A lot of science can be relatively quiet, perhaps even staid, but some topics can cause things to kick off. So-called alternative medicine (acupuncture, homeopathy, etc) is one of them. A couple of papers in the British Journal of General Practice have been the cause of no fewer than 10 (count ’em here) letters to […]
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Five years ago Amanda Page (then my PhD student) and I published a paper (free pdf here) that was computational statistical physics but was inspired by the problem of protein crystallisation. It is one of my favourite papers. An hour ago I got some automated email saying that another paper had cited this work of […]
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Perhaps the most contentious area that scientists get involved in in public is global warming. Debates often get rather adversarial. On the one hand you might have the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). On the other perhaps The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF). The 4th report of the IPCC states “Warming of the climate system […]
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Short answer: No. Longer answer: There is no evidence for this. This is despite the scientific paper and BBC article that claiming that obesity can indeed spread from friend to friend. The original work was in 2007 by Christakis and Fowler and appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). NEJM is a very prestigious […]
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The results of this year’s National Student Survey (NSS) are now out – go here and type “physics” and “Surrey” in the relevant boxes to get the Department’s numbers. The headline figure is that 98% of the students who filled in the NSS questionaire are satisfied with the course. Great. As an academic who has […]
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