Breaking the Science Barrier - Part1

Narrator : Richard Dawkins is a familiar name in science.In a string of best selling books,The Selfish Gene,The Blind Watchmaker,and recently Climbing Mount Improbable,he has changed the way we think about evolution,this year he became Oxford's first Professor in the Public Understanding of Science,and now he wants to change the way we think about science.

Richard Dawkins : This is a very heavy ball,it's heavier than a real cannonball because it's made of solid lead,it's ten times as heavy as a human head.Now what I want you to do,stand back against this post,hold it against your nose,let go,and then stand in the same place,and because of Newton's Laws,and the law of the conservation of energy,you can guarantee that that ball will stop short of your nose and not hurt you. Now are there any volunteers to do the experiment?

[The onlookers variously shake their heads and smirk,not wishing to risk their heads being smashed,with murmurs of dissent.]
I'll have to do it myself!

[Richard places the cannonball at his nose and let's go,and the ball swings away smashing a melon in the middle of the room for dramatic effect (and perhaps slightly reducing its energy). Note that the ball would still fail to return to Richard's face,even with no melon in the path of the ball,and Richard knows this will happen time after time,because it is a law of the universe.The public fear the result because they think he has "faith" that the ball will not crush his skull.Not so.This is the difference between science and other human ideas.This is a knowledge that the ball will never come back to the exact point it started from.One is therefore not "trusting" that the ball will fail to crush Richard's skull,but knowing that it won't,because he "understands" those laws -LB] The problem is that science is not a natural part of our lives.We should all know that there's no danger in that experiment.We should know the science that tells us so.But obviously not all of us do.So my purpose in this programme is to explain why science should become an integral part of all our lives. I hope to show you the dangers we face when we turn our back on science,and embrace anti-science,and the risks we run if we don't understand what science can do.But of course the message isn't all gloom and doom,far from it. Science can offer the highest form of joy.You'll meet three colleagues of mine who had that once in a lifetime chance all scientists long for,of shouting "Eureka". A good place for me to start is with the beginning of everything. There is still a lot we don't know about the origins of the universe,and you must keep investigating.But a broad picture of the evolution of life has emerged which is no longer open to reasonable doubt. The world is about four and a half billion years old,pretty soon,well within the first billion years or so,the first living cell arose,and from that we are all descended,all plants - all animals - all humans.That's an established fact,we're all cousins ,scientists accept it just as they accept that the world is round and not flat,and it orbits the Sun and not the other way around. Not to believe it would be absurd,and yet....

[Southern US Banjo music plays] A few months ago I went on a lecture tour of the United States,my subject was "Evolution", one stop was at Auburn,Alabama in the deep south of the country,I was outraged to find how many people there,still believed in something science tells us is ridiculous.

Girl : Well,I'm a Christian,so I believe in God and Jesus, and that He created the Earth.
Man : I believe you can see evolution in the world today,in Nature today,in terms of how different species adapted to their environment,but as far as that being the means of how like one cell became a man I don't believe that happened.

[Then what happens when an egg is fertilised an undergoes mitosis? For a while we are all unicellular.Moreover science is not a matter of belief,it is not up to the person "to have faith in" a theory.Much as Richard "knew" the cannonball would not crush his face,one gains "knowledge" in as far as one can be "convinced beyond a reasonable doubt".As Richard says evolution is past the point of reasonable doubt,and had the argument been in a court of law would have been proved true.It is incumbent then upon those who do not believe to accept the evidence REGARDLESS of what they believe,as they had to do in the OJ Simpson trial. Everyone had reservations about those circumstances and perhaps believed OJ guilty,but that's not how a trial functions. The vagaries of OJ's trial aside,the point is that REGARDLESS of whether one believes he is guilty,or in this case -believes a God exists - the onus is to accept the evidence if it is "beyond a reasonable doubt",which it is. It is farcical,therefore,in a country like the US,that prides itself on the truth and liberty of the individual and it's laws system (as does the UK),for something that is proved beyond a reasonable doubt to be rejected,in favour of a gross lie with no proof whatsoever.If we put God on trial,we would find not one shred of evidence to push that position "beyond a reasonable doubt".One can therefore conclude that belief in God is the irrational position of unreasonable people -LB]

Woman : God created man in his own image from...he created Adam from the dirt,and I believe it happened just as the bible says it.

