Is there life on Mars?

Famed NASA astrobiologist, Richard Hoover, has been hunting meteorites and extremeophiles in the frigid Antarctic for over 10 years. To the amazement of all, what this treasure hunt has uncovered is alien life: Fossils of ancient bacteria which hailed from colonies which thrived on comets, moons, and other planets.

Finally, definitive proof of life on other planets. I've been waiting for this since, well, the last time scientists discovered definitive proof of life on other planets.

In case you didn't notice, I was being sarcastic. The Journal of Cosmology, on the other hand, is almost certainly not being sarcastic with their press release:

In a world-wide exclusive, this startling, paradigm busting research, and the pictures to back up these claims, has been published in the March edition of the Journal of Cosmology.

Dr. Carl Gibson of the Center for Astrophysics and Space Sciences at Scripps Institute and the University of California at San Diego had this to say: "Dr. Hover has provided the world with extraordinary evidence to back up extraordinary claims. This discovery completely changes our perspective of the nature of life and our place in the Universe, The world will never be the same."

Extraordinary evidence to back up extraordinary claims? Truthfully, I have no idea about the extraordinariness of this evidence. I am not an astrobiologist and I have no experience with "the most advanced micro-scanning technology in the world". I know a little more than most about cyanobacteria, but as far as I am aware, they evolved on Earth around three billion years ago, and that is where it ends, or should I say, begins.

Also, I haven't read the paper.

Bust a cap in your plan

How does your friendly local telecommunications company jack up their prices without jacking up their prices? This week, Telstra showed us one way.

TELSTRA will start charging all long-distance and mobile calls in one-minute blocks later this month, after moving to 30 second blocks two years ago.

What kind of difference does this make? Let's use maths to work it out. Assume that calls cost one dollar per minute. Each full minute will cost the same regardless of whether you are charged for 30 second blocks, one minute blocks or even one second blocks. That final minute, though, is where the scam kicks in. If you are charged in one second blocks, maths says you will pay an average of 50c for that final minute (or part thereof). If you are charged in 30 second blocks, you will pay 50c if the call finishes in the first 30 sec, and the full dollar if it's more than 30 seconds, for a maths determined average of 75c. If you are charged in one minute blocks, you will obviously pay the full buckaroonie. In short, Telstra now charges an extra 25c per call. All without increasing their prices. Genius.

The Nightingale Collaboration - neatly clobbering online quacks

As of today, online quacks in the UK have a reason to be afraid... somewhat afraid. The Advertising Standards Authority has new powers to investigate and punish companies who's websites make bogus claims. Not-at-all-coincidentally, the Nightingale Collaboration (NC) has just launched.

The ASAs new powers include the power to ask search engines to remove ads that link to the dodgy website. These ads are then replaced with ads pointing out how stupid the website is. Superb! Google is a partner, so it looks like it will have real balls.

The NC is specifically aiming to stamp out dodgy health claims. They are running a 'focus of the month' campaign, aiming to eradicate one dodgy health claim at a time. First up is homeopathy. Easy, seeing as any health claim made for a homeopathic product ('nothing' in a pill) is provably wrong. Easier still, the NC website includes a handy set of instructions for submitting a complaint.

Expect a truckload of complaints over the coming months and, just maybe, fewer bogus health claims online. At least in the UK. Temporarily.

I will follow with interest.

You have to be read

Does writing a science blog that nobody reads make me a real journalist? No, says Tim Radford, "Former Guardian science editor, letters editor, arts editor and literary editor"*. Why not?

Journalists write to support democracy, sustain truth, salute justice, justify expenses, see the world and make a living, but to satisfactorily do any of these things you have to have readers. Fairness and accuracy are of course profoundly important. Without them, you aren't in journalism proper: you are playing some other game. But above all, you have to be read, or you aren't in journalism at all.

Dammit! I'd like to be thought of as a journalist, of sorts, sort of. But the words "you have to be read" have haunted me since I read them.

