Alzheimers, Psychology science, John Conway, Red cards, Decimate
More or Less
BBC
4.6 • 3.7K Ratings
🗓️ 25 September 2015
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Alzheimers What's behind the claim that 1 in 3 people born in the UK this year could get Alzheimers? How reliable is the science in psychology? The Reproducibility of Psychological Science project reported recently and it made grim reading. Having replicated 100 psychological studies published in three psychology journals only thirty six had significant results compared to 97% first time around. So is there a problem with psychological science and what should be done to fix it? One of mathematics' enigmas He is described as one of the most charismatic mathematicians but he is also shy and enigmatic. Professor John Conway has been described as a genius whose most famous innovation is the cell automaton The Game of Life - Tim talks to Siobhan Roberts about the man and his life. Is it more difficult to play against ten men? Arsene Wenger has said it, Sam Allerdyce and Steve Bruce have said it too - it's more difficult to play against ten men. It's an oft quoted footballing cliché but is there any truth in it? Decimate Tim used the word in an interview last week to mean devastate rather than cut by ten percent - many listeners said this was unforgivable - was it? - We ask Oliver Kamm - Author of 'Accidence Will Happen: The Non-Pedantic Guide to English Usage'.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, just before we start, I want to say thank you for downloading this edition of More or Less. |
| 0:04.6 | This is the long version, first broadcast on Radio 4, and it's the last of the current series. |
| 0:09.8 | But don't panic, the shorter version we do for the BBC World Service will continue to pop up in |
| 0:15.1 | your podcast feed until we return in January. Anyway, on with the show, here's Tim Halford. |
| 0:21.5 | Hello and welcome to More or Less, your weekly guide to the numbers that surround us. |
| 0:26.5 | Before we crack on with the programme, here's an important message from the director general |
| 0:30.6 | of the BBC, explaining why More or Less is to be cancelled and replaced with a weekly show about cats. |
| 0:36.8 | Mathematics is the simple bit. It's the stuff we can understand. It's cats that are complicated. |
| 0:45.0 | Only joking, that wasn't the DG, it was the man some people say is the world's most |
| 0:49.8 | charismatic mathematician, John Conway, more from and about him later. And More or Less isn't going |
| 0:57.3 | to be cancelled, we hope. Although some of you think it should be decimated. More about that later too. |
| 1:05.0 | First, we should probably talk about statistics. Loyal listeners have been in touch after seeing |
| 1:10.1 | various forms of this headline. One-third of British people born in 2015 will develop dementia. |
| 1:18.3 | The research was commissioned by the charity Alzheimer's Research UK from an outfit called |
| 1:23.2 | the Office of Health Economics. And it really grabbed attention, which is odd because it requires |
| 1:29.6 | estimating the medical condition of people in a hundred years' time. Imagine a study from 1915, |
| 1:36.4 | before the discovery that smoking causes cancer or the development of penicillin or the appearance |
| 1:41.3 | of AIDS forecasting today's health issues, it would be a stretch to take it seriously. |
| 1:47.6 | But there's a more specific problem with the forecast. It relies on 20-year-old data about how |
| 1:53.3 | likely dementia is to strike. In the lingo, the incidence of dementia. The researchers admit this |
| 2:00.0 | and say they'll include the latest numbers when they become available. That's likely to happen |
| 2:04.1 | quite soon. But we already know that the new findings are likely to be rather different from |
... |
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