The moons of Saturn and echoes of a synthetic universe

As fans of Star Wars might be aware, George Lucas is nothing if not visually astute. His thumbnail sketches for the X-wing, TIE fighter and Death Star created the essence behind these innovative designs. So isn't it strange that there is a real moon in our solar system that bears an astonishing resemblance to one of Lucas's creations?

At the last count Saturn had 53 confirmed moons, with another 9 provisionally verified - and as such assigned numbers rather than names. One of the ringed planet's natural satellites is Mimas, discovered in 1789 and at 396 kilometres in diameter about as small as an object can be yet conform to an approximate sphere. The distinguishing characteristic of Mimas is a giant impact crater about 130 kilometres in diameter, which is named Herschel after the moon's discoverer, William Herschel. For anyone who has seen Star Wars (surely most of the planet by now), the crater gives Mimas an uncanny resemblance to the Death Star. Yet Lucas's original sketch for the battle station was drawn in 1975, five years before Voyager 1 took the first photograph with a high enough resolution to show the crater.

Okay, so one close resemblance between art and nature could be mere coincidence. But amongst Saturn's retinue of moons is another with an even more bizarre feature. At 1469 kilometres in diameter Iapetus is the eleventh largest moon in the solar system. Discovered by Giovanni Cassini in 1671, it quickly became apparent that there was something extremely odd about it, with one hemisphere much brighter than the other.

As such, it attracted the attention of Arthur C. Clarke, whose novel 2001: A Space Odyssey described Japetus (as he called it) as the home of the Star Gate, an artificial worm hole across intergalactic space. He explained the brightness differentiation as being due to an eye-shaped landscape created by the alien engineers of the Star Gate: an enormous pale oval with a black dot at its centre. Again, Voyager 1 was the first spacecraft to photograph Iapetus close up…revealing just such a feature! Bear in mind that this was 1980, whereas the novel was written between 1965 and 1968. Carl Sagan, who worked on the Voyager project, actually sent Clarke a photograph of Iapetus with a comment "Thinking of you..." Clearly, he had made the connection between reality and fiction.

As Sagan himself was apt to say, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Whilst a sample of two wouldn't make for a scientifically convincing result in most disciplines, there is definitely something strange about two Saturnian moons that are found to closely resemble elements in famous science fiction stories written prior to the diagnostic observations being made. Could there be something more fundamental going on here?

One hypothesis that has risen in popularity despite lacking any hard physical evidence is that of the simulated universe. Nick Bostrum, the director of the University of Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute has spent over a decade promoting the idea. Instead of experimental proof Bostrum uses probability theory to support his suppositions. At its simplest level, he notes that the astonishing increase in computing power over the past half century implies an ability in the near future to create detailed recreations of reality within a digital environment; basically, it's The Matrix for real (or should that be, for virtual?)

It might sound like the silliest science fiction, as no-one is likely to be fooled by current computer game graphics or VR environments, but with quantum computing on the horizon we may soon have processing capabilities far beyond those of the most powerful current mainframes. Since the ability to create just one simulated universe implies the ability to create limitless - even nested - versions of a base reality, each with potentially tweaked physical or biological laws for experimental reasons, the number of virtual realities must far outweigh the original model.

As for the probability of it being true in our universe, this key percentage varies widely from pundit to pundit. Astronomer and presenter Neil deGrasse Tyson has publicly admitted he considers it an even chance likelihood, whilst Space-X and Tesla entrepreneur Elon Musk is prepared to go much further, having stated that there is only a one in a billion chance that our universe is the genuine physical one!

Of course anyone can state a probability for a hypothesis as being fact without providing supporting evidence, but then what is to differentiate such an unsubstantiated claim from a religious belief? To this end, a team of researchers at the University of Bonn published a paper in 2012 called 'Constraints on the Universe as a Numerical Simulation', defining possible methods to verify whether our universe is real or virtual. Using technical terms such as 'unimproved Wilson fermion discretization' makes it somewhat difficult for anyone who isn't a subatomic physicist to get to grips with their argument (you can insert a smiley here) but the essence of their work involves cosmic rays. The paper states that in a virtual universe these are more likely to travel along the axes of a multi-dimensional, fundamental grid, rather than appear in equal numbers in all directions. In addition, they will exhibit energy restrictions at something called the Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuzmin cut-off (probably time for another smiley). Anyhow, the technology apparently exists for the relevant tests to be undertaken, assuming the funding could be obtained.

So could our entire lives simply be part of a Twenty-Second Century schoolchild's experiment or museum exhibit, where visitors can plug-in, Matrix-style, to observe the stupidities of their ancestors? Perhaps historians of the future will be able to run such simulations as an aide to their papers on why the hell, for example, the United Kingdom opted out of the European Union and the USA elected Donald Trump?