I have to be read. I want to be read. I need to be read. The question is, how can I be read? I have a theory that will probably not pan out: Write it and they will come. If I produce good content, people will find the blog and link to it, and others will find it, and the cycle will continue. Is that realistic? What I don't want to do is spend my days pimping my blog wherever I can. That is not my way. I am, therefore, probably doomed from the start.

Brain-Body Performance Institute - Nintendo's creepy half-brother

Executive brain training hit the news this week...

OFFICE workers will undergo brain training to become ''executive athletes'' in an Australian-first clinical trial aimed at making staff smarter, healthier and more productive.

You know? Just like the Nintendo DS Brain Training games (RRP $49.95). The program being spruiked in this article is the one run by Paul Taylor of the Brain-Body Performance Institute.

We take the latest research from the disciplines of Neuroscience, Physiology and Psychology and blend it with the lessons of the Armed Forces and Elite Athletes to create programs that are both easy to follow and powerfully effective.

So you're saying I'll also need a Wii Fit Plus (RRP $159). Assuredly, though, my "Biological Age" ("as seen on the Biggest Loser"), bares no resemblance whatsoever to my Wii Fit Age? Or my Brain Age? 

I'm probably being unfair though. I am sure that the testing developed by Mr Taylor and neuropsychologist Dr Roy Sugarman is far more sophisticated than those silly Nintendo 'games'. Why not try this simple test? Pick which of these lines is from Mr Taylor, and which is from the website of Dr Kawashima's Brain Training.

Ten years ago we thought the brain wasn't very changeable, but we know now it is completely malleable, just like the body. And if you want to get the most out of it, you need a good training plan and you need to stick to it.

Everyone knows you can prevent muscle loss with exercise, and use such activities to improve your body over time. And the same could be said for your brain.

The Brain-Body Performance Institute's website is humorously dressed up in typical life coaching mumbo jumbo. Here is my personal favourite:

...they enter into ‘self-determinism’, a critical stage in the motivation continuum which is characterised as being driven to improve current health and fitness situations

Translated into English = "they decide that they want to get a Wii Fit Plus, and they swear that they'll totally use it everyday".

Oddly (reminder, RRP $49.95), brain training programs are big business:

The trial is part of a growing trend, in which online brain-training programs in the United States have grown into a $US295 million business

Here is what you do. Develop a computer based IQish test, and then develop a training program so that participants get better at your test. You know? Exactly like Nintendo does.

Elements of the program also sound eerily similar to the embarrassment that is Brain Gym, a program which was popular in schools across the UK a few years ago.

Brain Gym is a set of perfectly good fun exercise break ideas for kids, which costs a packet and comes attached to a bizarre and entirely bogus pseudoscientific explanatory framework.

Still, this new training program is probably good for a laugh, and if I worked for SAP I'd sign up. Actually, I might first ask a few questions about this "Biological Age" testing:

Mr Taylor's trial will start in March with 60 of SAP's Melbourne staff, who will have stress hormone levels measured, undergo genetic testing, brainpower assessments and bio-age tests to measure their real age against their health age.

Genetic testing? A multinational software company is going to allow a personal trainer access to the individual results of the most personal of all homonyms of jeans. The mind boggles. Admittedly this particular study is being run with some Swinburne University researchers, so it may be that someone on the ethics committee at the university keeps some kind of cap on the amount of personal genetic information that is passed around. However, Mr Taylor's websites contain the portentous line

GENETIC SCREENING

coming soon...

This, my friends, is a VBI (very bad idea).

Oh celebrities! Will you ever learn?

The excellent UK science charity Sense About Science have released their Celebrities and Science 2010 pamphlet, part of an ongoing campaign to correct some of the pseudoscientific crap spouted by various celebrities.

Each year at Sense About Science we review the odd science claims people in the public eye have made – about diets, cancer, magnets, radiation and more – sent in to us by scientists and members of the public. Many of these claims promote theories, therapies and campaigns that make no scientific sense. We ask scientists to respond, to help the celebrities realise where they are going wrong and to help the public to make sense of celebrity claims.