[And what test has that belief undergone to prove that it is true - none whatsoever,it is therefore the personal idea of the person, and has no wider pertinence to the world outside of that person's personal ideas -LB]

Richard Dawkins : Before I reinforce too many prejudices about the deep south bible belt,I should point out that beliefs on this issue are remarkably constant across the United States [Ref: Unnatural Selection ]. For instance anywhere you go,more than half the people you meet will believe Adam and Eve actually existed.

Fobb James : Why have no new major groups of living things appeared in the fossil record for a long time? What's different here though,is that this nonsense is official.Last November the Alabama board of Education decided that every biology text book should carry a sticker "The Alabama Insert" challenging the theory of evolution.The move was supported by state governor Fobb James.

[Fobb mocks the bent over position of monkeys moving to the upright position of man]

Fobb James : ...and then a thousand years later,come up to here (audience laughs)!

Richard Dawkins : His pantomiming of evolution is now a local legend.

Fobb James : If one wanted to understand something about the origin of human life,that you might ought to look at Genesis and you can get the whole story (audience applause sounds).Period.

[I'm personally amazed that a state governor sanctions such utterly ludicrous stories from the bible as the truth,when no investigation as been done which proves them beyond a reasonable doubt. Perhaps this is only fitting from those states which send innocent people to their deaths through their court system,and break their own laws taken from the bible.The bible says "Do not kill",it does not say "except in the case of murder". If these people are willing to hypocritically break their own laws and not understand the basic precepts of justice,then perhaps it is obvious why they believe fairy stories,over that which has good evidence to back it up. What is shown in this programme is a state governor trying to protect something which he has no proof of,and a vested interest in supporting to stay in office, because he is preaching to the converted,and rather than be unbiased and open-minded,his congregation have already made up their minds before the "trial" has taken place.Much as they found people guilty in a court of law when there was no proof of a crime. There hatred of "black" people came from the idea that races could be made "impure" perhaps through Darwin's "gamule" idea.But as geneticist Steve Jones points out if that idea were correct,traits would be watered down to nothing. It seems to me that the basic ignorance of these believers causes a "sour grapes" attitude that the scientific position can prove its case,and they cannot prove theirs.So rather than find proof,they bay like a lot of schoolchildren and mock what they don't understand, rather than try to understand it.Fear of something is borne through lack of comprehension,and time after time I have seen the latent lack of understanding of genetics and the origins of life both in the UK and the US,through conversations online. The sticking point for those that accept evolution going on now and modern ideas of DNA,is that chemicals could have ever become cells.Biopolymers required for building DNA they say could not have arisen spontaneously,even though we can see that viruses are little more than chemical machines,bacteria more sophisticated still,and crystals showing the capacity of self organisation.There is a clear path from chemicals to life,and just because someone fails to see how it can happen does not mean it can't. DNA itself is a chemical and this in principle necessitates our chemical origins.The capacity of chemicals to self-build is self-evident in crystals,and via "stratified stability" (J.Bronowski "The Ascent of Man") the chemical building blocks can self organise.
Thus anyone mocking evolution is an ignorant clown,and only showing themselves up as an imbecile not informed of the facts. I find it very scary that the US electorate is prepared to vote for the scientifically illiterate.But perhaps that's no surprise,the UK corridors of power are filled with God fearing scientifically illiterate people too,as Rick goes on to show -LB]

Richard Dawkins : Here are just a couple of extracts from the insert that governor James inspired. The first sentence refers to evolution as "A controversial theory some scientists present as a scientific explanation for the origin of living things" and tells us "Any statement about life's origins should be considered theory not fact" Well as you might expect,I couldn't let this pass unchallenged.

