Digging apart: why is archaeology a humanity and palaeontology a science?

Although my Twitter account only follows scientists and scientific organisations, every day sees the arrival of a fair few archaeology tweets, even by science-orientated sites such as Science News. As someone who has been an amateur practitioner of both archaeology and palaeontology I thought I'd like to get to grips with why they are categorised so differently. After all, the names themselves don't really help: the word 'archaeology' means "the study of everything ancient." whilst the common definition of 'palaeontology' is pretty much "the study of ancient life". I've even known people with close friends or relatives in one or the other discipline to confuse them: whilst viewing my fossil cabinet, a visitor once told me that her cousin was an archaeologist studying Maori village sites!

Even historically, both fields share many common factors. Not only were they founded by enthusiasts and amateurs, but to this day non-professionals continue to make fundamental contributions. In converse, amateurs can cause serious deficiencies in the data record by lack of rigour or deliberately putting financial gain ahead of the preservation of new information. This can be caused by a variety of methods, from crude or overly hasty preparation of fossils, to metal detectorists and site robbers who sell their finds to private collectors without recording the context, or even the material itself.

It is not immediately obvious where the dividing line between the two disciplines lies when it comes to prehistoric human remains. In the 1990s, archaeologist Mark Roberts led a team that excavated the half a million year old Boxgrove site in southern England. Finds included fragmentary remains of Homo heidelbergensis, thus crossing over to what might traditionally be deemed the territory of palaeontologists. In 2001 the multi-phase Ancient Human Occupation of Britain project started, with deliberate collaboration between both sectors, proof that their skills could overlap and reinforce each other.

By and large, neither palaeontology nor archaeology utilises repeatable laboratory experiments and therefore neither can be classified as a ‘hard’ science. Even palaeontology relies to a large extent on historical contingency, both for remains to be fossilised in the first place and then for them to be discovered and recorded using the relevant methodology. As British palaeontologist Richard Fortey has said "Physics has laboratories; systematic biology has collections." Talking of which, re-examination of old evidence in both disciplines can lead to new discoveries: how often do we see headlines pointing to a fundamental discovery...made in a museum archive?

Although archaeologist were not previously known for conducting experiments,  the New Archaeology/Processual archaeology that arose in the 1960s included an emphasis on testing hypotheses, one result of which is that archaeology now uses experiments to interpret site data. This includes attempts to recreate artefacts, structures, boats, or even food recipes, based on finds from one or more sites. It may not be laboratory conditions, but it is still a method of analysis that can reinforce or disprove an idea in a close equivalent of the scientific hypothesis.

Attempts to improve the quality of data gleaned from the archaeological record have led to the utilisation of an enormous variety of scientific techniques collectively labelled archaeometry. These include microwear analysis, artefact conservation, numerous physical and chemical dating methods such as the well-known radio carbon dating and dendrochronology; geophysical remote sensing techniques involving radar, magnetometry and resistivity; and DNA analysis, pathology and osteo-archaeology.

Teeth of a sand tiger shark
(possibly Odontaspis winkleri)
I found in a wood in Surrey, UK

But there are some major differences between archaeology and palaeontology as well. Although both appear to involve excavation, this is only somewhat true. Not only does archaeology include standing structures such as buildings or ancient monuments, but a project can be restricted to non-invasive techniques such as the geophysical methods mentioned above; excavating a site is the last resort to glean information unobtainable by any other way, especially important if the site is due to be destroyed by development. In contrast, fossils are no use to science by remaining buried. Having said that, I often fossils by sifting through pebbles rather than concerted digging. I have occasionally split rocks or dug through soft sand, but a lot of the time fossils can be found scattered on the surface or prised out of exposed chalk via finger nails. The best way to spot even large finds is to have them already partially exposed through weathering, whilst some archaeology cannot be directly seen from the site but only identified via aerial photography or geophysics.

Archaeological sites can prove extremely complex due to what is known as context: for example, digging a hole is a context, back filling it is another, and any finds contained therein are yet more. Repeated occupation of a site is likely to cause great difficulty in unravelling the sequence, especially if building material has been robbed out. This is substantially different to palaeontology, where even folded stratigraphy caused by geophysical phenomena can be relatively easily understood.

