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The Hague Fighting Crime with Science! the // Issue 02 // Spring 2013 GlasgGow Insight inIto ScSience and TTechnology CSI: The Hague Fighting crime with science! Homeopathy // Emotional Recognition // The Glasgow Effect // Medical Reporting // INSIDE THE GIST TEAM GIST EDITORIAL MANAGING Alan Boyd & Adam Stock We made it! Thanks for picking up The GIST's sophomore issue, EDITORS once again bringing you the finest science writing this side of Falkirk. ASSISTANT Craig McInnes EDITOR WHAT NOW? WRITERS Paul McCool, Craig McInnes, Due to the work of science communicators, starting with Carl Johnny Stormonth Darling, Sagan in the 1970's, through the BBC's Horizon documentaries, the Emilie Steinmark, Timothy Naked Scientists, Brian Cox, Alice Roberts and Richard Dawkins to Revell, Robert Hallam, David name a few, scientific research (in the UK at least) has the public's Iain Houston, Felicity Carlysle, full attention. There are now no less than 10 student science Luke Dicken, Scott McKellar, magazines in the UK, with React (Newcastle), Spark (York) and Steven Davies, Victoria Smith, Synergy (Lancaster) all starting in the last year. Science blogs are Joy Leckie, Jenny Ferguson too numerous to count. My question is this: Now that we have the EDITORS Robert Hallam, Steven Davies, public's attention, what do we do with it? David Houston, Yulia Revina Journalism's highest moral function is to hold to account the LAYOUT Emilie Steinmark, Yulia Revina, industries and sectors it reports on. In this respect, a large amount Ryan Imrie & Johnny of science journalism has been 'soft' journalism, and with good Stormonth-Darling. reason, as simply taking academic papers and giving the non- expert reader the gist (sorry) of the work is important and difficult COPY- Sophie Brennan-Jones & to do well. You'll find some excellent examples of how to do it well in EDITORS Steven Davies this issue. However, we may now be in a position to show the public SNIPPETS Chris Brennan-Jones that science, like any other large industry, has its problems. We've EDITOR started with the quality of medical science reporting in this issue, ART Nijole Ukelyte but there are many other areas that require scrutiny. The recent EDITOR backlash against paying for publication is a good example and has thrown up older questions about the quality of the peer-review IMAGES Beverley Caie, Ailsa McCaffery, system itself. Far from weakening the standing of research in the Courtney Gunn, Emily Fountain, eyes of the public, a little bit of negative press might serve to pull Sanja Gjenero down the final vestiges of the ivory tower previously inhabited by // 00 scientific research. WEBSITE Steven Davies // Alan Boyd is a 3rd year PhD student at the University of Strathclyde. FINANCE David Iain Houston, Kirsten Findlay, Cornelia Eisenach SUPPORTED BY THE GIST NEEDS YOU! If you're interested in any aspect of science communication, from writing and editing to podcasting, we'd love to hear from you. No experience necessary. Contact us at, Each individual article is copyright of its noted author(s) and is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence. // 00 COVER ART by Nijole Ukelyte WWW.THE-GIST.ORG // INSIDE THE GIST CONTENTS 02 Craig McInnes and Scott McKellar take a fresh look at homeopathy and ask,"Why should we care?" // 02 05 David Iain Houston shines a light on Glasgow's shocking health record and explores a recently discovered phenomenon known as the 'Glasgow Effect' 08 Felicity Carlysle experiences a place where fact is cooler than fiction. 10 Paul McCool investigates advanced image processing techniques. // 01 12 Tim Revell rediscovers some of the forgotten names associated with the world’s most famous equation. 14 Victoria Smith looks at the secret lives of spiders. 16 Luke Dicken discusses the work being undertaken by the Strathclyde Artificial Intelligence and Games research group to enhance our understanding of AI through games, as well as enhance our games through AI. 18 Emilie Steinmark looks at new research from the University of Glasgow looks into the development of emotion recognition from body language in children and adolescents. 