went wrong in the build-up without really stressing all the good bits. (I wish the media would cheer up sometimes!)

Despite this, we probably would have gone and seen it come through Southampton had it not been raining so hard at the time that we decided to give it a miss. (Although fantastic in the Paralympic Opening Ceremony, watching a collection of umbrellas is not so fun in real life.) Instead, my only real exposure was the torch relay bunting. (After the Royal Wedding, Jubilee and Torch Relay, I am now thinking that we should always have some form of bunting up. It's so cheery!)

By the time David Beckham arrived at the Olympic park with the flame and passed it on to Olympic legend, Sir Steve Redgrave, however, I was well and truly on board. Literally passing the torch to nominated youths as part of the "Inspire a Generation" theme was a really nice touch, I thought.

I enjoyed most of the Opening Ceremony but, for me, the real star of the whole show was the Cauldron. Indeed, as the memory of the event fades, this sense just increases. Like many, I had been slightly confused by the copper "petals" the different countries had been bringing in but when it all became clear and each one was lit, it began to make sense. There was still a slight hesitation in my house - there should be a single flame but then as the individual arms raised and the cauldron assembled, it was a thing of really beauty. (And pretty impressive engineering!)

In general, I enjoyed the Paralympic Opening Ceremony more and the cauldron was just as beautiful the second time. This time it was more like a favourite song that a band saves for the end of the show. We all knew it was coming but wondered when and how it would be delivered. The arrival of the torch into the stadium was perhaps more impressive than the Olympic ceremony - a Royal Marine flying in by zip wire from the tower next to the stadium. Having Britain's first paralympic gold medal winner light the cauldron was very different from the Olympic ceremony but equally special in its own way. As with much of the ceremony, I was impressed.

Both Opening ceremonies had elements celebrating British contributions to science and technology and I think that the Olympic cauldron captured that element perfectly. Well done to Thomas Heatherwick and all involved with making "Betty"!

Tim Minchin talks to Caitlin Moran

I've probably been living under a rock or something because I have never really come across Caitlin Moran before. I've just listened to Tim Minchin talk to Caitlin Moran on BBC Radio 4's "Chain Reaction" (it wasn't quite an interview!) and it was great!

It's only available on iPlayer for 5 more days and it's well worth a listen. (The previous episode in which Derren Brown interviewed Tim Minchin was pretty good too but I think that one's gone already. Perhaps it will reappear somewhere?)

She has some great things to say on a variety of topics including modern feminism and "ethical" free-range celebrity gossip. Although I'm not one, it really made me want to read How to be a Woman and, on the basis of this podcast, I would recommend that you do too! (It won an award and everything.)

Starting the Paralympics with a Big Bang

Well, I enjoyed the Olympics Opening Ceremony but I think I may have enjoyed the Paralympics opening even more. Kicking off with Steven Hawking introducing the Big Bang and then celebrating science, rationalism and the universal declaration of Human Rights - I was sold. Even the old Higgs boson got a role in proceedings!

Perhaps it was the reduced pressure of knowing that the Olympics had already gone smoothly but the whole thing had a much more relaxed feel to it. (Or perhaps it was just me!)

It really picked up where the Olympics left off: progressive, forward-thinking and a celebration of modern Britain and modern humanity. I also very much liked the umbrella theme, although happily they proved not to be needed. Great stuff. Hard to think of anything bad to say about it, actually. (Happily, I don't intend to!)

It was good to see the Olympic cauldron get lit again too and it was just a beautiful the second time. The arrival into the stadium was perhaps more impressive - a Royal Marine flying in by zip wire from the tower next to the stadium. Having Britain's first paralympic gold medal winner light the cauldron was also a really nice touch, I thought.

Bring on the Games!

Olympic Highlights II: The Royals

I'm something of a closet Royalist. I don't mean that I harbour suspicions regarding the sexual orientation of certain princes - it's none of my business - but rather that I have certain sympathy for the Windsors and think that, all things considered, they do a pretty good job. Until the Olympics came along, the recent Royal events (wedding and jubilee) are the closest we Brits have really got to having a proper national event.

There is also a small part of me that wonders whether we wouldn't be better off reinstating a Monarchy - if we could get rid of the "Divine Rights" aspect, at least. (A secular hereditary oligarchy, maybe?) Anyhoo... I'll save that one for another day.

With the Paralympics looming, this post is meant to be about the Olympics... and another one of the highlights for me was the British Royal family. (Partly, I suspect, because they kept the more embarrassing ones hidden from view!)

First, there was that moment during the Opening Ceremony when everyone turned to their neighbour and said "that's not her is it?" - or something similar. But it was the actual Queen! Sky-diving with James Bond! OK, so not actually sky-diving - and there was a bit of a daylight continuity issue - but, even so, respect to QEII for getting involved and not taking herself too seriously. Along with the torch, I think it was my favourite bit of the ceremony.