Perhaps the most fundamental difference between the disciplines is that of data analysis. As anyone who has spent time on a site excavation knows, there are often as many theories as there are archaeologists. There are obviously far less fixed data points than that provided by Linnaean taxonomy and so there is a reliance on subjectivity, the keyword being 'interpretation'. Even the prior experience of the excavator with sites of a similar period/location/culture can prove crucial in gaining a correct (as far as we can ever be correct) assessment. In lieu of similarity to previously excavated sites, an archaeologist may turn to anthropology, extrapolating elements of a contemporary culture to a vanished one, such as British prehistorian Mike Parker-Pearson's comparison between the symbolic use of materials in contemporary Madagascar and Bronze Age Britain. In stark contrast, once a fossil has been identified it is unlikely for its taxonomy to be substantially revised - not that this doesn’t still occur from time to time.

As can be seen, not all science proceeds from the hypothesis-mathematical framework-laboratory experiment axis. After all, most of the accounts of string theory that I have read discuss how unlikely it can ever be subject to experiment. The British Quality Assurance Agency Benchmark Statement for Archaeology perhaps comes closest to the true status of the discipline when it lists 'scientific' as one of the four key contexts for higher level archaeological training. In addition, every edition since 2000 has stated "Where possible, thinking scientifically should be part of the armoury of every archaeologist."

So part historical science, part humanity, archaeology is an interesting combination of methodologies and practice, with more resemblances than differences to palaeontology. As the Ancient Human Occupation of Britain project shows, sometimes the practitioners can even work in (hopefully) perfect harmony. Another nail in the coffin for C.P. Snow's 'Two Cultures', perhaps?

Dino wars: is that dinosaur Kiwi or Aussie?

It's a cheap piece of rhetoric to invoke the long-running if affectionate New Zealand-Australian rivalry, but what with the current campaign to redesign the New Zealand flag in order to differentiate it more its trans-Tasman neighbour, I thought it would be a good opportunity to discuss a science-themed story along these lines. In fact, the account bears some resemblance to the years spent arguing over Otzi, the Copper Age man found preserved in ice on the Austrian-Italian border. Although in this case, the focus of the disagreement isn't as clear-cut, since it concerns ancient remains found in both nations.

Even for a country with a population under five million, New Zealand has a seemingly minimal number of professional palaeontologists. That is, until you consider that the lack of industry application for the discipline's findings means its pretty good that there are any practitioners whatsoever. Numbers vary, but figures I have seen for the past few decades vary from less than a dozen to thirty or so professionals, most working for universities or state bodies. By comparison France, with twice the geographic area of New Zealand, has around one hundred professionals.

It isn't just the current financial crisis that has caused problems for would-be kiwi fossil hunters: funding has been steadily decreasing for the past half century and the emphasis shifted towards environmental research. This latter focuses on exploring the (very) long term changes that have affected not just the landmass as it is today but the largely submerged (90% or so) continent of Zealandia. This is of course extremely timely but it does enhance the idea that without much in the way of obvious practical returns, New Zealand palaeontology could dwindle to almost nothing. As it is, the country doesn't have a specialist palaeontological journal or even a dedicated palaeontological society.

The funding issue is claimed to be responsible for the loss of basic knowledge within the discipline, leading to problems such as taxonomic confusion and a backlog for formal descriptions, perhaps numbering some thousands of species, that are new to science. Of course New Zealand's distance from other nations doesn't help either, since the internet has frequently to be relied upon in lieu of direct representation at international conferences and the like. Therefore perhaps it's not surprising that there are only a couple of professional palaeontologists (part-time, at that) working on Mesozoic flora and fauna, including that much-loved clade, dinosaurs.

Luckily, this lack of professional numbers is partially redressed by dedicated amateurs, some of whom have played a pivotal role in dinosaur discoveries. The most famous is the late Joan Wiffen, who discovered New Zealand's first dinosaur fossils in 1974 after experts had proclaimed it unlikely any would be found (on the basis of the geological history of the current above sea-level land masses). I'm all for amateur fossicking and Joan Wiffen's four decades of dedication is an example to us all.

The heart of this piece concerns the discovery of the ninth dinosaur species found in New Zealand and serves as an instructive example of scientists at work knee-deep in messy reality rather than the unreachable ideal. One specimen that you won't find on FRED - the 95,000+ localities' Fossil Record Electronic Database - is the young theropod (carnivorous dinosaur) discovered in 2008 in New Zealand's dinosaur heartland, the Mangahouanga Stream between Taupo and Hawke's Bay. The specimen is only about forty centimetres long and is largely intact: a fully articulated skeleton only lacking a toe and a few tail end vertebrae. After 18 months careful preparation the reptile was in a suitable condition for high-level analysis, having - due to lack of budget - only received cursory examination during the removal of the overlying matrix. Having assessed the deposition layer as mid-Cretaceous the next obvious question was presumably which species did it belong to?

