Corrupted thinking and cancerous co-option

Unexpected Elements

BBC

Science

4.4 • 567 Ratings

🗓️ 17 August 2023

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The conversation this week starts off on corruption. There are allegations of political or corporate malfeasance in the news regularly throughout the world. But can science bring anything to the investigators? We look at some efforts to bring empirical rigour to the fight. But corruption of sorts is also a big thing in our online lives. Algorithms can deliver duff results, maybe because they are poorly conceived, or perhaps because they are fed corrupt data. So when our cellular biological algorithms are corrupted, our health is affected. Can cancerous tumours be considered corrupt organs, co-opting healthy cells to assist in their nefarious ends? Dr Ilaria Malanchi of the Crick Institute in London muses on the commonalities. Also, a look at the politicisation of pre-human palaeontology and how our stories of human origins have been, and in some ways still are, connected with nationalist geographical identities that mainstream science doesn't recognize. Presenter: Caroline Steel, with Yangyang Chen and Meral Jamal Producer: Alex Mansfield, with Margaret Sessa Hawkins, Ben Motley, and Sophie Ormiston

Transcript

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0:00.0	In 2019, we began investigating the disappearance of Dr. Ruzha Ignatva.
0:08.0	I believe we are a very special network.
0:10.0	A scammer who stole billions from investors around the world.
0:15.0	She's on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list.
0:18.0	And now, we have some unmissable updates. She has money and when you have
0:23.0	money, you have power. Join me, Jamie Bartlett, as the hunt for the missing crypto queen continues.
0:29.5	Listen first on BBC Sounds. I was working in a coffee shop in Boston to help pay rent while I was
0:36.3	training for the trials. And so people kept joking.
0:38.4	They're like, oh yeah, she just took a two-hour coffee break and went and ran the Olympic trials
0:42.3	marathon. On the podium is back with more Olympians and Paralympians sharing their journeys
0:48.6	to the top. On the podium from the BBC World Service, listen now, wherever you get your BBC podcasts.
0:58.0	Earlier this month, I visited the Danish island of Bornholm in the Baltic Sea to take a look at their plans for a zero-waste future.
1:06.1	We were given a tour of a brewery that's working towards recycling everything. And at the end,
1:12.1	our guide offered us a free crate of beer he wasn't able to sell. My eyes lit up. It was our
1:18.2	final night and local beer for the team sounded perfect. But the producer jumped in. Sadly,
1:25.5	we can't accept gifts of any kind. The BBC takes bribery,
1:29.9	even a well-intentioned beer, very seriously. So we headed home empty-handed, and the beer
1:36.4	presumably went in the bin. How wasteful. I'm Caroline Steele from the BBC World Service. This
1:43.5	is unexpected elements. I'm Caroline Steele from the BBC World Service. This is Unexpected Elements.
1:56.3	I won't waste any more time crying over spilt beer.
1:59.6	Let me introduce this week's unexpected elements team.
2:02.6	Dialing in from Nunavut, the northernmost province in Canada, is journalist Mareal Jamal.
	...

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