Research bias; Sniffer dogs; Lasers; Roadkill

BBC Inside Science

BBC

Science

4.6 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 29 August 2013

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Science is supposed to be objective. Research by Professor John Ioannidis suggests the reality is falling short of the ideal. He talks to Alice Roberts about bias in softer science disciplines, and how having an American on the team leads to more exaggerated claims for the results. Is this due to the extra pressures they face to come up with new and exciting findings?

Bomb-detection dogs are currently taught each new explosive, one at a time. It's time consuming, A team at Lincoln University are investigating a new approach, categorisation. It's known that dogs can visually recognise groups of items, but can they do this with a different sense, smell? Reporter Marnie Chesterton went to Lincoln to see the team at work.

This week's Show Us Your Instrument comes from The Rutherford Appleton Lab. Dr Ceri Brenner shows us the high energy Gemini laser. It can be used to research the conditions inside stars.

A team at Cardiff University are harnessing the power of social media to measure, for the first time, the kinds of wildlife being killed on Britain's roads. Gruesome, yes, but assessing the problem is the first step towards conservation solutions. Seen a roadkill blackspot near you? Become a splatter spotter and do your bit for science.

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 auction listen on BBC sounds I'm Alice
0:30.5	Roberts hello and welcome to inside. This week it's all about
0:35.1	skewed science, sniffer dogs and roadkill. This is your weekly helping of
0:40.0	multi-faceted science from Radio 4.
0:43.0	Terms and conditions along with an archive of past programs can be found at BBC.co.
0:48.8	UK slash Radio 4.
0:51.6	A very warm welcome to Inside Science. This week we'll be looking at the problem of
0:56.4	spin in science and asking how do you train a sniffer dog and finding out how you can help to collect data for something called Project
1:05.6	Splatter. And of course I'll be asking another scientist to show us their instrument.
1:10.6	But first, scientists pride themselves on being objective. We try to collect
1:16.7	and analyze data in the same methodical way no matter which country we work in or what
1:21.5	subject we're studying. But research out this week
1:24.6	says that's simply not true. The study published in the proceedings of the
1:29.1	National Academy of Sciences of the USA shows that both the location of the scientist and the subject
1:34.8	they work on can skew the results. I caught up with one of the authors John
	...

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