The most likely candidate for a species already scientifically described is the 5-6 metre gracile carnivore Australovenator wintonensis, which is known from fragmentary remains in central Queensland. At less than half a metre long, the New Zealand find would have to be a very young individual, which was the original opinion of the preparators. But the brief analysis of a visiting British palaeontologist put this into question, for although the upper jaw is missing from the adult Australovenator specimen, enough was present to suggest that the New Zealand skull is both too deep and too robust to be the same species. In addition, the kiwi remains has forearms that appear too long when compared to Australovenator, even accounting for variation in growth between youngster and adult.

Then in late 2009 the Australian Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology published an article claiming the New Zealand specimen was just an infant Australovenator. At this point patriotism started to kick in. Even though 'Australo' only means 'south' the word is close enough to the name of the larger nation to provoke the kiwi fossil community into a counter attack. A core group of Hawke's Bay-based amateur fossil hunters nicknamed the little dinosaur 'Hillaryonyx' (named after Everest pioneer Sir Edmund, of course) and the scene was set for a brontosaurus-sized brouhaha.

Although largely powerless, the passion of the non-professional fossicking community should not be underestimated. Everything that could be done to raise funding for a full analysis of the young reptile was undertaken: web articles were written, t-shirts were printed, even lyrics for a song called 'He's ours' (to the tune of the folk song 'No Moa!') On the basis of this, questions were asked in New Zealand parliament and as a result, and a bit of a whipround by some of the universities, money was found for eight months of part-time analysis by two palaeontologists with some experience on Mesozoic vertebrates. As mentioned previously, the reduction in funding for the discipline meant that there wasn't - and still isn't - a single full-time professional scientist dedicated to the era.

Once the analysis was complete the intention was to have a monograph published by GNS Science, a government-owned research institute, prior to public exhibition of the fossil. Everything seemed to be going smoothly, until several visiting Australian palaeontologists asked to see the prepared slab. They were at first stalled, and then later denied access, even to just photographs of the bones. Several arbitrary reasons were given, but the most likely motive for this behaviour was that the kiwi scientists were still assessing the species of the dinosaur. Which, given the loss of taxonomic knowledge mentioned above, was a tricky business if restricted to just New Zealand scientists. So much so, that it took the next two and a half years before anything further was heard.

It's not known who was allowed to examine the fossil during this time but by late 2013 rumours surfaced that the dinosaur had been finally identified as a species new to science. A badly scanned interim report was leaked, containing several figures of the prepared fossil, included the photograph above. More significantly, the report listed eleven points of fundamental anatomical disparity with Australovenator, which have since proved enough to convince the majority of naysayers. The few who are still doubtful are all, needless to mention - but I will anyway - Australian. Until the beginning of this year it seemed the specimen would remain in limbo, but someone, somewhere, perhaps a leading university figure or government official, has pulled their finger out and New Zealand's latest endemic dinosaur species may soon be appearing in the records of the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN).

So not exactly an ideal way to pursue science by any stretch of the imagination. But the story is proof that cuts in funding can cause all sorts of problems for science in the long-term, even if the matter appears trivial to the layman.

Oh, and as for the official name for the creature: Stultusaurus aprillis. How appropriate!

Cutting remarks: investigating five famous science quotations

If hearing famous movie lines being misquoted seems annoying, then misquoted or misused science citations can be exasperating, silly or downright dangerous. To this end, I thought that I would examine five well-known science quotations to find the truth behind the soundbite. By delineating the accurate (as far as I'm aware) words in the wider context in which they were said/written down/overheard by someone down the hallway, I may be able to understand the intended meaning, and not the autopilot definition frequently used. Here goes:

1) God does not play dice (Albert Einstein)

Possibly Einstein's most famous line, it sound like the sort of glib comment that could be used by religious fundamentalists to denigrate science in two opposing fashions: either Einstein is being facetious and therefore sacrilegious; or he supports an old-fashioned version of conventional Judeo-Christian beliefs in which God can be perceived in the everyday world. Talk about having your cake and eating it!

Einstein is actually supposed to have said: "It is hard to sneak a look at God's cards. But that he would choose to play dice with the world...is something that I cannot believe for a single moment." This gives us much more material to work with: it was actually a quote Einstein himself supplied to a biographer. Some years earlier he had communicated with physicist Max Born along similar lines: "Quantum mechanics is certainly imposing. But an inner voice tells me that it is not yet the real thing. The theory says a lot, but does not really bring us any closer to the secret of the 'old one'. I, at any rate, am convinced that He does not throw dice."

