Scientists on Trial
BBC Inside Science
BBC
4.6 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 1 February 2018
⏱️ 33 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In 2016 there was an attempted coup in Turkey. This led to many people who the government saw as opposition figures being sacked from their jobs and in some cases held without trial. They include prominent intellectuals, medics and scientists. In recent days there has been a similar crackdown on people voicing criticism of Turkey's current military actions in Syria. Stephen Reichter, Professor of Psychology at St Andrews University has been to Turkey to observe the trial of one of his former colleagues. He tells us what he saw and discusses the wider issues for science.
It's the 60 years since the launch of Explorer 1 and the discovery of the Van Allen Belts. This was the satellite the US launched in response to Sputnik. However unlike Sputnik it did undertake scientific exploration, its findings have been significant for every space mission that followed.
Using DNA sequencing scientists have found that the 'Two Brothers' mummies at the Manchester Museum have different fathers so are, in fact, half-brothers. Khnum-nakht and Nakht-ankh - date to around 1800 BC. Ever since their discovery in 1907 there has been some debate amongst Egyptologists on whether the two were actually related at all. DNA was extracted from their teeth to solve the mystery.
And the science of the Archers, a current storyline involves leaks of industrial chemicals illegally buried on a farm many years ago. We'll be looking behind the scenes to see where the story came from and how the world's longest running soap opera ensures scientific accuracy.
This week's programme is presented by Gareth Mitchell as Adam is away.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, it's Doleepa, and I'm at your service. |
| 0:04.7 | Join me as I serve up personal conversations with my sensational guests. |
| 0:08.8 | Do a leap interviews, Tim Cook. |
| 0:11.2 | Technology doesn't want to be good or bad. |
| 0:15.0 | It's in the hands of the creator. |
| 0:16.7 | It's not every day that I have the CEO of the world's biggest company in my living room. |
| 0:20.7 | If you're looking at your phone more than you're looking in someone's eyes, |
| 0:24.7 | you're doing the wrong thing. |
| 0:25.9 | Julie, but at your service. Listen to all episodes on BBC Sales. |
| 0:30.3 | Hello, I'm not Adam Rutherford and this is the podcast edition of BBC Inside Science for |
| 0:36.8 | Thursday the 1st of February. Happy new month. I'm Gareth Mitchell standing in for Adam |
| 0:41.0 | for a few weeks whilst he writes yet another book. |
| 0:44.0 | He's off Twitter and everything, prolific and with good Twitter discipline. |
| 0:48.0 | H-tag IDOff my cap. |
| 0:50.0 | My handle by the way, if you have nobody more interesting to follow, is at Garret then. |
| 0:54.0 | All right, then let's jump in with the program and a gag that really only works if you know about |
| 0:58.9 | the archers and we're one of those people who, unlike you and me, doesn't live in the future |
| 1:03.7 | downloading podcasts but actually heard the show on the radio. I know, can you imagine such a thing? |
| 1:19.0 | No, don't worry, Radio 4 has not made a mistake. It's not quite time for the archers yet. But we are going to be discussing the science of the archers today. |
| 1:24.3 | But before we get to Ambridge, we're actually going back to the late 1950s and how America |
| 1:28.7 | played catch-up in the space race. |
| 1:31.3 | And even further back, 4,000 years we go to two brothers in Egypt or were they |
... |
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