Now there's food for thought.

Tsunamis and sunsets: how natural disasters can inspire creativity

Just as war is seen as a boost to developments in military technology, so major disasters can lead to fruitful outbursts in creativity. The word disaster, literally meaning 'bad star' in Ancient Greek, might seem more appropriate to meterorite impacts or portents associated with comets, but there are plenty of terrestrial events worthy of the name. One interesting geophysical example appears to have had an obvious effect on Western art and literature: the eruption of Mount Tambora in April 1815.

This Indonesian volcano exploded with such force that ash fell in a cloud over 2,500 km in diameter, with the initial flows and tsunami causing over 10,000 deaths. The subsequent death toll may have been ten times that number, primarily due to starvation and disease. The short-term changes in climate are thought to have accelerated the spread of a cholera strain, leading eventually to millions of deaths during the next few decades.

Although volcanic aerosols lasted for some months after the eruption, the effects were still being felt the following year. Indeed, 1816 earned such delightful nicknames as 'The Year Without a Summer' and 'Eighteen Hundred and Froze to Death', with global temperatures dropping just over half a degree Celsius. This might not sound like much, but as an example of the freak conditions the northern USA received snow in June. Thanks to the recording of weather data at the time, it seems that the climate didn't return to normal for that period until 1819.

The terrible weather and its resulting famines and spread of disease led to riots in many nations, with the short-term appearance of vivid sunsets - due to the fine volcanic dust - failing to make up for the deprivations of food shortages and very cold conditions. One artist who was probably inspired by the former effect was J.M.W. Turner, whose paintings of evening skies appear extremely garish. As a child, I thought this seemingly unnatural colouration was due to artifice, not realising that Turner was depicting reality.

The post-Tambora aerosols contributed to Turner's stylistic change towards depicting the atmospheric effects of light at the expense of form. His radiant skies and translucent ambience inspired the Impressionist school of painting, so perhaps modern art can be said to have its roots in this two hundred year-old disaster.

Literature also owes a debt to Tambora's aftermath: during their famous Swiss holiday in June 1816, Lord Byron produced the outline of the first modern vampire story whilst Mary Shelley started writing Frankenstein. It's easy to suggest that the food riots and wintry weather then current in Switzerland could have contributed towards her tale, in which mankind's best efforts to control nature are doomed to failure.

However, it isn't just the arts that were affected by the aftermath of the volcanic eruption: several key technologies had their roots in the widespread food shortages generated by Tambora. In 1817 the German inventor Karl Drais, aware of the lack of fodder then available to feed horses, developed the earliest steerable - if pedal-less - bicycle. Although its use was short-lived, the velocipede or hobby horse was the first link in the chain (go on, spot the pun) that led to the modern bicycle.

If that doesn't appear too convincing, then the work of another German, the chemist Justus von Liebig, might do. Having as a child been a victim of the post-Tambora famine, von Liebig is known as the 'father of the fertiliser industry' for his work in the 1840s to increase crop yields via nitrogen-based fertilisers.

There is still a widespread perception that scientists' thought processes differ from the rest of humanity's, utilising thought methods that lack any emotion. However, the after effects of Tambora imply that creativity in response to surroundings can be just as important for scientific advance, in the same way that artists respond to their immediate environment. Hopefully, recognition of this will be another nail in the coffin for the harmful idea of C.P. Snow's 'Two Cultures' and lead more people to respect the values of science, upon which our civilisation so heavily relies. Perhaps that way we'll be rather better prepared for the next great natural disaster; after all, it's only a question of time...

Wrangling robots: encouraging engineers of the next generation

On hearing my daughters' regaling some of their activities and technology at school, I frequently lament 'I wish we had that when I was their age'. I was lucky enough as it was for the early 1980s; for example, my school year was the first to actually get computers in the computer science classroom!

But enough of the trip down memory lane. The British Government has recently announced that it is pledging over £17 million towards robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) research in universities. Of course the drive behind this is as much economic as a love of STEM: Accenture's 2016 report Why Artificial Intelligence is the Future of Growth states that AI could contribute up to £654 billion to the UK economy by 2035, if comprehensively integrated into industry and society. Sectors utilising cutting-edge technology such as pharmaceuticals and aerospace will be able to grow markedly thanks to AI and robotics, so now is indeed a great time for children to learn the necessary core skills.

New Zealand too is determined not to be left behind in the development of such technology, which it is hoped will create new jobs whilst stimulating economic growth. One such programme aimed in this direction is Kiwibots, home to New Zealand's contenders for the annual Vex Robotics World Championship. The largest international robotics competition, over thirty nations are taking part this year. New Zealand's national finals recently took place at Massey University in Albany, north of Auckland. The winning teams have been announced and among those qualifying for the World Championship in Kentucky next month is one from an all-girls school, which is great news.