So here is the context behind the quote: Einstein's well-known disbelief in the fundamental nature of quantum mechanics. As I've discussed in a previous post Einstein's opinions on the most accurate scientific theory ever devised was completely out of step with the majority of his contemporaries - and physicists ever since. Of course we haven't yet got to the bottom of it; speaking as a non-scientist I find the Copenhagen Interpretation nonsense. But then, many physicists have said something along the lines of that if you think you understand quantum mechanics, you haven't understood it. Perhaps at heart, Einstein was stuck in a Nineteenth Century mind set, unable to conceive of fundamental limits to our knowledge or that probability lies at the heart of reality. He spent decades looking for a deeper, more obviously comfortable, cause behind quantum mechanics. And as for his interest in the 'Old One', Einstein frequently denied his belief in a Judeo-Christian deity but referred to himself as an agnostic: the existence of any presence worthy of the name 'God' being "the most difficult in the world". Now there's a quote worth repeating!

2) Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge (Carl Sagan)

As I've mentioned before, Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything is chock full of the results of scientific investigation but rarely stops to consider the unique aspects that drive the scientific method, or even define the limits of that methodology. Sagan's full quote is: "Science is more than a body of knowledge. It is a way of thinking; a way of sceptically interrogating the universe with a fine understanding of human fallibility. If we are not able to ask sceptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be sceptical of those in authority, then, we are up for grabs for the next charlatan (political or religious) who comes rambling along."

It is interesting because it states some obvious aspects of science that are rarely discussed, such as the subjective rather than objective nature of science. As human beings, scientists bring emotions, selective memory and personal preferences into their work. In addition, the socio-cultural baggage we carry is hardly ever discussed until a paradigm shift (or just plain, old-fashioned time has passed) and we recognise the idiosyncrasies and prejudices embedded into research. Despite being subject to our frailties and the zeitgeist, once recognised, these limitations are part of the strength of the discipline: it allows us, at least eventually, to discover their effect on what was once considered the most dispassionate branch of learning.

Sagan's repeated use of the word sceptical is also of great significance. Behind the multitude of experimental, analytical and mathematical methods in the scientific toolkit, scepticism should be the universal constant. As well as aiding the recognition of the biases mentioned above, the sceptical approach allows parsimony to take precedence over authority. It may seem a touch idealistic, especially for graduate students having to kowtow to senior faculty when seeking research positions, but open-minded young turks are vital in overcoming the conservative old guard. Einstein's contempt for authority is well-known, as he made clear by delineating unthinking respect for it as the greatest enemy of truth. I haven't read Stephen Jay Gould's Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life, but from what I understand of his ideas, the distinction concerning authority marks a clear boundary worthy of his Non-Overlapping Magisteria.

3) The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; and I for one must be content to remain an agnostic (Charles Darwin)

From the original publication of On the Origin of Species in 1859 to the present day, one of the most prominent attacks by devoutly religious critics to natural selection is the improbability of how life started without divine intervention. If we eventually find microbial life on Mars - or larger organisms on Titan, Europa or Enceladus - this may turn the tide against such easy a target, but one thing is for certain: Darwin did not attempt to detail the origin of life itself. Although he stated in a letter to a fellow scientist: "But if (and Oh! What a big if!) we could conceive in some warm little pond, with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts, lights, heat, electricity etc., present that a protein compound was chemically formed ready to undergo still more complex changes" there are no such broad assumptions in his public writings.

As it turns out, Darwin may have got some of the details correct, although the 'warm little pond' is more likely to have been a deep sea volcanic vent. But we are still far from understanding the process by which inert chemicals started to make copies of themselves. It's been more than sixty years since Harold Urey and Stanley Miller at the University of Chicago produced amino acids simply by recreating what conditions were then thought to resemble on the early Earth. Despite numerous variations on this classic experiment in subsequent decades, we are little closer to comprehending the origin of life. So it was appropriate that Darwin, who was not known for flights of fancy (he once quipped "My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts") kept speculation out of his strictly evidence-based publications.

Just as Darwin has been (at times, deliberately) misquoted by religious fundamentalists determined to undermine modern biology, his most vociferous disciple today, Richard Dawkins, has also been selectively quoted to weaken the scientific arguments. For example, printing just "The essence of life is statistical improbability on a colossal scale" as opposed to the full text from The Blind Watchmaker discussing cumulative natural selection, is a cheap literary device that lessens the critique, but only if the reader is astute enough to investigate the original source material.

