TOP 100 SCIENCE SITES
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| You can't judge the value of a degree course by the number of contact hours | Robert Woolfson Any student willing to engage will get good value for moneyThe Browne review into the funding of higher education has led to a debate on whether a university education provides value for money. In the last three months, there have been two comment pieces by arts students complaining about the "paucity of teaching" within their degrees and suggesting that the disparity between arts and science contact hours should be reflected in the fees.I'm entering my third year of a chemistry degree at the University of Manchester and I would not be surprised if, as a result of the Browne review, science undergraduates are asked to pay considerably higher fees without any real debate about whether they actually get more value for money than arts students.Last year, my fees "bought" between 15 and 20 contact hours a week. Eight hours of lectures, nine of labs, along with regular tutorials and workshops. I got the chemicals I needed to run my experiments, the support I needed to do them safely and the journal subscriptions necessary to place my experiments in context. So far so good.And what experiments did I do? The same standard set of experiments that were performed last year and will be performed next year. That's not a complaint; learning the basic techniques is an essential part of any science degree. But it does preclude original thinking; all my assessments to date have involved "right" answers that can be logically deduced from the available knowledge.By comparison arts students, if they are lucky, get six to eight hours of lectures, seminars and tutorials a week. Instead of labs and workshops, they get extensive reading lists: they are "paying for the privilege of reading textbooks". So for three years and almost £10,000 in tuition fees, what do they really get?Well, for one thing, they get a sounding board for their ideas. Once arts students have worked through their reading list, they're going to have ideas about what they've read and how these ideas fit into the grand scheme of things. At university, they get access to a knowledgeable faculty and, through discussions, can clarify and better express their ideas.Their fees also pay for the supply and maintenance of the huge collection of books necessary to develop the required depth of knowledge – otherwise known as the library. It's a telling fact that at the main University of Manchester library, there is part of one floor devoted to science and nearly five wings devoted to the arts.Another, more abstract, way of looking at value for money is by examining the skills learned through a degree. Again, arts students apparently don't get value for money. What do they learn? How to read a book? How to analyse a theme? Compare that to a science student who has potentially learned the basics of probing the nature of the universe.Yet the majority of graduate entry jobs simply require a degree, irrelevant of specialisation, so there must be something valuable about an arts degree. All students are essentially taught the same skills; the ability to work self-sufficiently, a toolkit of problem-solving methods and the skills and confidence to apply it in unknown situations.The more you put in to your degree the more you get out. Those who take the time to seek out lecturers and use all the resources their fees pay for get far higher value for money than those who simply cruise through. Also, whether you're studying 10th-century Norse poetry or the stereochemistry of heterocyclic molecules, degree-level study requires a stupendous amount of work to reach the standard required.Arts and science degrees are different but equal, and equally valuable. So please, stop demonising science students because we spend more time in labs and less time in the library.University teachingTuition feesHigher educationArtsUniversity fundingLecturersRobert Woolfsonguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
From the archive, 14 September 1955: Murderers sleep well and eat heartily Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 14 September 1955FROM OUR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENTMurderers in the main sleep well in Brixton Gaol. They also, it appears, eat heartily and tend to put on weight. These facts derived from a study of the habits of fifty consecutive murderers confined to the prison were presented at the third International Congress on Criminology in London yesterday as tending to support the view that murderers are remarkably free from care.In describing the emotional reactions of arrested murderers, Dr J.A. Hobson, of the psychiatric department at the Middlesex Hospital, said that although the murderers he had seen had been of very varied personality types and suffering from different forms of mental illness, they had had little in common, apart from the fact that each had killed