My daughters attend another all-girls school that competed in the national championships, giving me the opportunity to examine one of their robots in person. Vex EDR primarily consists of metal components including perforated strips reminiscent of the Meccano toy building system I had as a child - and indeed their construction techniques are not dissimilar - although EDR incorporates battery-driven motors and elastic band 'muscles'. EDR is aimed at senior/high school students, but primary/elementary and intermediate schools are not left out, thanks to the mostly plastic-built Vex IQ system which is closer to the Lego Mindstorms/Technic ranges.

Vex EDR robots can either be wheeled or tracked and include towers and arms with manipulators. They can be remote controlled or programmed using ROBOTC, a C-based programming language: not only do the students get to be engineers but computer programmers too. Younger roboteers can use a drag-and-drop interface to assemble code whilst older ones may write and test code using an editor. In order to aid code writing, Robot Virtual Worlds is, as the name suggests, a simulated environment for testing virtual robots, even including an underwater scenario (which is obviously not achievable with the real thing)!

To encourage more girls to participate in the traditionally male world of engineering, the Robotics Education and Competition Foundation has created Girl Powered, a series of challenges for EDR and IQ systems.

In addition to learning specific technical skills, the experience can generate enthusiasm for STEM subjects - after all, it's rather more exciting than most school lessons - whilst providing useful experience in general skills such as collaboration and problem-solving. The creativity and teamwork involved in Vex robotics shows that some elements of science and engineering are not overtly difficult, abstractly mathematical or plain boring. When I was an onlooker at the national finals, the looks of tension and joy on the roboteers' faces said it all.

As Vex themselves state: Think. Create. Build. Amaze.

What better way could there be to encourage children towards STEM careers, especially when AI and robotics will undoubtedly play an ever more important role in the coming decades?

Wondering about the wanderer: the life and times of the monarch butterfly in New Zealand

This summer has seen a proliferation of monarch butterflies in my garden. Over the past five years there's been little change in planting - except for a few additional self-seeded swan plants (a.k.a. milk weed Gomphocarpus fruticosus and similar species) - so why am I now seeing so many more Kahuku/Wanderer than previous years? This summer has seen a mixture of wet and dry weeks but not an extreme in either direction, when compared to the previous four summers in house. Is that the secret: just a balance of weather conditions; or is there more to it than that? As I pointed out in a recent post, a cluster of swan plants several street's away has seen very few monarch butterflies. Let's have a look at the details.

My experience:

Although common enough in all except the coldest regions of New Zealand, Danaus plexippus is not a native species but seemingly self-introduced at some point within the last 150 years. It's large size and colourful wing markings have led to its popularity in art and science. I've seen paintings, collages, sculptures and jewellery utilising its patterns, which contrast vividly with New Zealand's predominantly green appearance.

Swan plants, the almost sole food source, are readily available from garden centres and buying one can lead to large numbers of self-seeded plants, aiding the spread of the monarch. I've found this year that even young plants under 50cm tall have had eggs laid on them. I've also noticed that the swan plants in my back garden contain more than double the number of caterpillars than those in the front garden, despite the latter garden being much larger and having a lot more vegetation. I've even noticed that some caterpillars in the front garden disappear shortly after starting to pupate; perhaps the denser planting attracts or hides more predators?

Lifecycle:

The eggs are usually found on the underside of leaves and tend to be more conspicuous than the first instar (freshly-hatched) caterpillars. Apparently, larger caterpillars will munch through both eggs and smaller caterpillars without noticing, so it's a monarch-eat-monarch world out there! I've had to move some caterpillars when they get to a decent size in order to prevent them eating their entire plant and starving to death. Females can lay hundreds of eggs in their lifetime at a rate of up to 40 per day, so monarch care sites recommend destroying later eggs to allow the earlier individuals to survive. In general, the warmer the weather the quicker the caterpillars grown to full size before pupating. However, it has been noted that butterflies that hatch in the autumn can survive over winter, often in colonies, their lifespan extended from two months for same-summer breeders up to nine months. Unlike in their North American homeland, New Zealand monarchs do not migrate enormous distances.

Predation:

Despite absorbing toxins from milkweed, both caterpillars and butterflies are predated by a range of other animals. I've occasionally found a pair of wings on the ground, which is a good indication of predation by a South African praying mantis, Miomantis caffra. Other introduced invertebrates such as wasps will also attack monarchs. It's interesting that these predators tend to have originated in Europe, Africa and Asia yet the monarch evolved in North America; clearly, the former aren't too specialised to be able to handle alien prey. Which of course is what has happened in general to New Zealand's native birds and reptiles, with European mustelids and rodents and Australian possums finding a veritable feast amongst the kiwi and company.