[Lecture theatre applause as Richard comes to lectern.]
"Thank you very much indeed...and what I thought I would do,with your permission,is to depart from...." So in my lecture to the beleaguered university at Auburn,I threw away my prepared speech and set about the Alabama insert,line by line. (laughter) "This text book discusses evolution,a controversial theory some scientists present as a scientific explanation for the origin for living things,such as plants,animals and humans.

This is sneaky and dishonest (laughter).'Some scientists', 'controversial', suggests the existence of a substantial number of respectable scientists who do not accept evolution.In fact the proportion of qualified scientists who do not accept evolution,is tiny.

John Franson : And that holds for this one...

Richard Dawkins : It may have been fun for me to get laughs from an enlightened audience,but for Alabama's biology teachers this insert is no laughing matter.

John Franson : A gene is a sequence of nucleotides,in a molecule of....

Richard Dawkins : Dr John Franson is head of biology at nearby Tuskegee University.More than half his students don't believe in evolution.

John Franson : ....chromosomes are made of DNA and protein.

Richard Dawkins : And now he has the insert to contend with as well.

John Franson : For many of these people when it comes to teaching evolution,the well has been poisoned.These are going to be there last...in many cases there last science courses, and then these kids are going to go on,and they're going to become the politicians,they're going to become the leaders of industry,they're going to be the movers and shakers in society.

Man : I don't believe it,that man comes from apes,that he could have evolved from apes,I just don't believe that.

[So there is evidence that suggests that this is so,but you refute the evidence with no counter evidence? We share 99% of DNA with chimps,and yet we didn't have a common ancestor? How does this man account for the apparent contradiction? Did God give us the same DNA as a joke? And of course which God are we talking about? -LB]

Woman : I like that it's much better that I came from Adam and Eve versus coming from an ape,so....and that's the bottom line.

Woman : I agree.

[There is proof for the latter and none for the former,I wonder what you do if sitting on a jury,GUESS? Or do you just go with your instincts? What about REASON? -LB]

Richard Dawkins : But don't let's get too smug about the foibles of our American cousins

[Funny isn't it how they accept that they are our cousins,via sharing DNA with us,and yet can't see that you can do the same with apes? -LB]. We're not so smart ourselves,when it comes to knowing the scientific basics.

Professor John Durant at Imperial College in London has made a study of British attitudes to science,and his last big survey revealed some big gaps.Only about a third of our sample knew that antibiotics,one of the most important classes of drugs,don't kill viruses,they only kill bacteria.Only about a third knew the Earth goes round the Sun once a year,and less than half actually,in 1988 were able to say that DNA is a substance that has to do with living things,and those I think are quite surprising,and perhaps quite eye-opening to scientists.

Richard Dawkins : I find this lack of scientific understanding worrying,and what's worse,as a society,we seem happy to tolerate such ignorance. I've noticed a double standard in our society with respect to science,earlier this year I was on a late night television talk show,and I mentioned the names of Watson and Crick,and the chairman promptly stopped me and said "For the benefit of viewers,who are Watson and Crick?".Now if I'd said I'd just been to the Cezanne exhibition,she wouldn't have dreamed of saying "For the benefit of viewers,who was Cezanne?".

