Last updated September 4, 2017 at 5:38 pm
Kelly and Casey discuss, debate, and analyse trending topics in where the social, cultural, and political meet the scientific.
Bugs are for girls
Sophia Spencer is 8 years old and has just published her first scientific paper.
One of our favourite hashtags from 2016 was #bugsR4girls – it started when a young girl was being bullied by her peers for her love for bugs. Her mother reached out to the Entomological Society of Canada for advice and encouragement for her daughter. This society consequently shared the letter on Twitter and #BugsR4girls was born. What was unexpected the amount of love and encouragement for Sophia from all over the world. The hashtags showed countless images of female entomologists out in the field and doing their thing with bugs unashamedly.
Now, just over a year later, Sophia is the junior author on a paper that breaks down how the #BugsR4Girls hashtag contributed to science communication and public perception of entomology. It included a whole section called “Outcomes and Benefits for Sophia, in Her Own Words” in which she outlines her reaction to the whole thing.
The paper was published in Annals of the Entomological Society of America – read more via Science Alert.
Artificial Intelligence has pretty dodgy gaydar
Researchers from Stanford University claim they have made a neural network (a type of artificial intelligence) that can more accurately predict a person’s sexual orientation than another person can.
It had a success rate of 81 percent for men and 74 per cent for women, and the researchers claim that it picks up subtle features that people miss. If this idea unsettles you, you’re not alone – both the research method and ethics have been called into question. The AI was only exposed to online dating profile pictures of Caucasian people between 18 and 40 – hardly a representative sample set of the spectrum of human experience and sexuality.
LGBTQI groups have not been shy about pointing out that in the wrong hands this sort of tool could be one of oppression, and that the whole project is based on the premise of heteronormativity.
Find out way more over at The Conversation.
Crush of the Week: Dr Marie-Claire King
Read about her amazing story, as written by her, on Huffington Post.
The Future of Australia’s Transgendered Youth
It’s not easy to be transgendered. Statistics reflecting the experience of young trans people in Australia have just been released, and they are sobering.
Almost 50% of young trans Australians have attempted suicide – compared to about 2.5% of young people in the general population. 80 % have self-harmed, compared to just over 8%. And about 75% have been diagnosed with depression, compared to about 7.5%.
This is a wakeup call that we can’t ignore – particularly because this is entirely preventable. Mental health issues are not a foregone conclusion for trans men and women. Today, they suffer bullying, discrimination, and a lack of social support, and these are the kind of experiences that trigger mental illness.
This study could be a turning point: we’re looking at a future where these numbers remain stagnant, where they get worse, or where they get better. It’s up to all of us to support transgendered people, otherwise known as people, to fix this.
Quick Draw is Google’s Artificial Intelligence Side Project
Under the guise of a game, Quick Draw is actually a machine learning project. You draw, and a neural network tries to guess what you’re drawing. The more you play with it aka the more information you give it, the more it will learn to recognise drawings.
On Twitter, Kyle McDonald (@kcimc) revealed some of the patterns he and a friend had discovered from the publicly available data. They found that certain countries and regions of the world draw objects different. He showed examples including everything from houses to fish, to bread to underwear to ice cream. It’s fascinating insight into culture, language, history and colonisation from simple drawings for AI.
Humanity Needs Sneaky Robots
Take a moment to let the fact that being a robo-ethicist is a job sink in. Okay? Okay. A team of robo-ethicists from California Polytechnic State University recently argued that rather than unflappably honest and straightforward robots, ultimately we will want artificial intelligence to deceive us. We’re going to be interacting with robots in a service and a social capacity, and they’ll become functional members of our communities. Even though ‘deception’ is most often used as a pejorative, it has a social function. Think about white lies, or under-promising and over-delivering. They argue that we’ll want robots that can, if not feel human emotions, at least recognise and respond to them appropriately.
The Absurdity of the Nobel Prizes in Science
Science is rarely a solo act. Yet the Nobel Prizes for science continue to award individuals. If you’re lucky, a prize is split up amongst a maximum of three individuals. This was recently the case with the 2017 Nobel Prize for Physics which was awarded to Rainer Weiss, Kip Thorne, and Barry Barrish for their discovery of gravitational waves. Yet, hundreds of scientists were attributed as contributors in the landmark research paper.
The fact that the Nobel Prize 2017 committee refuses to make group awards is causing increasingly frequent problems and giving a misleading impression of how a lot of science is actually done.” astrophysicist Martin Rees.
The Nobel Prizes for Science reiterates and amplifies an inaccurate and unfair representation of the scientific community demographic.
Interestingly the Peace Prize can be awarded to entire teams and organisations.
“Instead of honoring science, they distort its nature, rewrite its history, and overlook many of its important contributors,” writes Ed Yong in his article.
Crush of the Week: Lady Gaga
Check out her Netflix documentary and find out more about her recently diagnosed health condition fibromyalgia.
In every episode of Switched On, Kelly and Casey discuss, debate, and analyse trending topics where the social, cultural, and political meet the scientific.
Emergency First Responders are Civilian Bystanders
In one of the worst US shooting massacres, on October 1 2017, it’s been shown that it was good Samaritans that saved the lives of many. It took first emergency responders up to 30 minutes after the shooting began to arrive at the scene. By that time, survivors had already been cleared out, either taken out of the venue or transported to nearby hotels, or hospitals. The majority of injured reached trauma centres and hospitals in private cars, pickup trucks and taxis.
