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BBC Inside Science

Informed consent, El Nino, Gravitational Waves, Cloud cover

BBC Inside Science

BBC

Technology, Science

4.51.3K Ratings

🗓️ 3 July 2014

⏱️ 29 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Informed consent Facebook has been under fire for running a controversial 'emotion manipulation' study on 689,003 Facebook users. The experiment, to find out whether emotions were contagious on the social network, involved minor changes to users' news feeds. It's contentious because the users were not informed that they were taking part in an experiment. Facebook says, check the terms and conditions, but Dr Chris Chambers at Cardiff University says that the ethical standards for science are higher, and should involve informed consent. Dan O'Connor, Head of Medical Humanities at the Wellcome Trust, gives a short history of consent in experimentation.

El Nino According to the Met Office, the world is almost certain to be struck by the "El Nino" phenomenon this year, with the potential to induce "major climactic impacts" around the world. Roland Pease investigates this flip in the climate state of the Pacific basin, and asks the experts studying this phenomenon, whether it'll be a major event and how it might affect the climate.

Gravitational Waves The announcement, earlier this year, that the BICEP 2 telescope at the South Pole had detected evidence that gravitational waves exist may have been premature. Gravitational waves are theoretical phenomena, based on observation of polarisation of ancient cosmic light. Finding them, adds to the evidence that the Universe is expanding. The data has now been made public, but the confidence in the numbers is being questioned.

Cloud cover A listener asks about cloud cover and night time temperatures, and how air temperature and moisture content interact. Our expert Peter Sloss from the Met Office answers.

Producer: Fiona Roberts.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Choosing what to watch night after night the flicking through the endless

0:06.8

searching is a nightmare we want to help you on our brand new podcast off the

0:11.8

telly we share what we've been watching

0:14.0

Cladie Aide.

0:16.0

Load to games, loads of fun, loads of screaming.

0:19.0

Lovely. Off the telly with me Joanna Paige.

0:21.0

And me, Natalie Cassidy, so your evenings can be a little less

0:24.9

searching and a lot more watching listen on BBC sounds.

0:29.1

Hello you this is the podcast of Inside Science from the BBC first broadcast on the 3rd of

0:34.8

July 2014 terms and conditions at BBC.co. UK slash radio for now all you podcast

0:41.7

listeners are hardcore as you actively seek us out rather than merely have it on in the background whilst making supper.

0:48.0

So as a reward the show is four minutes longer, yes we really spoil you.

0:54.0

Warts and all science on the program this week,

0:56.0

and we've got plenty of scientists behaving badly.

0:59.0

Experimenting on people without telling them,

1:02.0

misconduct in high profileprofile stem cell studies, and

1:05.9

squabbling in cosmological projects.

1:08.6

And the climate's not behaving too nicely either, with 2014 looking like a big El Nino year. But first, Facebook now has more

1:17.5

than 1.2 billion regular users. I guess you don't get that many friends without making a few enemies.

1:24.8

This week the relationship status between you and Facebook was updated to It's Complicated,

1:31.1

when it was revealed that they have been secretly experimenting on you, which is not the type of thing that people are meant to do in relationships.

1:38.0

In a paper published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the Facebook research team, coupled with

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