[This typifies the idea that science is not held in esteem as part of our cultural heritage,and that the arts are held in greater esteem.This is perhaps because the public school system steeped in tradition maintains a God myth and Christian values.I note that Irene Riding is trying to get the church synod filled with what she calls "old fogies",the rejected Lords from the House,and via Baroness Young attempting to retrogress to teaching children that there is a God that loves them.In these PC days where all faiths are given credence,it is the height of arrogance to suggest that the Christian god and values have any place in our society beyond any other faith. For me the existence of any of these silly myths is an anathema to our industrial heritage and scientific prowess. Alan Turing's contribution no doubt would have been outlawed by puritanical Mary Whitehouse blue rinse imbeciles,purely because his sexuality didn't fit into there biblical fairy stories.Then he wouldn't have decoded the ENIGMA machine (For US citizens watching the film that re-writes history,it was Alan Turing and the Bletchley peeps that did this not the US.Alan also spawned the notion of a digital computer-it wasn't Steve Jobs and Bill Gates), and possibly we'd have lost the war.We should not be teaching children about Gods which do not exist,in any other way than as historical metaphors.Valuing science is absolutely essential to our society and our survival,for these reasons it is necessary to impede the progress of the likes of ignoramuses like Irene Riding under all conceivable scenarios.Don't forget it was her "old fogies" who failed to comprehend the nature of C-60,it's nature as a Carbon isotope being implicit in it's name,even a chimp could figure it out. Why do they not prove their case as being not like chimps,by understanding scientific ideas? By eschewing those ideas they shoot themselves in the foot and prove how much like chimps they are! -LB]
And that double standard matters,not that we should value Cezanne less,but we seek to value science more.No one knows that better than that great messenger of science,Sir David Attenborough.

[It's perhaps ironic,that his brother Richard,played the owner of Jurassic Park.Even in that story is inherent the idea that if man plays God he comes a cropper.And alongside "Andromeda Strain" another doom-laden anti-science book by Michael Creighton,one might wonder whether in fact Mr Creighton is in the 50% who has silly notions of God. The dystopian visions penned by various writers,theist or not,do no service to science in the public's mind. They maybe entertaining,but it also creates fear of the future.I've not seen X- men yet,but I'm guessing that genetic manipulation will be portrayed as a threat,and upon this one might wonder if there isn't a Hollywood propaganda to cast science as a dark spectre. At risk of being charged with being a conspiracy theorist,or as being anti-semite,I might point out that many of the movie moguls were Jewish immigrants and a good proportion of movie actors are Jewish. Steve Spielberg himself is of Jewish faith,and thus must nominally believe in God.This may or may not affect which stories make it to the screen or how a subject is portrayed if written by a atheist writer,but I can't help thinking that the basic beliefs of the person or the industry as a whole will tend to reflect the biases of the people that populate that sector. Thus it's possible, however unconsciously,that our film materials are propaganda for a pro-God,anti-science perspective,and thus whilst suspending your disbelief at rampaging computer rendered dinosaurs or genetic mutant men,it is as well to be informed of what science is and isn't capable of, just as Richard suggests,in case you get fantastic notions and feel intimidated or threatened that one day you'll be eaten by a T- Rex or have the weather changed by "Storm" ! In general science is trying to do good for society,not destroy it! -LB]

David Attenborough : (In his unique hushed tones) Now I'm getting up into the canopy,into the world of the birds of paradise.

Richard Dawkins : He feels strongly,that a practical knowledge of science and its uses would benefit everybody.

David Attenborough : ...and here's the top.The birds are in another emergent tree,just like this one,and I've got an absolutely clear view of them. I am quite sure that people will get a greater pleasure,not only from knowing how things work,but from being able to take competent decisions about their own life.You ought to be able to know how to repair a fuse,you ought to be able to know roughly what goes wrong with your car,when something goes wrong with it,I confess I'm not very good at that myself.But you ought to have some idea as to the way these things work, and that is science.

Richard Dawkins : The point is that this kind of ignorance means we don't understand what science can tell us and what it cannot, and that is serious,because science is used by journalists and especially politicians,to persuade us that they are right. "The issue is no longer a question of the safety of British Beef,the best available evidence demonstrates that British beef and beef products can be safely eaten by consumers both here and around the world." Do you believe him? You need to know a bit about science to be able to answer that.I don't mean the latest facts about BSE research,but at least enough about scientific method to know that you cannot claim certainty from science. Science can never say "the evidence demonstrates" for instance "that beef is definitely safe to eat".It can only offer probabilities, and explain where current evidence points.It's then up to us as individuals to decide what to do with that information.