The delay of sheer panic, confusion and pandemonium means that it takes medical services longer than expected to reach emergencies. Furthermore, as the injured are transported to various sites around the city, it can be harder to delegate resources in a timely and ordered manner. In the first critical minutes, it can be also hard to pinpoint the origin of the emergency, as was experienced with the Las Vegas shooting.
Interestingly, difference phone apps listed different hospitals in Las Vegas as the quickest to reach which helped to prevent overcrowding at a single hospital. Experts say that such events highlight the importance of prepping the public in how to help the wounded, likening it to nonmedical soldiers knowing how to attended the wounded. Being prepared is the best chance we have to save lives.
Losing the Viking Battle but Winning the Culture War
Were Vikings an insular Nordic people only interested in their own customs? Or were they an openminded and inclusive society? The evidence behind a recent theory might not stack up, but the larger story still probably rings true. A researcher from Sweden was investigating the burial clothes of Viking women who died in the tenth century. She noticed some geometric designs, and theorised they may represent the Arabic word for god. This idea was such an intriguing concept that it quickly caught on, and was reported by the media.
But it didn’t take long for another researcher, from Texas, to debunk the theory – on Twitter, naturally. The shapes on the burial clothes resemble Arabic lettering that was not in common use for 500 years after the Viking women died. And, the original researcher had to extrapolate out from the edges of the scraps of material she had. But while this example probably isn’t true, the fact of a multicultural Viking society probably is.
Crush of the Week: Mini-Mathematicians
These three girls dressed up as the women portrayed in “Hidden Figures” are winners! pic.twitter.com/cVFH71Hu7a
— zellie (@zellieimani) October 30, 2017
In every episode of Switched On, Kelly and Casey discuss, debate, and analyse trending topics where the social, cultural, and political meet the scientific.
Catch up on net neutrality
It’s time to wake up, sheeple.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the US has proposed an order that will remove net neutrality protections introduced in 2015.
Net neutrality is the idea that internet service providers (ISPs) treat everyone’s data equally. All data or content gets sent at the same speed so sites don’t get blocked or throttled. This includes things like TV show streaming services or gaming. Understandably, these are all good things. You get what you pay for.
But without net neutrality we could see different bundles, different access, different apps, all packaged up differently make it harder for consumers to make comparisons between ISPs.
The problem with removing net neutrality means that ISPs can start charging online companies extra to use their delivery pipes and infrastructure. This could have serious effects for individuals when those companies start passing on the costs to consumers.
The current argument from the FCC chairman is that the net neutrality regulations hinder corporate innovation. However, without net neutrality it would be harder for start-ups to complete against established online companies which may partner up with ISPs. With all this, it could lead to less competition and less need for innovation.
Whether or not the FCC’s proposed Restoring Internet Freedom Order vote will come out with the repeal of net neutrality is unknown. But there are definitely many critics, with over 20 internet pioneers, including the inventor of the World Wide Web, writing an open letter to the FCC to delay or reconsider the vote.
Attractiveness in males, unattractiveness in scientific studies
A new study posits that men who look strong are more attractive to women. Their evidence suggests that being tall helps, while being overweight hurts. The research involved showing 150 women images of male torsos, and having them rate their attractiveness. All three researchers, from Griffith University and California State University, were men.
We take issue with this study on several levels.
Firstly, we find it shallow and, for want of a better word, gross. If the genders were reversed, we’d be calling out this study for objectification. We’re concerned studies like this only serve to make people feel bad about their appearance.
Secondly, we suspect a fundamental misunderstanding of male attractiveness to females from the male authors. The perspective has zoomed in too far, and all it ends up showing is what makes a more attractive disembodied torso, not what makes a more attractive man.
The information gleaned from this study doesn’t offer men anything of value for their interactions with women. Men who use this as motivation to strengthen their torso are likely to be disappointed when women don’t fall at their feet. Men without strong torsos could easily blame any lack of female interest on this and see women as shallow.
The social climate we find ourselves in makes it more important than ever for men to listen to women, and value their input, and respect their experiences.
Check out the article about debunking attraction science here.
Crush of the Week: Riko Muranaka
Riko Muranaka is a Japanese doctor and journalist who just won the 2017 John Maddox prize, which is awarded for promoting science and evidence to the public. Riko is standing up to enormous social pressure in Japan by promoting HPV vaccination.
Defence Minister Christopher Pyne’s twitter account was hacked to ‘like’ a pornographic tweet – which immediately raises eyebrows about cyber security at the highest levels of the Australian Government. But we’re fascinated by the fact that an automated bot brought the like to the media’s attention. You can’t hide anything online, whether it’s what you post to your account or how you interact with others.
It’s hard to know whether or not you’re being a jerk – and is it even worth knowing? Should science study ‘jerkitude‘? We’ve also got some tips about how to tell if you’re a jerk – and the best one involves looking outside yourself.
Sugary drinks are bad for you in all sorts of ways, but Australians still drink too many of them. A new messaging campaign targeted at Australia’s Indigenous population uses language, slang and spokespeople from their community – we can’t wait to see the results.
And our Crush of the Week is film producer extraordinaire and head of Lucasfilm Kathleen Kennedy.
Casey Harrigan
Casey Harrigan (@caseyharri) is a Contributing Editor for The Body and Culture on Australia’s Science Channel. Her academic background is in science communication, and her professional background is in science and factual television. Don’t get her started talking about sci fi movies, comedy, interesting animal facts, or Beyonce because she will never stop.
Science and technology is as much a part of our cultural fabric as art, music, theatre and literature. They play a significant role in our daily lives, yet, in a world dependent on science, we often take them for granted. Australia’s Science Channel believes every citizen has a right, and a responsibility, to be informed, and our mission is to create programs to bring that about.