someone, beyond their freedom from anxiety.Two or three volunteered the information that they had never enjoyed such calm and peace of mind as they had experienced in prison. In pondering the possible reasons why the majority of men awaiting trial for murder are so remarkably lacking in emotion, Dr Hobson suggested that in some cases the very act of killing someone could of itself be therapeutic in removing tension from unconscious conflict.Dr Hobson did not overlook the murderer whose unconcern might be explained by a pathological love of the limelight. The idea of execution and the notoriety had a certain glamour for some of those accused of murder, who might prefer to be hanged in preference to the comparative ignominy of Broadmoor.Dr Hobson, who was the only defence witness at the trial of John Reginald Christie, who was hanged in 1953 for the murder of his wife, said: "I am quite sure, that if we had been successful with Christie he would have been even more critical of me and his counsel than he was. Also, I think it is quite likely that if Christie had been reprieved, he would in some way have felt that he had been cheated of what was his due."Of all murderers I have seen Christie was a hysteric par excellence and dissociated with the greatest facility. He wept crocodile tears in the witness-box, but I think he was less concerned and less moved by his crime than anyone else in court."Towards the end of the case there was one very dramatic moment at the end of the Judge's summing-up. Just at this moment Christie threw over a little piece of paper to me, sitting at the solicitor's bench, which said: 'I trust you did get a few cigs for me. I am absolutely out of stock. I feel O.K.'" Prisons and probationPsychologyMental healthguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Asbestos saga proves our feeble press watchdog has no bark and no bite It took a seven-month battle to get the Daily Mail to correct Christopher Booker's dangerous claims about asbestos. Guest post by Richard WilsonBack in February, the Daily Mail published an article denouncing "The Great Asbestos Hysteria", and claiming that the health risks had been grossly exaggerated by "the BBC, profiteering lawyers, and gullible politicians". The article was a response to a study raising concerns about the ongoing dangers of asbestos in UK schools. Those dangers were, the Daily Mail assured us, "all but non-existent". While many older school buildings still contained asbestos, almost all of it was "relatively harmless white asbestos, encapsulated in cement or other materials, from which it is virtually impossible to extract even a single dangerous fibre". The threat from such products was so "vanishingly small" that a study by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) had concluded that the danger was "insignificant", with "arguably zero" risk of lung cancer.Good news all round, then. No need for schools to worry about that crumbling asbestos roof. No need, we might think, for maintenance workers to wear protective clothing when renovating old school buildings. No need, it would seem, to employ specialist contractors to assess whether to leave asbestos undisturbed or get it removed. Those guys are, in any case, according to the Mail, a "commercial racket" with a "vested interest in exaggerating the dangers of products which are, in effect, harmless". Last week, seven months after the article was published, the Daily Mail issued a carefully worded correction:"...The HSE assessments related to specific levels of exposure to white asbestos fibres, not white asbestos products, and found a risk from higher levels. The article said that asbestos in UK schools is almost all white. According to the HSE the more harmful brown asbestos was also frequently used in schools..." Not such good news. What many reading the Daily Mail article won't have known is that the author, Christopher Booker, has a long track record of downplaying the health risks of white asbestos. Though not a scientist himself, Booker has written at least 42 newspaper articles on this subject since 2002, making claims that run counter to the views of most experts, but are remarkably similar to those of the asbestos industry. Several of the claims in the Daily Mail article – including that an HSE study once concluded the health risks of white asbestos cement were "insignificant" - have previously appeared in Booker's Sunday Telegraph column, prompting a series of direct rebuttals from the HSE. The available evidence, as assessed by – among others - the World Health Organisation, the UK and US governments, and the European Union, is that white asbestos poses a serious risk to human health that needs to be carefully managed. If the experts are right about asbestos and Booker is wrong, then this matters for at least two reasons. Firstly, there's a danger that people may take unnecessary risks when handling the stuff, with potentially deadly consequences a couple of decades down the