Matthew Freeman : What's very important I think is that these decisions aren't left to scientists,or politicians,or committees of scientists,politicians and bishops.Those aren't the people that should be making these decisions.Society as a whole should be,and I don't think society can make those decisions in a sensible way,unless they have a basic understanding about the principles of science,not the details,but the principles.

Richard Dawkins : This shouldn't be anything to worry about,despite the headlines,science isn't only or even usually about dangers and difficulties,on the contrary.The more you find out about science,the more you realise that it can be positively inspiring. There are two sorts of science,non-stick frying pan,and supernovae.People used to justify the space-race because you got non-stick frying pans as a spin-off,which I think is a bit like justifying music,by saying that it's good exercise for the violinist's right arm


[Whilst that's true,I think the essence of the "non-stick frying pan" argument,is an attempt to show the scientifically illiterate the idea of how blue skies research works,that one must invest in one thing,to get useful by-products that in the first instance seem unrelated to what is being invested in.Richard uses the example later of genetic fingerprinting,but a lot of scientific discovery is serendipitous,accidental by products of other lines of investigation.One cannot research only presumably "useful" lines of inquiry,and further - lots of other human activities are done regardless of how useful they are,like playing a violin. Art isn't particularly useful,and here Richard says Cezanne is well known,but Crick and Watson are not,and if useful were the only criterion as to what humans invest in,then no works fiction or works of art would be funded.Humans do not only do "useful" things,they do things which please them and fill them with wonder,and science has those attributes as well as "usefulness".If we were to go by "useful" then Crick and Watson should be known,and Cezanne be an obscure "useless" painter. If one does not know of Cezanne one is accused of philistinism,similarly if one does not know of Watson and Crick,one should be accused of scientific philistinism. If we actually checked,most of the population of the Western world could be accused of being a philistine in the scientific sense.Moreover,as Richard says,we pride ourselves on our ignorance and boast about our inability to understand scientific precepts.This trend seemingly enters the public domain from conservative traditionalists who no doubt value Cezanne,but balk at having to understand the intricacies of DNA.Perhaps like those in Alabama they find it offensive to their beliefs that we sprang from chemical automata,and that no silly god myths need be invoked to explain how life began.The romantic allusions prevalent in art and music from Michaelangelo to Handel's Messiah,draw on notions of God,and perhaps the idea that the basic premise behind these works maybe wrong,is too much for them to bear.Presumably they see it as diminishing to the human "spirit" to see man as so unimportant in the scheme of things,and this then demeans his art and music. But science has it's aesthetic component too,it doesn't just have to be useful, and the usefulness can come from things that initially appear useless.Similarly,one cannot research only ethical or morally good lines of inquiry,since morals are products of value judgements and therefore what is good to one person is bad to another.Thus Brian Appleyard's criticisms are naive and misplaced. Recent accidental and useful discoveries include C-60,the very isotope not understood by most likely the very people who suggest that only "good" science should be pursued.If every there was a need for their scientific education,this is it. C-60 was discovered by Sir Harry Kroto and his US colleagues whilst looking into the physics of star formation.No one expected C-60,it came "out of the blue" or maybe the black in this case.Now C-60 and it's fullerene offshoots,might be used to repair nerves,or to make light and strong fibres,or used in electronic components. Similarly,Material World reported the accidental discovery of a semiconducting polymer at Cambridge by Richard Friend,that may pave the way for lightweight sheets that can be used as displays rather as LED's are.No one was trying to create a display on purpose,it was purely theoretical research to understand how electrons might move in polymers. The pure research led to the application,not vice versa. Channel 4 reported that Albert Hoffman accidentally discovered the hallucinogenic properties of Ergot,presumably he wasn't planning on going on a trip! One cannot force Nature's hand,contrary to the beliefs of mystics,we can test nature and discover things,but we can't make nature do our bidding -LB]

This on the other hand,is a classic example of the kind of science that really excites me.You won't get any non-stick frying pans here,but what you will get,is something which for my money is far more valuable.An approach to the most distant reaches of the universe and to the most profound questions that the human mind can ask. This is Britain's largest radio telescope at Jodrell Bank near Manchester. The surface area of the dish is an acre

[Oh no not imperial measure from Rick!! -LB], and it's capable of receiving radio signals from planets and stars millions of light years away.