Caring for monarchs:

Apart from removing caterpillars from overcrowded plants, my only other assistance is to rehang any fallen chrysalis and move the occasional pre-pupating wanderer into a wood and wire cage until they metamorphose. Although I have found one chrysalis about eight metres from the closest swan plant, a fully-grown wandering caterpillar might just prove too tempting a morsel. Otherwise I tend to leave nature to do its thing; after all, it's hardly an endangered species. Many caterpillars disappear before reaching pupation due to a combination of disease and predation and any swan plant that gets completely eaten may lead the incumbent caterpillars to starvation. Darwin was famously inspired by Thomas Malthus' An Essay on the Principle of Population, so it's great to be able to see such a theory in action in your own garden!

Public interest:

Despite being neither native nor endangered, there are various New Zealand-based citizen science projects studying them, such as by fitting wing tags for tracking purposes. Much as I am in favour of direct public engagement in science, I wonder if the effort wouldn't be better redirected towards endangered native species. As I've previously discussed, if visually attractive poster species get much of the attention, where does that leave the smaller, more drab, less conspicuous critters that may be more important?

I'm still at a loss to what has caused this summer's proliferation of monarch butterflies in my garden. There are just as many other summer species as usual, such as adult cicada and black crickets, and seemingly as many monarch predators such as praying mantises. But as I've mentioned before, perhaps what to human eyes appear similar conditions are not so to these colourful creatures. Although how much effort would be required to detail those conditions is somewhat beyond the capability of this amateur entomologist!

Backyard bonanza: collating stats for a predator-free future

I've previously discussed how a lack of understanding of statistics can cause consumers to make poor choices, so it would seem that increasing the public's understanding of them can only be a good thing. Therefore, along the lines of New Zealand's annual garden bird survey, I decided to do a bit of citizen science. My aim was to record the highest number of each fauna species seen at one time, either actually in my garden or seen from my garden. The time frame was a calendar year, so as to take into account seasonal migrations and food availability. As an aside, it might have been easier to count flora (after all, it doesn't move very fast) but with Auckland being the weediest city in the world and my floral knowledge much weaker than my recognition of fauna, I opted for the easier option of any animal that I could see without using a microscope.

A meta-analysis released this month states that almost twenty-five percent of birds on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species are being affected by climate change. In addition, with last years' announcement to make New Zealand predator-free by 2050, such surveys might be useful for locating concentrations of introduced pest species. In a way, I'm providing a guide that anyone can follow with the minimum of effort (hint, hint). So here are my results, followed by some more information:

Class/species	Native/self-introduced	Number seen
Insecta
Ant (unknown species)	Yes	Numerous
Asian paper wasp	No	3
Black field cricket	Yes	4
Bumble bee	No	1
Bush cockroach	Yes	14
Cabbage tree moth	Yes	7
Cabbage white butterfly	No	2
Cicada	Yes	2
Click beetle	Yes	2
Common bag moth	Yes	1
Crane fly	Yes	1
European earwig	No	1
Ground beetle	Yes	2
Honey bee	No	1
Housefly	No	7
Ladybird	Yes	2
Monarch butterfly	Yes	17
Shield bug	Yes	3
South African praying mantis	No	22
Tree weta	Yes	18
Arachnida
Bird dropping spider	Yes	1
Black cobweb spider	Yes	1
Black house spider	Yes	1
Daddy long-legs	Yes	3
Jumping spider	Yes	1
Nurseryweb spider	Yes	1
Slater spider	Yes	1
White tail spider	No	1
Annelida
Earthworm	No	5
Tiger worm	No	Numerous
Hexapoda
Springtail	No	Numerous
Chilopoda
Centipede	Yes	3
Mollusca
Common garden snail	No	9
Reptilia
Rainbow skink	No	2
Aves
Australasian hawk	Yes	1
Blackbird	No	2
Black headed gull	Yes	3
Eastern rosella	No	4
Fantail	Yes	2
Goldfinch	No	3
Greenfinch	No	2
House sparrow	No	14
Myna bird	No	4
Rock pigeon	No	5
Silvereye	Yes	7
Song thrush	No	1
Spotted dove	No	1
Starling	No	4
Tui	Yes	1
Mammalia
Cat	No	2
Chicken	No	1
Dog	No	1
Hedgehog	No	1
Mouse	No	1
Rabbit	No	1

The first thing that seems obvious is just how many non-native species I observed, some deliberate introductions whilst others accidentally brought to New Zealand, but all within the past two centuries.

