Science Monkey

Java, cup o’ Joe, brown sludge, learning juice, jet fuel, or even a euphemism for sex –today’s episode is all about everyone’s favourite (legal) drug: coffee! What does this have to do with gerbils? Well…. you’ll see. In today’s Rigorous of Ridiculous segment, Graham and Ray discuss “Coffee and Cancer of the Pancreas” and another…More

Science Monkey episode 3

Java, cup o’ Joe, brown sludge, learning juice, jet fuel, or even a euphemism for sex –today’s episode is all about everyone’s favourite (legal) drug: coffee! What does this have to do with gerbils? Well…. you’ll see.

In today’s Rigorous of Ridiculous segment, Graham and Ray discuss “Coffee and Cancer of the Pancreas” and another retracted paper, “A computer application in mathematics.” We also continue our favourite segment, Didja Know, in which one monkey must determine which science “fact” is not particularly facty.

Graham and Ray discuss “moonshots”, those huge, government-led science initiatives that promise to change the world forever. Curing cancer? Living forever? Hover boards? Where should we focus our energies? We also introduce our new segment, Is This Still A Thing, in which we look at some examples of ancient civilizations dealing with scientific issues that…More

Science Monkey episode 2

Welcome to Science Monkey! In today’s episode, Graham and Ray talk about pseudoscience and why we are still engaged with it, even in the modern, technological era. We also shamelessly plug our books, Words Well Put and Nothing To Do With Skin. And Graham recommends his translation of Six Records of a Life Adrift, by Shen Fu.…More

Science Monkey episode 1

Graham and Ray discuss “moonshots”, those huge, government-led science initiatives that promise to change the world forever. Curing cancer? Living forever? Hover boards? Where should we focus our energies? We also introduce our new segment, Is This Still A Thing, in which we look at some examples of ancient civilizations dealing with scientific issues that continue to be relevant today. In this episode, Graham quotes from ancient historical and philosophical sources cited in The Shorter Science and Civilisation in China by Joseph Needham.

In our Rigorous or Ridiculous segment, we discuss the following two papers: “Celestial determinants of success in research“, a paper that explores whether your horoscope can predict if you will win a Nobel Prize, and “Biomechanical Characteristics of Hand

Coordination in Grasping Activities of Daily Living“, a controversial (retracted) paper that seems to posit the existence of God…or does it?

TERMS used: confirmation bias, clinical vs. statistical significance, gui 鬼 (ghost). For the full list, check out the glossary.

(The image above was taken from here.)

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Welcome to Science Monkey! In today’s episode, Graham and Ray talk about pseudoscience and why we are still engaged with it, even in the modern, technological era. We also shamelessly plug our books, Words Well Put and Nothing To Do With Skin. And Graham recommends his translation of Six Records of a Life Adrift, by Shen Fu.

Some of the things we mention include: a University course that has some anti-vaccination elements, a questionable diet described in the New York Times that purports to miraculously “cure” autism, why people tend to fall for pseudoscience, and a 1997 Wall Street Journal advertisement, masquerading as a peer-reviewed science paper, called “Science Has Spoken: Global Warming Is A Myth”.

We introduce our segment, Rigorous or Ridiculous, in which we discuss whether a study is good or… not. Today, the papers we tackle are “Association between breastfeeding and intelligence, educational attainment, and income at 30 years of age: a prospective birth cohort study from Brazil” and “An Open-Label Pilot Study of Homeopathic Treatment of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder in Children and Youth.”

Oh, and Ray is deeply embarrassed that he temporarily forgets what an “open label” study is.  Deeply, shamefully, devastatingly embarrassed. (But Graham guessed correctly.)

TERMS used in today’s podcast: prospective, longitudinal, association, correlation, continuous variable, dichotomous variable, open label, control group, pilot study. (See the glossary for the full list.)

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