line. In 2008, a survey by the British Lung Foundation found widespread ignorance about the health risks, with under a third of tradespeople – the group most at risk of exposure – aware that it could cause cancer, and 28% "mistakenly assuming that some levels of asbestos are safe". Further misinformation surely won't help. Secondly, for those affected by asbestos-related disease, ill-informed media reports belittling the health risks can be offensive and upsetting. I got the smallest glimpse of what that must be like when I saw that my blog had been linked to from a Facebook group set up by mesothelioma sufferers in response to Booker's Daily Mail article. Several members of the group had decided to report the Mail to the Press Complaints Commission, for breaching section 1 of the PCC's ethical code: "The Press must take care not to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted information". I've been following Booker's antics for a while – I researched his work in detail for my book Don't Get Fooled Again, and still write about him from time to time on my blog. So I decided to support the Facebook campaigners – and test out the PCC's claim to be "fast, free and fair" – by putting in a complaint of my own. It wasn't difficult to produce evidence debunking the Mail's assertion that white asbestos was "relatively harmless". Back in 2002, the HSE had published a summary, with references, of the peer-reviewed research linking the material to mesothelioma and lung cancer. The newspaper's claim that an HSE study had found the dangers of white asbestos cement to be "insignificant" was also easy to disprove: Booker had made the self-same claim in the Sunday Telegraph back in 2008, and been rebutted in detail by the HSE. Neither was it hard to show that the Mail had got it wrong in claiming that "it is virtually impossible to extract even a single dangerous fibre" from white asbestos cement. An HSE lab report from 2007 notes that "the claim that respirable airborne chrysotile fibres are not able to be released from asbestos cement products was refuted by the individual airborne fibres sampled during the breaking of the test sample with a hammer". In theory, this should have been the end of the matter. According to the PCC's code, "a significant inaccuracy, misleading statement or distortion once recognised must be corrected, promptly and with due prominence". What happened instead, in my view, speaks volumes both about the character of the Daily Mail, and the credibility of the newspaper industry's self-regulatory body. After a delay of several weeks, the PCC forwarded me a dismissive response from the Daily Mail's executive managing editor, Robin Esser. While acknowledging some minor errors, Esser insisted that the disputed HSE study did indeed back up Booker's views on asbestos. The fact that the HSE had put out a statement explicitly rebutting this merely proved that "those responsible for HSE press releases are similarly unable to grasp the significance of findings published by their own statisticians". For good measure, Esser accused me (falsely, just in case you're wondering) of being "allied to a well-organised and well-funded commercial lobby", who "stand to benefit financially" from the "anti-asbestos campaign". Rather than take ownership of the process, assess the various bits of evidence and come to a judgement, the PCC instead asked me to go through this new set of claims and produce a further response. Here I began to see why so many people have given up on the PCC. If a newspaper digs in its heels and simply denies all the evidence that's been presented, there doesn't seem to be much that the PCC can do except bat the issue back to the complainant. It was at this stage that I learned that the asbestos campaigner Michael Lees had also submitted a detailed complaint. Michael, who has been working to highlight the dangers of asbestos in schools since losing his wife Gina, a teacher, to mesothelioma, had been singled out by name – the third time that Booker had done this. Michael took particular exception to the dismissive terms in which the article had referred to his wife's death, adding to the offence of a previous piece in which Booker had dubbed the case "bizarre". He was also concerned that – aside from Booker's views on white asbestos – the article sidestepped the fact that many schools still contain large amounts of brown asbestos, whose dangers are beyond dispute.More time-consuming exchanges followed, with long gaps in between, while we awaited a response from the Daily Mail. In the end we won, sort of. The newspaper agreed to make some amendments to the text of the article, publish a short correction, and write a private apology to Michael Lees over Booker's comments about his wife. But to get even this far has taken seven months, and a substantial time investment, while the Daily Mail seems to have been able to drag the process out with impunity. "Free", perhaps – but hardly "fast", or "fair".Richard Wilson is the author of Don't Get Fooled Again – The Skeptic's Guide to Life. www.twitter.com/dontgetfooledMartin Robbinsguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