As well as the Queen, I was also very impressed with the Princes - particularly Harry. They appeared on the BBC and just seemed like very sensible, well-adjusted, human fellas. I know that Harry has had a bit of a rough time in the press lately - again, none of my business - but I'd be pretty happy to have him or his brother as King. They both seem to have their heads screwed on the right way - which is quite a wonder, all things considered.

I really liked the fact that he was the official Royal representative for the closing ceremony. What's more, having seen Harry's Arctic Heroes, I am also glad to hear that it will be "business as usual" for him at the Paralympics.

The Olympic Legacy - it's not all about the medals

Last week, the Telegraph website featured what struck me as a particularly vacuous piece of cynical journalism: "£4.6 million - the cost of an British Olympic medal". This piece annoyed me in so many ways, it's hard to know where to start. The essence of the piece - look how much we have spent per medal - is summed up by the title but it's worth having a look at what this cost translates to:

"Great Britain's impressive form at the Olympics follows a massive cash injection after London won its bid to host the Games. UK Sport's funding increased from £70 million for the 2004 Athens Games to £235 million for Beijing.

This year, it has received £264 million, largely from investment through the National Lottery."

I'm not sure about this last figure. There seems to be a bit of journalistic confusion about whether the £264 million is for one year or four years - the context (and comments) implied that it is actually £264 million over four years. A BBC article today, "Funding for Britain's Olympic sports extended to Rio 2016" has some slightly different values:

"Team GB's budget for the last four years was £313m. Providing lottery ticket sales hold up, the Rio pot will be similar."

"The level of funding from the National Lottery will be an estimated £87m per year, with around £40m coming from the Government."

Let's go with the highest value of these - £127 million per year - and put that sum in a bit of perspective.

According to a BBC article in May, "Premier League club wages climb to new highs":

"Total wages across the Premier League rose by £201m (14%), equivalent to more than 80% of the £241m increase in club revenues that season, to give a final salary bill of £1.6bn."

In other words, the total UK Sport's funding is approx. half the increase in revenue of Premier League football clubs and less than 10% of their salary bill. The same article also reports the top wage bills per club:

TOP PREMIER LEAGUE WAGE BILLS 2010-11

☐ Chelsea - £191m (up from £174m in 2009-10)
☐ Manchester City - £174m (£133m)
☐ Manchester United - £153m (£132m)
☐ Liverpool - £135m (£121m)
☐ Arsenal - £124m (£111m)

So, the top 4 clubs spend more on their team wages than UK Sport spends on everything. It doesn't look like quite such bad value for money now, does it?

The other thing, of course, is that the medal tally is surely one of the least important of all the outcomes of sports funding. The motto of the Games is, after all, "Inspire a Generation". As a number of people have pointed out - including previous multi-medal-winner Ian Thorpe, who was a (fantastic) pundit for the BBC - inspiring and encouraging young people to do more sport can be seen as an investment in the health of the nation. Obesity is a big problem in this country (ironically, thanks in part to some of the Olympic sponsors), and it's a no-brainer that a more active lifestyle will help. The Department of Health reports

"a significant burden on the NHS - direct costs caused by obesity are now estimated to be £5.1 billion per year."

And that's just the NHS. In other words, obesity annually costs the UK at least 40 times more than Olympic sports (ignoring the one-off costs of hosting the Games this time, of course).

Coming back to the Telegraph article, I think that one of the crucial things here is that the most inspirational athletes are not always the ones that win the medals. The athlete that comes eighth with a Personal Best and is (rightly) pleased at being eighth best in the world can be far more inspiring that the athlete that gets in a grump at coming second (and winning a medal) because they were expecting to win. Indeed, one thing that has impressed me about TeamGB is that we have had far more of the former that the latter. The pride of athletes like these - and proud family members such the now legendary Bert le Clos - certainly inspire me a lot more than the Usain Bolt's of this world. After all, not everyone can be Usain Bolt, but everyone can do their best and give their all.

Of course, the inspiration generated by sporting success does not stop at sport itself. I count myself among those who have been inspired and seen my cynicism thoroughly quashed - both at the Olympics itself but also the will and ability of Britain to make a good job of it.

In contrast to the Telegraph piece above, one of my favourite Olympics articles so far was an item in the Guardian by Jonathan Freedland, "London 2012: we've glimpsed another kind of Britain, so let's fight for it" captures my own view of the Games quite nicely:

For we got a glimpse of another kind of Britain. A place which succeeds brilliantly, not least by drawing equally on all its talents, black and white, male and female. A place where money and profit are not the only values, exemplified by the 70,000 volunteers who made the Games work and showed the world a smiling face while they were at it. A place that reveres not achievement-free celebrity, but astonishing skill, granite determination and good grace, the land not of TOWIE but of Bradley Wiggins, Nicola Adams and Laura Trott. A place where patriotism is heartfelt, but of the soft and civic rather than naked and aggressive variety; a place that welcomes visitors from abroad and cheers louder for the Turkish woman who came last in a 3,000m steeplechase heat than it did for the winner.