Now for some interesting comments about how statistics can be (mis)interpreted:

1) The method I chose to order the table by could affect how easy it is to find key points of interest. Alphabetical order is familiar but is simply a well-known form of cataloging. Therefore it can be seen as a neutral form of presentation, not emphasising any particular pattern of the results. Had I ordered by native/non-native, it might have become more apparent how many of the latter bird species there are. If I had ordered all species in one list by this method, rather than in separate classes, the pattern would have been obscured again. So simply by selecting a certain order, results can appear to support a certain notion.

2) How useful is this data if it lacks supporting information? By this, I mean factors that might affect the count: Is it a common or garden (yes, that's a pun) location or an highly unusual one? Is the locale urban or rural? What are the surroundings? How big is the garden and how much vegetation is there? Is the vegetation primarily native or non-native? I could go on like for this ages, but clearly to get a more sophisticated understanding of the causes behind the figures, this information is necessary. Even then, two locations that are almost identical to a casual observer might appear profoundly different from the vantage point of say, earthworms. I will admit to (a) having built 2 weta motels and a bug motel; and (b) feeding silvereyes in winter; and (c) having made a tui sugar water feeder that has been totally ignored. Go figure!

3) Are there any other obvious factors that could affect wildlife? How managed is the location? Are chemicals such as weedkiller used or is the garden solely organic? Again, this can have a massive effect on wildlife, such as pesticides that remove insects at the base of food webs. On the one hand, if mine is an organic garden surrounding by neighbours who spray their foliage, then it could be an island of suitability in a comparatively barren terrain. But alternatively, if most of the neighbourhood isn't fauna-friendly, how likely would my garden get visited even on the off-chance by animals that can't live in the wider area?

4) Of course there's also contingency within natural selection. For example, quite by chance some species can survive on foods not native to their ecosystem. Although stick insect numbers in New Zealand were drastically reduced thanks to DDT, gardens don't need to contain their native food plants in order to support them. In the south-west of England, three species of accidentally-introduced New Zealand stick insect have flourished for decades on the likes of roses! Also, unusual events can affect populations: in this case, the two rainbow skinks appeared several months' after laying some ready lawn so I can only assume their eggs arrived with the turf, the previous five years having seen no skinks whatsoever.

5) When it comes to surveys, timing is also important. As you might expect, most of my observations took place during the day, with the only nocturnal ventures being on clear nights when using my telescope. The moths and hedgehogs were mostly seen at night, whilst had I included birds I could hear as well as see, then a morepork would have been added to the list. Again a simple prejudice, in this case sight over sound, has skewed the statistics. The large number of mantises were not adults but nymphs all hatching from a single ootheca. As for the monarch butterflies, they were a combination of caterpillars, chrysalis and adults, having appeared in much greater numbers this year than previous, despite no additional swan plants (their only food). Interesting, a clump of twenty or so mature swan plants a few streets away hasn't yielded any monarchs in any of the three stages. Presumably, predators such as wasps are responsible.

The sheer randomness of nature is exciting, but doesn't exactly help to uncover why populations are such as they are found via small-scale studies. Oh, and further to the damage invasive species have wrought on native wildlife, you may be interested to learn that none of the mammals belonged to me, the cats and dog being owned by friends and neighbours whilst the rabbit was an escapee from a dozen houses away!

6) Finally, there's the scale prejudice. Although I have a basic microscope, I didn't include such tiny wonders as tardigrades and bdelloid rotifers, even though garden moss and leaf litter respectively has revealed these wee critters. My page of nature photographs shows this prejudice, with microscopic fauna getting their own page.

So, what can we learn from this, apart from the large number of non-native species commonly found in Auckland? Perhaps that raw data can be presented in ways to obscure patterns or suggest others, should the publisher have an agenda. Furthermore, without access to highly detailed meta data, the statistics by themselves tell only a small part of the story and as such are open to wide-ranging interpretation by the reader. Therefore the next time you read about some percentage or other, remember that even without manipulation or omission, survey data is not necessarily pure, unsullied and free of bias.

Hold the back page: 5 reasons science journalism can be bad for science

Although there's an extremely mixed quality to television science documentaries these days (with the Discovery Channel firmly at the nadir) - and in stark contrast to the excellent range of international radio programmes available - the popular press bombards us daily with news articles discussing science and technology. Both traditional print and online publications reach an enormous percentage of the public who would never otherwise read stories connected to STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics). Therefore these delivery channels and the journalists who write material for them face an immense challenge: how to make science accessible and comprehensible as well as interesting. How well they are doing can be judged by the general public's attitude towards the subject...which is currently not that great.