4) Anybody who has been seriously engaged in scientific work of any kind realizes that over the entrance to the gates of the temple of science are written the words: 'Ye must have faith.' (Max Planck)

Thomas Henry Huxley (A.K.A. Darwin's Bulldog) once wrote that "Science is organized common sense where many a beautiful theory was killed by an ugly fact." But that was back in the Nineteenth Century, when classical physics ruled and scientists predicted a time in the near future when they would understand all the fundamentals of the universe. In these post-modern, quantum mechanical times, uncertainty (or rather, Uncertainty) is key, and common sense goes out of the window with the likes of entanglement, etc.

Back to Planck. It seems fairly obvious that his quote tallies closely with the physics of the past century, in which highly defined speculation and advanced mathematics join forces to develop hypotheses into theories long before hard evidence can be gleaned from the experimental method. Some of the key players in quantum physics have even furthered Copernicus' preference for beautiful mathematics over observation and experiment. Consider the one-time Lucasian Professor of Mathematics Paul Dirac's partiality for the beauty of equations over experimental results, even though he considered humanity's progress in maths to be 'feeble'. The strangeness of the sub-atomic world could be seen as a vindication of these views; another of Planck's quotes is "One must be careful, when using the word, real."

Leaving aside advanced physics, there are examples in the other scientific disciplines that confirm Planck's view. In the historical sciences, you can never know the full story. For example, fossils can provide some idea of the how and when a species diverged into two daughter species, but not necessarily the where and why (vis-à-vis ecological 'islands' in the wider sense). Not that this lack of precision should be taken as doubt of validity. As evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould once said, a scientific fact is something "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent."  So what might appear to primarily apply to one segment of the scientific endeavour can be applied across all of science.

5) Space travel is utter bilge (Richard van der Riet Woolley, Astronomer Royal)

In 1956 the then-Astronomer Royal made a prediction that was thoroughly disproved five years later with Yuri Gagarin's historic Vostock One flight. The quote has been used ever since as an example of how blind obedience to authority is unwise. But Woolley's complete quote was considerably more ambiguous: "It's utter bilge. I don't think anybody will ever put up enough money to do such a thing...What good would it do us? If we spent the same amount of money on preparing first-class astronomical equipment we would learn much more about the universe...It is all rather rot." He went on say: "It would cost as much as a major war just to put a man on the moon." In fact, the latter appears to be quite accurate, and despite the nostalgia now aimed at the Apollo era, the lack of any follow-up only reinforces the notion that the race to the moon was simply the ultimate example of Cold War competition. After all, only one trained geologist ever got there!

However, I'm not trying to defend the edited version of Woolley's inopportune statement since he appears to have been an armchair naysayer for several decades prior to his most famous quote. Back in 1936, his review of Rockets Through Space: The Dawn of Interplanetary Travel by the first president of the British Interplanetary Society (BIS) was even more pessimistic: "The whole procedure [of shooting rockets into space]...presents difficulties of so fundamental a nature, that we are forced to dismiss the notion as essentially impracticable, in spite of the author's insistent appeal to put aside prejudice and to recollect the supposed impossibility of heavier-than-air flight before it was actually accomplished." Again, it might appear in hindsight that Woolley deserves scorn, were it not for the fact that nearly everyone with some knowledge of space and aeronautics was of a similar opinion, and the opposition were a few 'cranks' and the like, such as BIS members.

The moral of the this story is that it is far from difficult to take a partial quote, or a statement out of context, and alter a sensible, realistic attitude (for its time and place) into an easy piece of fun. A recent tweet I saw was a plaintive request to read what Richard Dawkins actually says, rather than what his opponents claim he has says. In a worst-case scenario, quote-mining makes it possible to imply the very opposite of an author's intentions. Science may not be one hundred percent provable, but it's by the far the best approach we have to finding out that wonderful thing we humans call 'the truth'.

Discovery FM: science programming on the radio

Considering the large amount of trash on satellite TV documentary channels (yes you, Discovery Channel and National Geographic, with your constant stream of gullible, gibbering 'experts' hunting down Bigfoot, UFOs and megalodon), I thought I'd do a bit of research into science programming on that long side-lined medium, radio.