21 It’s tricky to get science reporting correct. Why do we still see so many misleading headlines? Rob Hallam finds out. 20 // theGIST // SPRING 2013 Beverley Caie // HOMEOPATHY HOMHOEMOEPOPAATTHHYHYOMEOPATHY HOMEOPHOAMETOPHATHHYHYOMOEMOPAETHOY PATHY If you're reading this there is a reason that there are no side ibuprofen. Homeopathic tablets are reasonably good chance that, effects is because you are lucky if also available, but here just one having an interest in science, you there is any active ingredient drop of the homeopathic solution is think homeopathy is nonsensical whatsoever in the 'medicine'. added to a little ball of sugar, quackery peddled (mostly) by diminishing your chances even opportunists and charlatans. And Homeopaths believe that if a further of getting any of the active you’re right, it is. If the object of an substance causes an effect, then a ingredient. There is a good reason opinion-piece is to win the reader to small dose of that substance can why you cannot overdose on the writer’s point of view, then we cure an ailment with the symptoms homeopathic pills. The worst you have already succeeded. Hurrah. that match that effect. For example, are likely to get is a dental cavity. Strychnos Ignatia causes people to Unfortunately, writing critically suffer feelings of grief, so a small So, given that homeopathic about homeopathy has become dose of the Ignatia tree is remedies are a few gazillion something of a cliché because the apparently a cure for grief. This 'like molecules short of a medicine, how very nature of this "alternative cures like' argument sounds do homeopaths justify ripping medicine" is fundamentally plausible enough when you people off? Well, they use a highly laughable. So why are we consider vaccines, where a small scientific process called succussion bothering? Well firstly, we recently amount of a virus (or virus-like (invented by Samuel Hahnemann). attended a Glasgow Skeptics particle) is administered to allow After each dilution the homeopath 03 lecture by Kevin Smith, a senior your body to learn how to fight hits the mixture with an 'elastic // lecturer at Abertay University and a against it. Alas, that is where the body', often a book (fiction/non- renowned opponent of pseudo- similarity to conventional medicine fiction, all genres are acceptable), medicine, in which he galvanised ends. to imprint the 'memory' of the opinion within the room that homeopathic remedy into the homeopathy is at best amusing Homeopathic products are sold in surrounding water. Modern-day hokum and at worst dangerous, terms of their strength. Your local homeopaths still cite the theory deliberate misinformation. This homeopath will sell Ignatia, for from 1988 that water has a seemed like a good starting point instance, under a name like 'Ignatia memory of what has been in it for us to write a self-righteously 30C'. The word ‘Ignatia’ implies, before. Despite being roundly angry GIST article with all the raw unsurprisingly, that this ingredient debunked by the journal Nature[3], power of sugar pills and crystal is in the thing you are buying (a and despite a grand total of zero healing. Secondly, it seems that good start) and the '30C' term tells studies being able to provide homeopathy is still a thriving you the strength, or rather the lack evidence of water's memory, and business in the UK[1]. The NHS thereof. You may think 'the higher despite the fact that the notion is continues to fund homeopathic the number, the stronger the dose', just plain stupid, homeopaths remedies, including four but you would be wrong, worthless worldwide have kept calm and homeopathic hospitals, one of human! Take your logic elsewhere. carried on regardless in The Great which is in Glasgow. Public figures '30C' is a measure of dilution so the Dilution Swindle. such as The Prince of Wales, Nicola higher the number, the more diluted Sturgeon MSP and Jeremy Hunt MP the initial product is. In this case, it Our problem with homeopathy is have all given homeopathic care means that 1ml of the Ignatia not one that can be criticised as [2] extract (or 'active' compound) has being scientific elitism. This is their approval . These people really 54 should know better. been effectively diluted into 10 common sense elitism – an elite cubic metres of water. That's a cube that, frankly, everyone could easily Surprisingly, not many people know of water where each side is 106 be a part of. We live on a planet what homeopathy really is (not light years in length, which is bigger where the environment is governed enough people anyway). Sometimes than our solar system. This means by the hydrological system. Water billed as an alternative medicine, that a whole bottle of Ignatia 30C is evaporates continuously from the we would suggest that it is an statistically unlikely to contain even oceans, forms clouds, precipitates alternative in the same way that a one molecule of Ignatia extract, and as rain and makes its way into the crash mat is an alternative to a the higher the dilution, the less your water system until it eventually parachute. You may conjure up chances are of – maybe – getting pours out of your tap. If water had a images of 'natural remedies' and that one molecule that probably memory, surely it would remember, 'plant extracts' and remember wouldn’t treat your illness anyway. for example, the fish? Since hearing that there are no side For comparison, a 200mg ibuprofen sufferers of seafood allergies have effects associated with tablet contains around six hundred a horrible reaction to, say, lobster, homeopathic medicines.
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