In November 2016 Oxford Dictionaries stated that their Word of the Year was 'post-truth', which refers to 'circumstances in which objective facts are less influential...than appeals to emotion and personal belief.' Clearly, this is the antithesis of how good science should proceed. Combined with the enormous output from social media, which gives the impression that anyone's opinion is as valid as a trained professionals and you can see why things aren't going well for critical thought in general. Did you know that a Google search for 'flat earth' generates over 12 million results? What a waste of everyone's time and data storage! As they said about Brexit: pride and prejudice has overcome sense and sensibility. Here then are five reasons why popular science journalism, mostly covering general news publications but occasionally dipping into specialist magazines too, can be detrimental to the public's attitude towards science.

1) Most science writers on daily newspapers or non-specialist periodicals don't have any formal science training. Evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould once pointed out that journalists have a tendency to read summaries rather than full reports or scientific papers, thus distancing themselves from the original material before they even write about it. The problem is that an approach that works for the humanities may not be suitable for science stories. We're not critiquing movies or gourmet cuisine, folks!

As an humorous example of where a lack of research has led to a prevalent error,  a 1984 April Fools' Day spoof research paper by American journalism student Diana ben-Aaron was published in 350 newspapers before the original publisher admitted that Retrobreeding the Woolly Mammoth was phoney. One of the facts that ben-Aaron made up (and still remains unknown) is that woolly mammoth had fifty-eight chromosomes. This number is now ubiquitous across the World Wide Web from Wikipedia to the Washington Post, although I'm pleased to see that the National Geographic magazine website correctly states the situation. Clearly, anyone who follows the President Trump approach that "All I know is what's on the Internet" isn't going to get the correct answer.

This isn't to say that even a scientifically-trained journalist would understand stories from all sectors: the pace of advance in some fields is so fast than no-one can afford the time to maintain a sophisticated understanding of areas beyond their own specialism. But it isn't just particular research that is a concern: general concepts and methodology can be ignored or misunderstood; whilst a lack of mathematical training can easily restrict an understanding of how statistics work, with error bars and levels of significance often overlooked or misrepresented.

Related to this ambiguity and margin for error, journalists love to give definitive explanations, which is where there can be serious issues. Science is a way of finding ever more accurate explanations for the universe, not a collection of unchangeable laws (excepting the Second Law of Thermodynamics, of course). Therefore today's breakthrough may be reversed by tomorrow's report of sample contamination, unrepeatable results or other failure. It's rarely mentioned that scientists are willing to live with uncertainty - it's a key component of the scientific enterprise, after all. Yet in the event of an about turn or setback it's usually the scientists involved who get blamed, with accusations ranging from wasting public money to taking funding from something more worthwhile. Meanwhile, the journalist who wrote the original distorted account rarely gets held responsible. As for the one-sided scare stories such as nicknaming GM crops as 'Frankenfoods', this lowers what should be a serious public debate to an infantile level extremely difficult to overthrow.

2) How many science documentaries have you seen where the narrator says something along the lines of “and then the scientists found something that stunned them”? Such is the nature of story-making today, where audiences are deemed to have such short attention spans that every five minutes they require either a summary of the last ten minutes or a shock announcement. This week I saw a chart about bias within major news organisations: both CNN and USA Today were labelled as 'sensational or clickbait'. I've repeatedly read about scientists who were prompted by journalists towards making a controversial or sensational quote, which if published would distort their work but provide a juicy headline. It seems that limiting hyperbole is a critical skill for any scientist being interviewed.

Journalists don't owe invertebrate paleontologists, for example, a free lunch but there is a lot of good professional and occasionally amateur science being conducted away from the spotlight. Concentrating on the more controversial areas of research does little to improve science in the public's eye. Even reporting of such abstract (but mega-budget) experiments as the Large Hadron Collider seems to be based around headlines about 'The God Particle' (nearly six million results on Google) A.K.A. Higgs Boson (less than two million results). Next thing, they'll be nicknaming the LHC ‘The Hammer of Thor' or something equally cretinous. Although come to think of it…

The World Wide Web is far worse than printed news, with shock headlines ('It Was The Most XXX Ever Found - "It Blew My Mind," Expert Says') and over-inflated summaries that would make even lowbrow tabloids blush. Even specialist periodicals are not immune to the syndrome, with New Scientist magazine being particularly at fault. In 2009 it published the silly headline 'Darwin was wrong' which drew the ire of many biologists whilst providing a new form of ammunition for creationists. In 2012 their special 'The God Issue' turned out to contain less than fifteen pages on religion - but then it is meant to be a popular science periodical! In this vein the Ig Nobels seem to get more attention than the Nobel Prizes as journalists look for a quirky man-bites-dog angle to convince the public that a science story is worth reading.