[For those who aren't scientifically aware,one common misconception is that a "light year" is a measure of time.It isn't - it's a measure of distance - equivalent to the distance covered by light travelling 300 000 kilometres per second for one year.For those wondering why I am so against imperial measure.Two reasons - First mixing units of measure is bad practice and leads to errors,and I've even noticed scientists doing it. Second,we have ten fingers not 12 or 14,and base 10 is the most intuitive, one only need add a zero to multiply by it,so even the innumerate can follow raising to a power.Imperial measure is often held onto by the same conservative ostriches that hold science in contempt,and metric makes the interchange of the scientific constants and measuring systems much easier,and I hate that xenophobic little Englander mentality that holds onto something with no virtue through sheer bloody mindedness and petty allegiance to outmoded systems. Just because a load of old simpletons got used to one system,is no reason to keep it when it makes no sense,and their inability to accommodate change and what does make sense,is unbecoming of a modern civilised country -LB]

It is a key that unlocks some of the secrets of the universe. What a pleasure! What a privilege to have a chance to unlock one of those secrets.A colleague of mine had.

Jocelyn Bell-Burnell : Hi Chris.

Chris : Hiya.

Richard Dawkins : Professor Jocelyn Bell-Burnell is now a world renowned astronomer.When she was still a graduate student in her 20s,she made the kind of scientific leap most scientists can only dream of.She discovered a completely new kind of star,and it's discovery revolutionised our understanding of the universe.

[Note that the payoff was not material,but something you can't chart in monetary or physical terms - understanding. Richard likes to use the word "impoverished" for those views lacking in such understandings,and I think he's quite right. A society that pays homage only to material goods and "useful" practical things,is an impoverished society. For want of a better word our "spirit" needs feeding too. And in this sense you might see that science is not a base or demeaning pursuit,reducing things to their parts and material substance,but a genuinely creative activity like painting a picture.Similarly mathematics with its emphasis on pattern has the same attributes. These attributes are not apparent at the school level of learning,and it is a shame that many people acquire a distaste via the apparent difficulty of the subject matter.We have created a period now where intellectual ability is seen as untrendy,and this is why,in particular young boys,are perceived to be underachieving. Before now girls didn't take up the sciences,and both genders perceived maths as dull and uninspiring,and similarly science was or is the preserve of the nerd. This culture MUST be changed,and the blue rinse traditional Christians are further impoverishing our society by trying to bring back traditional values and praying to God in an ill-founded attempt to curb crime and instil "good values". If people could truly celebrate their cultural heritage and not succumb to ideas falling upon us by default from rising foreign shores,then perhaps alternative therapies,crystal worship etc would be seen for what they are -impoverished views,ignorant views,that eschew the actual cultural history if the person that holds those ideas. The Western world,for all it's detriments,as on the whole done some fantastic things via science,and we should celebrate global telecomms, computers, antibiotics, DNA, and moreover the immaterial understanding that led to them for the fantastic achievements that they are,all done without requiring any ritual behaviour or prayer to a super being,(even if some science was done by religious people) and not run down our abilities as human beings,because pious zealots feel threatened by their own inadequacy and ignorance -LB]

Richard Dawkins : This was her tool kit in those days,a radio telescope in Cambridge which she'd helped to build herself.It recorded radio signals from objects at the very edges of the universe,as well as signals from local radio stations electric motors and the like.