TV review: Horizon: What Happened Before the Big Bang? and Wild Britain with Ray Mears What was the universe like before the big bang? A big Swiss cheese fondue, according to one scientist on HorizonWhere did everything come from? How did it all begin, the universe and everything? Easy. There was a big bang, 13.7bn years ago, since when the universe has been expanding, right? Well, that used to be correct. But now a bunch of pointy heads are beginning to question this, and Horizon: What Happened Before the Big Bang? (BBC2) attempts to put their thinking across in a way that might make some sense to those of us whose heads are less pointy.Before the big bang? Isn't that like before the beginning of everything? Don't tell me it was God, after all? Don't be daft. But the problem with big bang is that it's all effect and no cause, everything from nothing, which is philosophically difficult. And big bang is mathematically problematic too. Like if you go backwards, cramming everything into a smaller and smaller space, you eventually get to a space that isinfinitesimally small. And, apparently, in mathematics invoking infinity is the same as giving up, or cheating.There are further difficulties – such as when you get really, really small, gravity becomes repulsive (yuk) rather than attractive (mmm). To be honest, I can't quite remember why that's a problem, but it is, believe me. Big bang? Big sham more like.So what's the answer then? What was there before, or instead of, the universe? Well, it depends who you listen to. This one dude says there are various ways of defining nothing. His own interpretation of nothing has convinced him that there was a before, and that the appearance of matter did not start the clock of time. Someone else says our universe owes its existence to a previous one which had the misfortune to collapse in on itself. And then Professor Andrei Linde, my favourite, says everything was emmental. "You have Swiss cheese, OK? And in Swiss cheese you have these bubbles of air, OK? So, just imagine the cheesy part of it is heavy vacuum and the universe expands, and these bubbles appear inside, and it looks like an infinite universe inside." Hmm, to be honest I'm struggling a little with that one. So the cheese is the nothing, and the holes – which you might expect to be the nothing – are actually the something; it's almost like the inverse of emmental. Anyway, I think I get it: big bang wasn't the start of it at all, just the end of something else, which had been going on for ever, and the universe just appeared out of what Professor Linde calls the cheese of eternal inflation.No, of course I don't really get it. It's all a big fondue, inside my head. But it doesn't really matter. It's done in a way that you can go with it until it all gets a bit fuzzy, and then just marvel at the questions that are being tackled. At the fact that there's a building in Canada that looks like a mathematical problem itself which is full of people whose job is to sit around pondering these questions. And that they still use blackboards and chalk there. And that somewhere else, in Ohio, is the biggest vacuum chamber in the world, which has 8ft-thick aluminium walls and takes more than a week to empty of everything, by pumping out the air and then freezing the remaining molecules. It's a cathedral of nothing. Fascinating.Wild Britain with Ray Mears (ITV) is easier. He's in the Forest of Dean, looking for stuff to look at, and to eat. A salad of wild garlic, golden saxifrage, wood bittercress and cherry blossom anyone? Mmm.He finds a goshawk, and a sleeping dormouse which has to be the most adorable thing in the world. Well, until the little stripy baby wild boars appear. I want one, Daddy, get me one, right now. (But be careful, son, says Daddy, look at its mother; wild boars, they're like partners – when you get them, they're lovely and cute, but then they get big, and hairy and grunt.)There's something very nice about Ray Mears, comforting almost. I like his encounter with an adder. A lot of TV wildlife people today would have pounced, grabbed it by the back of the head, held the writhing serpent up triumphantly, forced open its mouth to show its venomous fangs. Not Ray. He just looks at it asleep in the sun, admires its diamond marking, then watches as it slithers slowly into the bracken. Respectful, that's what he is, and respect is as important in the Forest of Dean as it is in the inner city.TelevisionDocumentaryAstronomySpacePhysicsSam Wollastonguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Swiss archaeologists find 5,000-year-old door By FRANK JORDANS 2010-10-20T21:17:28ZGENEVA (AP) -- Archaeologists in the Swiss city of Zurich have unearthed a 5,000-year-old door that may be one of the oldest ever found in Europe.... hosted.ap.org |