The perils of explaining science, Living to 500, What's good for your teeth and The future of stargazing
BBC Inside Science
BBC
4.6 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 12 January 2017
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Why the simplest explanations are not always the best when it comes to science. Where you read about a scientific subject can affect not just what you learn but also how much you think you know about the subject.
Quahogs are a kind of clam and they can live for hundreds of years. Analysis of their shells provides a record of historical climate change. Researchers studying their shells have found big differences between the drivers of climate change now and in the pre-industrial era.
Trips to the dentist may become less frequent if an experimental treatment with stem cells becomes widespread. The treatment involves regrowing damaged dentine, bringing about a natural tooth repair.
Radio telescopes have brought us signals from the far reaches of the known universe and listened in on the space race. Now a new generation will take us further than ever before.
Producer Julian Siddle.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello you this is the podcast of Inside Science from BBC Radio 4 first broadcast on the 12th of January 2017 |
| 0:07.5 | I'm Adam Rutherford Radio 4 is of course the home of science and all the pods are up for your perusal including science stories |
| 0:15.2 | the life scientific is back on air monkey cage is back in the next couple of weeks I'm on it with |
| 0:19.8 | Alice Roberts and we're being wrong. |
| 0:22.6 | And all of the last four series of the curious cases with me and Dr. |
| 0:26.6 | Hannah Fry are all primed and ready to go. |
| 0:28.6 | But for your weekly fix, stay tuned. |
| 0:31.4 | It might be a bit chewy to eat, but a 500 year old Icelandic clam is providing |
| 0:36.8 | us with a detailed thousand year record of the changing oceans and climate. We've got a brand new technique for not just repairing tooth decay, |
| 0:45.4 | but getting teeth to repair themselves. And we step inside one of the most iconic telescopes |
| 0:51.3 | on Earth to have a look at the next generation of |
| 0:54.0 | stargazers. Very carefully, very carefully, towards the top |
| 0:59.6 | is holding onto the banisters, nothing below me, and then we come up. |
| 1:05.0 | Oh, wow, what a view! |
| 1:09.0 | But first, a little learning is a dangerous thing. |
| 1:12.0 | So said Alexander Pope, though it will get you quite far on university |
| 1:16.3 | challenge. But a new study of how people learn about science suggests that Pope was spot on. |
| 1:21.6 | The studies come from Germany and shows that when non-expert suggests that overestimated their understanding of the topic. |
| 1:32.6 | What that means is that people may ignore experts if they think they understand a topic |
| 1:37.4 | sufficiently. |
| 1:38.4 | Now, this is particularly troubling for me. |
| 1:41.3 | It's my job to explain some pretty complex scientific ideas. So in a blatant |
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