This is the Britain we let ourselves see these past two weeks. It will slip from view as time passes, but we are not condemned to forget it. We don't have to be like the long-ago poet who once wrote: "Did you exist? Or did I dream a dream?"

Well said, Jonathan. I, for one, will try not to forget it.

No place for Creationism in state-funded UK schools

It's been a pretty good couple of weeks for a Rationalist Geek. Nerds all over the world have enhanced enjoyment of the Olympics with the Nerdlympics. Human potential, ingenuity and achievement has been promoted by the BHA and embodied by the bold landing of the Curiosity Rover. Homeopathy is on the back foot in Britain. Continuing the theme, I am happy to (somewhat optimistically) report that the British government have confirmed that the Creationism has no place in a state-funded science class.

I'm far from convinced that there is any merit in the government plans for "free schools" and "academies" - indeed, there seems to be a lot of well-founded opposition to the plans - but there is at least one bit of good news that has come out of the recent concerns over approval for Free Schools to be run by Creationist groups. In a Guardian article from a couple of weeks ago, a Dept for Education spokeswoman is quoted as saying:

"It is absolutely not true that this free school will be able to teach creationism as scientific fact. No state school is permitted to do this. We have clear guidelines about what schools can and cannot teach. Any free school found to be contravening the guidelines will be in breach of their contract and will be subject to action by the department, including prohibiting them from operating."

Happily, this position has been confirmed and strengthened in a letter from Michael Gove (Secretary of State for Education) posted on the Glasgow Skeptics Facebook page in which he states (my emphasis):

There is no place for the teaching of creationism in Free Schools. The Free School application guidance is clear: creationism, intelligent design and similar ideas cannot be taught as valid scientific theories. Furthermore, teaching creationism in science lessons is forbidden by the legal agreement that sets out the conditions by which all Free Schools receive their funding. Should there be evidence of a breach of this clause we would take swift action which would be likely to result in the termination of that funding agreement. This would mean that the organisation no longer had any role in running the school with state funding.

Now, we just need to make sure that we hold him (and his successors) to that.

What I am not so sure about is what the situation is for "Independent schools". The implication is that schools without state funding are not bound by these conditions. If this is the case then perhaps state-funded Faith schools are not such a bad thing after all - if the alternative is Independent Faith schools, that is.

A great intro to Humanism by the BHA

Continuing this month's celebration of things that make me proud to be British, here is a lovely (and short) video by the British Humanist Association explaining (a) what Humanism is, and (b) why you don't need religion to have morals or to give life meaning.



I particularly like the quote from Richard Dawkins:"Science is the poetry of reality."

UK Homeopathic manufacturers might have to sell their sugar pills as... sugar pills!

If I had to draw up a top three list of irrational nonsense that makes me fear a little for the future of humanity, Homeopathy would probably be on that list. It embodies everything that is wrong about "woo" - disproven bunk supported by liars spouting pseudoscientific nonsense in order to extract money from the gullible, credulous and/or desperate.

It should be illegal to pretend that sugar pills or water are medicine. Happily, it turns out, it is! In a great Guardian piece yesterday - Homeopaths offer to rebrand products as 'confectionery' - "The Lay Scientist" Martin Robbins reports that:

Under current UK law*, it is an offence for a lay homeopath to supply or sell unlicensed homeopathic medicines for which they do not hold a certificate of registration from the MHRA. Unlicensed remedies can only supplied by those with prescribing rights - medical doctors or registered pharmacists - and then only after a face-to-face consultation with the patient. Since very few homeopathic products are licensed, this means a huge swathe of Big Sugar's products are, in theory at least, not legal.

*The Medicines (Homoeopathic Medicinal Products for Human Use) Regulations 1994, as amended in 2005.

Furthermore, under the Human Medical Regulations Act, there is an obligation to enforce this law if a complaint is made - and, thanks to Simon Singh and friends, complaints are being made! It's still not clear to me how much actual fallout from this there will be but it's definitely a step in the right direction.

Martin Robbins ends his piece with this great line:

"I've got no problem with people buying and selling homeopathic remedies for their aches and sniffles. Just don't pretend it's a real medicine, and don't persuade people it can treat dangerous diseases. Is that really so much to ask?"

I hope not, Martin. I really hope not.

(And in case you are under the impression that Homeopathy might be effective, read the House of Commons Select Committee (Science and Technology Committee) Evidence Check 2: Homeopathy.)

[Edit: I was obviously having a brain-dead moment when writing this and erroneously called Martin Robbins, Tim. Doh! Sorry, Martin.]