Having grown up with BBC Radio in the UK I've always listened to a variety of documentaries, particularly on Radio Four. Although I now live in New Zealand one of the joys of the internet is the ability to listen to a large number of BBC science and natural history documentaries whenever I want. The BBC Radio website has a Science and Nature section with dozens of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) programmes from latest news shows such as Inside Science and Material World to series with specific subject matter such as the environmental-themed Costing the Earth.

A long-running live broadcast BBC series that covers an eclectic variety of both scientific and humanities subjects is novelist and history writer Melvyn Bragg's In Our Time. Over the past sixteen years distinguished scientific guests have explored numerous STEM topics in almost two hundred episodes. Although much of the science-themed material leans towards historical and biographical aspects, there has also been some interesting examination of contemporary scientific thought. The programme is always worth listening to, not least for Bragg's attempt to understand - or in the case of spectroscopy, pronounce - the complexities under discussion.

One of my other favourites is the humorous and wide-ranging The Infinite Monkey Cage, hosted by comedian Robin Ince and physicist/media star Brian Cox. Each episode features a non-scientist as well as several professionals, the former serving as a touchstone to ensure any technicalities are broken down into public-friendly phrasing. Many of the show's topics are already popular outside of science, such as SETI (the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) and comparisons of science fiction to fact. The programme is well worth a listen just for the incidental humour: you can almost hear steam coming out of Brian Cox's ears whenever a guest mentions the likes of astrology. Despite having a former career as a professional pop keyboard player, the good professor is well known for his disparaging marks about philosophy and other non-scientific disciplines, cheekily referring to the humanities in one episode as 'colouring in'.

I confess that there are still many episodes I have yet to listen to, although I notice that a fair few of the programme descriptions are similar to topics I would like to discuss in this blog. In fact, an episode from December 2013 entitled "Should We Pander to Pandas?" bares a startling similarity to my post on wildlife conservation from three months earlier! Coincidence, zeitgeist or are the BBC cribbing my ideas? (It wouldn't be the first time, either...)

A final example of an excellent series is the hour-long live talk show The Naked Scientists, covering both topical stories and more general themes. In addition to the programme itself, the related website includes DIY experiments using materials from around the home and an all-embracing forum.

Although consisting of far fewer series, Radio New Zealand also broadcasts a respectable variety of science programming. There are currently thirty or so titles available in the science and factual section on line, including some interesting cross-overs. For instance, back in 2006 the late children's author Margaret Mahy discussed her interest in science and the boundaries between fact and fiction in The Catalogue of the Universe. Thanks to the internet, it isn't just radio stations that supply audio programming either: the Museum of New Zealand, Te Papa Tongarewa in Wellington, releases ad-hoc Science Express podcasts. So far I've been very impressed with the range on offer and it's always good to find in-depth discussion on local science stories.

The United States has a decent range of science programmes on various internet streams and the non-profit NPR network, with the related NPR website dividing the material into obvious themes such as the environment, space, energy and health. Most the programmes are very short - as little as three minutes - and often consist of news items, usually accompanied by a good written précis. NPR also distributes Public Radio International's weekly call-in talk show Science Friday, which is extremely popular as a podcast.  The associated website contains videos as well as individual articles from the radio show, although interestingly, the archive search by discipline combines physics and chemistry into one topic but separates nature, biology, and human brain and body, into three separate topics.

Planetary Radio is the Planetary Society's thirty-minute weekly programme related to the organisation's interests, namely astronomy, space exploration and SETI. For any fan of Carl Sagan's - and now Neil deGrasse Tyson's - Cosmos, it's pretty much unmissable.

Talking of which, various scientists now take advantage of podcasting for their own, personal audio channels. A well-known example is deGrasse Tyson's StarTalk, which as the name suggests, frequently concentrates on space-related themes. In addition to the serious stuff, there are interviews with performing artists and their opinion on science and once in a while some brilliant comedy too: the episode earlier this month in which Tyson speaks to God (who admits that amongst other divine frivolities, monkeys and apes were created as something to laugh at and that the universe really is just six thousand or so years old) is absolutely priceless.

Physicist Michio Kaku has gone one further by hosting two weekly shows: the live, three-hour Science Fantastic talk show and the hour-long Exploration. The former's website incorporates an archive of videos, some as might be expected concentrating on futurology, whilst the talk show itself often covers fruity topics verging on pseudoscience. The latter series is generally more serious but the programme is slightly spoilt by the frequent book-plugging and over-use of baroque background music.