3) Talking of which, journalists want to reach the widest possible audience and therefore looking for human angle is a prominent way to lure in readers. The two most recent Brian Cox television documentary series, Human Universe and Forces of Nature have concentrated on stories around families and children, with the science elements being interwoven almost effortlessly into the narrative.

In print and digital formats this bias means that the focus is frequently on articles that might directly affect humanity, especially medical, agricultural and environmental stories. This puts an unbalanced emphasis on certain areas of science and technology, leaving other specialisations largely unreported. This might not appear bad in itself, but lack of visibility can cause difficulties when it comes to maintaining public funding or attracting private philanthropy for less commercial and/or more theoretical science projects.

Another method used to make science more palatable is to concentrate on individual geniuses rather than team efforts. I assume only a very small proportion of the public know that theoretical physicists do their best work before they are thirty years old, yet the seventy-five year old Stephen Hawking (whose name is now a trademark, no less) is quoted almost every week as if he were Moses. He's well worth listening to but even so, Professor Hawking seems have become a spokesperson for almost any aspect of science the media want a quote on.

4) With competition tougher than ever thanks to social media and smartphone photography, journalists face ever tighter deadlines to publish before anyone else. This can obviously lead to a drop in accuracy, with even basic fact-checking sometimes lacking. For example, a year or two ago I sent a tweet to the British paleopathologist and presenter Dr Alice Roberts that the BBC Science and Environment News web page stated humans were descended from chimpanzees! She must have contacted them fairly rapidly as the content was corrected soon after, but if even the BBC can make such basic blunders, what hope is there for less reputable news-gathering sources? As with much of contemporary business, the mentality seems to be to get something into market as quick as possible and if it happens to be a smartphone that frequently catches fire, we'll deal with that one later. The Samsung Galaxy Note 7's recent debacle is the gadget equivalent of the BBC error: beating the opposition takes precedence over exactitude.

It's one to thing to define science as striving towards more accurate descriptions of aspects of reality rather than being a series of set-in-stone commandments, but publishing incorrect details for basic, well-established facts can only generate mistrust of journalists by both scientific professionals and members of the public who discover the mistake. Surely there's time for a little cross-checking with reference books and/or websites in order to prevent the majority of these howlers? Having said that, I find it scary that a major media organisation can commit such blunders. I wonder what the outcry would be if the BBC's Entertainment and Arts News page claimed that Jane Austen wrote Hamlet?

5) Finally, there's another explanation that has less to do with the science journalists themselves and more with what constitutes newsworthy stories. Negativity is the key here, and as such science news is swept along with it. For example, the BBC Science and Environment News web page currently has three articles on climate change and animal extinctions, an expensive project technology failure, earthquake news and a pharmaceutical story. Like a lot of political reports, those concerning STEM subjects concentrate on the bad side of the fence. Unfortunately, the dog-bites-man ordinariness of, for example ‘Project X succeeds in finding something interesting' usually precludes it from being deemed media-worthy. The ethos seems to be either find a unique angle or publish something pessimistic.

One tried and tested method to capture attention is to concentrate on scandal and error: science is just as full of problems as any other aspect of humanity. Of course it is good to examine the failure of high-tech agriculture that led to the UK's BSE 'mad cow' disease outbreaks in the 1980s and 90s, but the widespread dissemination of the supposed link between MMR and autism has caused immense damage around the world, thanks to a single report being unthinkingly conveyed as rock-hard evidence.

Bearing in mind that journalism is meant to turn a profit, perhaps we shouldn't be surprised at how misrepresented scientific research can be. It's difficult enough to find the most objective versions of reality, considering all the cognitive bias in these post-truth times. There are no obvious answers as to how to resolve the issue of poor quality science reporting without either delaying publishing and/or employing scientifically-trained staff. The market forces that drive journalism unfortunately mean that STEM stories rarely do science justice and often promote a negative attitude among the rest of mankind. Which is hardly what we need right now!

Devoted to dinosaurs: Joan Wiffen and the role of the amateur scientist

I was recently at a second hand book stall, browsing a first edition of Graeme Steven's Prehistoric New Zealand. The market stall owner told me that she had thumbed through the book and was amazed to learn that New Zealand had any wildlife prior to the moa. This seemingly widespread lack of knowledge about the nation's past is no doubt partially due to the small number of both practitioners and finds, although the state education system cannot be considered blameless. Still, in an age of easily-accessible information via the World Wide Web and the likes of the National Geographic Channel, such gaps do seem rather surprising.