[I should note that this is a female contribution to science,and I only note the gender so as to redress the balance that might appear as sexism in my comments elsewhere. Jocelyn Bell is also a Quaker,and has spiritual beliefs that engender some sort of entity.From other comments she has made I find her ideas make a lot more sense considering she is a scientist,than those of physicist Russell Stannard who holds that the Christian God exists.His mutually contradictory views are farcical in the extreme,and had he not been a noted scientist,I would have suggested that he be locked in an asylum for his own safety if not for everyone elses! (See "Science and Wonders" and OU "The Argument from Design" and Dawkins RI Lecture) Note also that electric motors produce by default radio waves,as obviously do radio stations.Considering the scares over cell phones,you might very well wonder why no one kicked up a fuss about powerful electric motor's,radio station's or indeed microwave oven's capacity to produce a cancer risk in the same way people think cell phones do. The cell phone scare was typical of how scientific ignorance fuels public decisions that are ill informed. All the above objects variously produce EM waves,but I never noticed a cancer risk associated with using a Hoover published in the papers.No doubt when some "New of the World" editor reads this they'll check for incidences of "ankle cancer" and find a suggestive association with the use of Hoovers,and everyone will stupidly take to using brooms,because they're scientifically illiterate! The precise powers and frequencies and penetrating ability of the emissions from the above objects varies,and one should not be complacent,but one should also be informed in order not to become paranoid about a useful piece of technology because a newspaper innumerate ignoramus talks through the wrong orifice -LB]

Richard Dawkins : Her job was to pick out the star signals from the man-made rubbish.One day she was deep into a three-mile long [Mile? -LB] printout of all this confusing information,when a strange signal a quarter of an inch [Inch? -LB] long caught her eye.

Jocelyn Bell-Burnell : It was pretty close to the limits of detectability,and I didn't quite know what to make of it,because it didn't look totally like one of the distant quasars and it somehow didn't look really like the locally generated interference.

Richard Dawkins : When she amplified the scrappy signal,she found a series of pulses one and a third seconds apart [Even seconds aren't decimal! -LB],it was unlike anything she'd seen before.She,and her supervisor Professor Anthony Hewish were instantly faced with a puzzle.The new signal was full of contradictions.

Jocelyn Bell-Burnell : It's quite fast,it's too fast to be a star,so it's small,but because it's accurate,it's got great reserves of energy,it's not noticing that it's sending radio wave after radio wave after radio wave,it's not drooping or giving up in an exhausted manner,it's not running down in any sense.

[No doubt creationists will seize on it as contravening the entropy law! Ha ha! -LB] So it's got vast reserves of energy so it's big.So it's big and it's small,and we couldn't fathom that out for quite a while.

[It's quite easy-you'd located the TARDIS! -LB] We did for a while wonder if it was Little Green Men signalling to us,and they would have been little green men on a planet which was going round their Sun,and we did tests to try and establish this.

Richard Dawkins : They couldn't solve the problem,then months later she stumbled across another scrappy signal,if she could get this amplified,perhaps she would find the answer.

Jocelyn Bell-Burnell : This was the 21st of December and I was about to go on Christmas holiday,and it was about three o'clock in the morning when this bit of scruffy sky was due to be visible to the telescope.

Richard Dawkins : She got to the telescope just a few minutes before three,but it was cold and the machinery wasn't working,it wasn't even recording man-made interference.

Jocelyn Bell-Burnell : Well,I breathed on it and I uttered unladylike words at it and I flicked switches and I think I maybe even applied a foot to it in fury,
[All not very Quaker-like actions. Jocelyn is in her own movie about black holes soon, called Quaker,mass and the pit! -LB] and I got it to work,at full sensitivity for five minutes,and it was the right five minutes,and it was on the right setting,and in came,blip,blip,blip,blip,not one and a third seconds apart,this time one and a quarter seconds apart,and from a totally different bit of the sky.