The good news is that far from reducing radio the internet has developed a new multi-media approach to traditional broadcasting, with comprehensive archives of material available from a multitude of sources. One thing the US, UK and New Zealand programming has in common is the inclusion of celebrities, especially actors, both to enhance series profile and to keep content within the realm of comprehension by a general audience.

All in all, I'm pleasantly surprised by the variety and quality of audio programming emerging from various nations, as opposed to the pandering to new age, pseudoscientific and plain woolly thinking that frequently passes for science television broadcasting. Even book shops aren't immune: I was recently disappointed to notice that a major New Zealand chain book store had an 'Inspiration' section twice the size of its STEM material. So the next time you see a team of researchers in on a quest for a species of shark that has been extinct for over a million years, why not relax with good old-fashioned, steam-powered radio instead?

An index of possibilities: defining science at a personal level

"If a little knowledge is dangerous, where is the man who has so much as to be out of danger?" - T.H. Huxley

With a sense of revitalisation following the start of a new year - and since the number of misconceived notions of the scientific method are legion - I thought I should put my cards on the table and delineate my personal ideas of what I believe science to be.

I suppose you could say it's a self-learning exercise as much as anything. Most people consider science the least comprehensible of all disciplines, removed from every day experience and only accessible by a select few (a.k.a. an intellectual elite), albeit at the loss of the creativity that drives so many other aspects of our lives. But hopefully the incredible popularity of British physicist Brian Cox and other photogenic scientist-cum-science-communicators is more than a passing fad and will help in the long term to break down this damaging myth. Science is both part and parcel of our existence and will only increase in importance as we try to resolve such vital issues as environmental degradation whilst still providing enough food and water for an ever-increasing population (fingers very much crossed on that one, folks!)

So here goes: my interpretation of the scientific method in ten bite-size, easy-to-swallow, chunks.