It has short explanations from experts in the various fields as to why these people are kooky, and is well worth a look, with simple explanations doled out by experts in the various fields. This year's collection includes a variety of food related celebrity silliness, such as Sir Cliff Richards' blood group diet, and Olivia Newton John's insistence on taking "digestive enzymes with every meal". Power Balance bracelets ($60 rubber bands) also get a mention. Disappointingly, my high school crush Julia Sawahla gets called out for, when visiting the tropics, taking homeopathic 'nosodes' instead of anti-malaria tablets; this is exactly the same as doing absolutely nothing.

By far the oddest though, comes from cage fighter Alex Reid with this delightful anecdote:

it’s actually very good for a man to have unprotected sex as long as he doesn’t ejaculate. Because I believe that all that semen has a lot of nutrition. A tablespoon of semen has your equivalent of steak eggs, lemons and oranges. I am reabsorbing it into my body and it makes me go raaaaahh.

although this is spoiled by the party poopers at Sense About Science

Alex... the nutritional content of the ejaculate is really rather small. And it’s worth remembering that unprotected sex might result in pregnancy or the passing on of a sexually transmitted infection.

The main lessons from this exercise are nicely summarised in four dot points:

• Nothing is chemical free: everything is made of chemicals, it’s just a case of which ones.
• Detox is a marketing myth: our body does it without pricey potions and detox diets.
• There’s no need to boost: bodily functions occur without ‘boosting’.
• Energy and fitness come from… food and exercise: there are no shortcuts.

Oh celebrities! Will you ever learn?

Do not read!

If you're a *cough* regular *cough* reader, you might notice a new totally clickable button to the right - "So you've had a threatening letter". This is a new initiative from the Libel Reform Campaign, a U.K. organisation campaigning, oddly enough, for libel reform. The problem lies in the rather draconian libel laws in England, where costs for a court case can easily be hundreds of thousands or even millions of pounds, and the odds are stacked way in favour of the claimant (accuser). People and organisations around the world now use the threat of libel in England - regardless of whether the material was written in England or whether either party is English - to silence any criticism of them, as most people will cave and remove the offending material and/or make a public apology rather than risk the horror of the English courts.

Our libel laws allow people accused of funding terrorism or dumping toxic waste in Africa to silence their critics whilst ‘super-injunctions’ stop the public from even knowing that such allegations exist. We need to reform our libel laws now, and that’s why we’re launching a national campaign to persuade our politicians to do so. Jonathan Heawood, Director of English PEN

This sucks, and Sense about Science, Index on Censorship and English PEN have taken it upon themselves to get the law changed, so that the outcomes are fairer and the costs are reduced. It seems to be working too, and it will truly be a great day when I can call someone a cocksucker* with impunity; I'm making a list for just such an occasion. In the meantime, bloggers, journalists, scientists and others will continue to sweat over whether to publish valid criticisms at the risk of being financially ruined by a stupid system in an otherwise lovely country. Hence the "Bloggers and libel law" guide, which is a handy information source for anyone accused of libel, and also a great heads-up for anyone who writes on the web.

Seeing as though I regularly criticise people on this very website, and having followed the cases of Ben Goldacre and Simon Singh with interest, I admit that I was a little concerned for my own skin. I feel much better after reading the guide, however, because I now know that I am fully protected from all risk of libel by the fact that nobody actually reads this blog.

Limitation period is the time limit after you publish something that someone can bring an action for defamation against you. Currently this is one year. In the case of writing published on the Internet the limitation period of one year begins again every time someone clicks on the blog post or online article. This is known as the multiple publication rule.

If you have read this far, please leave a comment along the lines of "I promise not to sue Daryl under any circumstances, even if he accuses me of orally interfering with male chickens. Infact, I will forget everything I just read for a period of exactly one year." Just to be sure.

*the word "cocksucker" may not be considered "fair comment" when the libel reform bill is finally passed, but we can all pray that it will.