Of course a lack of public knowledge concerning ancient life isn't restricted to New Zealand. I recall several amusing (yes, I know it sounds smug) encounters at London's Natural History Museum, where I discovered that parents of dinosaur-crazed children cannot differentiate giant ground sloths from dinosaurs, let alone bipedal carnosaurs from quadrupedal sauropods.

The poor understanding of New Zealand's past is exacerbated by the low population and correspondingly small amount of funding available. Therefore perhaps it's not surprising that amateurs have made significant discoveries, from the Hamilton Junior Naturalist Club's discovery of a giant penguin fossil at Kawhia to Joan Wiffen, the 'Hawke's Bay housewife' (an epithet that always causes me to grit my teeth) who discovered New Zealand's first dinosaur fossils and much more besides.

I've previously discussed the joys of amateur fossicking from a primarily fun aspect but also mentioned how New Zealand relies on non-professionals. The Kawhia penguin is a case in point, as it would have eroded within a year had it not been discovered. Indeed, I was recently collecting some Pleistocene marine molluscs above a Taranaki river valley, on a steep slope prone to severe flooding. These fossils had been uncovered following a landslide caused by a severe rainstorm in 2015 and would no doubt be washed away with the next one.

In addition to the lack of professionals, the discipline's funding within New Zealand has decreased over the past half century. The Marsden Fund is a key sponsor of science projects but less than 10% of proposals are successful. The obvious wider issue here is that for the foreseeable future there is unlikely to be any private funding for scientific research that isn't financially viable in the short-term; let's face it, most paleontology isn't going to earn big bucks. That isn't to say there aren't some income streams available, especially around museums, merchandise and occasionally site tourism. However, New Zealand's dinosaur, marine reptile and pterosaur remains are mostly isolated fragments, hardly likely to prove star attractions for even the most ardent dino enthusiast.

Which brings us back to Joan Wiffen. She went from a minimal secondary education (due to her father's prejudice) to an honorary science degree from Massey University - whilst still supporting the view that it is the duty of married women to do all the housework. Although she may not have actively negated the Hawke's Bay housewife appellation, the term is hardly suitable for an extremely conscientious scientist; after all, if her husband had been the team leader, he probably wouldn't have been referred to as a Hawke's Bay electronics technician!

Having recently finished reading Wiffen's 1991 book Valley of the Dragons: The Story of New Zealand's Dinosaur Woman I was struck by the obvious lack of professional expertise available in New Zealand as recently as the 1970s and 1980s. Even today, the thirty or so professional paleontologists in the country don't have their own organisation and fall under the auspices of the Geoscience Society of New Zealand. Yet I've long considered geology to be an extremely conservative discipline (think that meteorologist Alfred Wegener's continental drift hypothesis gained little traction for decades until evidence of plate tectonics was found, rather than there being any active interest in resolving the mystery) and so can do few favours to outsiders.

Therefore, Joan Wiffen faced almost complete indifference from scientists who proclaimed there were no relevant strata in which to locate dinosaur remains. Apparently someone had previously noticed reptilian bones in a Te Hoe Valley stream bed - which is what sparked off Wiffen's first expedition - but no-one had the interest or funding to follow it up. Her narrative hints at the disdain professionals felt for amateurs in general but happily this situation has changed markedly in the interim, with citizen science helping to bridge gaps in many fields. In the case of New Zealand paleontology, the notable finds by amateurs have included previously unknown species, adding to the evidence that areas of the 'lost' continent of Zealandia have been continually above water since the Mesozoic.

My recent Taranaki excursion was child's play compared to the deprivations Wiffen and co endured in their rat-infested self-built hut, not to mention funding the entire work themselves. From learning how to remove rock matrix via acetic acid (in an old baby bath, no less) to building a stereo microscope stand from a pillar drill base, the Hawke's Bay team certainly utilised classic kiwi number eight wire ingenuity.

In a pre-internet age - it took six months just to pin down the location and land owner of the area marked 'reptile bones' - gaining technical advice from foreign experts was slow and cumbersome. Ironically, in later years New Zealand professionals visited Wiffen's fossil preparation workshop to gain insight into their operation, including as to how she and her friends achieved such high standards. Clearly, her work wasn't the product of a casual dilettante but the output of a highly motivated and hard-working scientist, albeit an unpaid one.

The American paleontologist and evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould frequently observed that his disciplines were forms of historical science, built upon a series of unrepeatable events created by the complex interaction of disparate factors. Therefore deposition and preservation - even the discovery - of fossils are unique circumstances; remains that are visible today may be little more than dust tomorrow. We owe Joan Wiffen and her colleagues an enormous debt for increasing the sum of human knowledge at their own time and expense, purely for the love of science. And if any Hawke's Bay residents want to pick up where she left off, then I'm sure both professionals and posterity would be most grateful!