[When listening to these accounts,versed in science to some extent that I am,I can't help wondering how man-made small periodic signals are screened out of cosmological reception. Could not the massive amplification be creating a reproduction of a signal in the electronic circuitry of the telescope itself,or the consequence of an induced signal in the telescope from the massive fields generated by its power supply? Another note here,I was once asked how one discriminates dubious scientific published material from the credible stuff,and thus tell when someone is making up scientific sounding "viable" scenarios that would fool the lay person. The answer I gave,supplied by my brother,was of the relationship to other credible scientific papers,in other words by mutual assent.In order to be able to discern this mutual assent one must be scientifically informed oneself,to know both who is considered beyond reproach,and whether in fact what they're saying is credible.In other words being scientifically informed is inescapable unless you wish to be at the behest of those who would pull wool over your eyes.Notably crop circles,can be seen immediately as hoaxes by anyone familiar with fractals and mathematically similar patterns.The likes of Reg Presley or Lionel Fanthorpe will be taken in by it as a phenomenon worthy of investigation.Similarly if Reg Presley or Lionel Fanthorpe published a paper for peer review on crop circles,like as not it would be immediately trashed for the nonsense it undoubtedly would be.Those scientists who have genuinely investigated such circumstances and employed virtually every physical force under the Sun in doing so,are hampered in this by obvious hoaxers.In one Sci Tech article one hoaxer proclaimed with glee that no one wished to have crop circles explained, and that people preferred the mystery.If they do then they are very sad indeed,for man has made his progresses by explaining things not by leaving them as unexplained phenomenon,and if that hoaxer values clean drinking water,food in his belly and any ailment quickly treated,then he'd better think again about what he values. Advocating ignorance is the action of an imbecile,and whilst Reg Presley and Lionel Fanthorpe seem genuinely intrigued by what they witness,their answers lie in doing science,not in chanting over haunted Ford Capris or waiting to catch a space ship landing in a corn field. For those who have difficulty in discerning the bogus from the legitimate. Reg and Lionel fall into the former category.But don't take my word for it,figure it out for yourself,try thinking for a change -LB]

And not only is it very exciting,but it kills the little green men,because you don't have two lots of little green men on opposite sides of the universe both deciding to signal to planet Earth at the same time in a rather silly way.

[Much as I agree with Jocelyn,for the benefit of those who think life starting here is a matter of absurd probability,and thus requiring creation.If we utilise Drake's equation for discerning the probable number of civilisations,and take account that (as Asimov says) that the civilisations need be alive and technological at the same time as we are,then it's not inconceivable that two worlds could signal us from opposite ends of the sky.It stretches credibility if you suppose they do it at the same moment in their history,considering they are light years away,and thus as far as we are concerned the signals started out long ago. (Note that light year is a measure of distance,but it takes time to traverse distance). If technological civilisations are plentiful,and all mature at the roughly the same time,then they'd all be doing what we're doing around the same time,but it would take decades or centuries for the signal to reach us,by which time,possibly that society could have blown itself up.So things aren't particularly rosy for alien contact,presuming of course that they haven't found a simple intergalactic device,like a stargate.Contrary to the accounts of Reg Presley clones,aliens haven't been here,and nor did they start our human race by interbreeding, contrary to the ramblings of Erik Von Daniken and Graham Hancock,the latter being a self confessed non-scientist who presumes to make up theories about subjects of which he has no expert knowledge,and of course makes very basic mistakes,that even I can spot.One would not wish to have brain surgery performed by circus clown (unless he happened to be both clown and doctor!),and likewise Mr Hancock should keep his nose out of things about which he clearly knows nothing,and leave it to those who are trained to do the job.For the record Mr Hancock is another in the "bogus" category -LB] It's a new kind of star -great!

Richard Dawkins : Jocelyn had discovered a pulsar,the remains of an exploded star,it's invisible corpse was a spinning lump of prodigiously dense matter,crushed to a fraction of it's former size.A pulsar the size of Wembley Stadium would weigh as much as the Earth.It was the nearest thing then discovered to a black hole,and it opened a new chapter in our understanding of the universe.Surely it's better to explore stars with telescopes,than horoscopes?! Yet many still look to the paranormal for their answers, as we'll see.