1. A large amount of science is not difficult to comprehend
   Granted, theoretical high-energy physics is one of several areas of science difficult to describe meaningfully in a few, short sound bites. But amidst the more obtuse volumes aimed at a popular readership there are some gems that break down the concepts to a level that retains the essential details without resorting to advanced mathematics. Evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould noted that the fear of incompetence put many intelligent enthusiasts off learning science as a leisure activity, but with the enormity of these popular science sections in many bookstores - there are over 840,000 books in Amazon.com's science section - there is no longer an excuse for not dipping a toe. Leaving physics aside, there are plenty of areas of science that are easy to understand too, especially in the 'historical' disciplines such as palaeontology (more on that later).
2. Science is not a collection of facts but a way of exploring reality
   This is still one of the most difficult things to convey. Bill Bryson's prize-winning best seller A Short History of Nearly Everything reminds me of the genre of boy's own bumper book of true facts that was still around when I was a child: Victorian-style progress with a capital 'P' and science just a compilation of theories and facts akin to say, history. The reality is of course rather more complicated. The scientific method is a way of examining nature via testable questions that can be resolved to a high degree of certainty by simplified models, either by practical experiments (both repeatable and under 'laboratory conditions') - and including these days, computer simulations - or via mathematics.
3. Science requires creativity, not just rigor
   The stereotype of scientists as rational, unemotional beings has been broken down over the past thirty years or so, but many non-scientists still have little idea of the creative thinking that can be involved in science, particularly in cutting-edge theorising. From Einstein's thought experiments such as what it would be like to ride alongside a beam of light to the development of string theory - which has little likelihood of experimental evidence in the near future - scientists need to utilise creative thought at least as much as data collation and hard mathematics.
4. Scientists are only human
   Scientists are far from immune to conditioned paths of thought ingrained via their social and cultural background. Therefore, rather than all scientists being equally adept at developing particular hypotheses, they are subject to the same whims and sense of normality as everyone else. In addition, individual idiosyncrasies can hinder their career. I've discussed previously how Einstein (who famously said his contempt of authority was punished by him becoming an authority himself) refused to accept some of the aspects of quantum theory long after his contemporaries had.
   Scientists could be said then to follow the stereotype visible elsewhere, namely that young radicals frequently evolve into old conservatives.
5. If there's no proof, is it still science?
   Thomas Henry Huxley (a.k.a. Darwin's Bulldog) once said that the 'deepest sin against the human mind is to believe things without evidence'. Yet scientific hypotheses are sometimes formed prior to any support from nature or real-world experimentation. Although Charles Darwin had plenty of the evidence revealing artificial selection when he wrote On the Origin of Species, the fossil record at the time was extremely patchy and he had no knowledge of Mendelian inheritance. In addition, the most prominent physicists of his day were unaware of nuclear fusion and so their theories of how stars shone implied a solar system far too young for natural selection to be the primary mechanism of evolution. By sticking to his ideas in spite of these issues, did this make Darwin a poor scientist? Or is it feasible that many key advances require a leap of faith - a term unlikely to please Richard Dawkins - due to lack of solid, physical evidence?
6. Are there two schools of science?
   New Zealand physicist Ernest Rutherford once disparagingly remarked something along the lines of physics being the only real science, and that other so-called scientific disciplines are just stamp collecting. I prefer to think of science as being composed of historical and non-historical disciplines, only occasionally overlapping. For instance, cutting-edge technological application of physics required repeatable and falsifiable experiments, hence the deemed failure of cold fusion, whilst the likes of meteorology, evolutionary biology, and palaeontology are composed of innumerable historical events and/or subject to the complexities of chaos theory and as such are unlikely to provide duplicate circumstances for testing or even capable of being broken down into simplified models that can be accurately tested.
7. An accepted theory is not necessarily final
   A theory doesn't have to be the absolute end of a quest. For example, Newton's law of universal gravitation had to wait over two centuries for Einstein's general theory of relativity to explain the mechanism behind the phenomenon. Although quantum mechanics is the most accurate theory ever developed (in terms of the match between theory and experimental results), the root cause is yet to be understood, with wildly varying interpretations offered instead. The obvious problem with this approach is that a hypothesis may fit the facts but without an explanatory mechanism, scientists may reject it as untenable. A well-known instance of this scientific conservatism (albeit for good reasons) involved Alfred Wegener's hypothesis of continental drift, which only achieved orthodoxy decades later once plate tectonics was discovered.
8. Scientific advance rarely proceeds by eureka moments
   Science is a collaborative effort. Few scientists work in a vacuum (except astronauts, of course!) Even the greatest of 'solo' theories such as universal gravitation was on the cards during Newton's lifetime, with contemporaries such as Edmond Halley working along similar lines. Unfortunately, our predilection for simple stories with identifiable heroes means that team leaders and thesis supervisors often receive the credit when many researchers have worked towards a goal. In addition, the priority rule is based on first publication, not when a scientist formulated the idea. Therefore many theories are named after scientists who may not have been the earliest discoverer or formulator. The work of unsung researchers is frequently neglected in favour of this simplified approach that glorifies the work of one pioneer at the expense of many others.
9. Science is restricted by the necessity of using language to describe it
   Richard Dawkins has often railed against Plato's idealism (a.k.a. Essentialism), using the phrase 'the tyranny of the discontinuous mind'. I recall a primary example of this as a child, whilst contemplating a plastic model kit I had of a Neanderthal. I wondered how the human race had evolved: specifically, how could parents of a predecessor hominid species give birth to a modern human, i.e. a child of a different species? Of course, such discontinuity is nonsense, but it is surprising how frequently our mind interprets the world in this format of neat boundaries. A large part of the problem is how do we define transitional states as the norm, since our language is bound up with intrinsic categories? In addition, we rely on metaphor and analogy to describe aspects of the universe that do not conform to everyday experience, the nature of quantum probability being an obvious example. As with the previous point on our innate need for heroes, we are always constructing narratives, thus restricting our ability to understand nature at a fundamental level.
10. Science does not include a moral dimension
    Science, like nature, is neither moral nor immoral and cannot provide a framework for human behaviour. Of course, this doesn't prevent scientists from being greedy or stupid, or even just naïve: witness British evolutionary biologist J.B.S. Haldane who recommended the use of poison gas as a war weapon due to it being more humane than conventional weapons (in terms of the ratio of deaths to temporarily incapacitation). This suggests that non-scientists should be involved in the decision-making process for the funding of some science projects, especially those with clear applications in mind. But in order for this to be tenable, the public needs to be considerably more scientifically literate than at present. Otherwise the appalling scare-mongering engendered by the likes of the British tabloid press - think genetically modified crops labelled as 'Frankenstein foods' - will only make matters far worse. GM crops themselves are a perfect example of why the Hollywood approach for clear-cut heroes and villains fails with most of science. Reality is rarely black or white but requires careful analysis of the myriad shades of grey.

In conclusion, it might be said that there are as many variants of science as there are human beings. Contrary to many other disciplines, mistakes and ignorance are clear strengths: as Darwin stated in The Descent of Man, 'Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.' Above all, there are aspects of science that are part and parcel of our everyday experience and as such, we shouldn't just consider it as something to save for special occasions.