The perils of fake science news, The neanderthal inside us, What The Beatles really sang - statistically speaking
BBC Inside Science
BBC
4.6 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 23 February 2017
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A woolly story about resurrecting mammoths raises serious questions for medical ethics. News of a scientist's plan to resurrect mammoths has spread around the world. However the story is largely untrue. We look at how this kind of 'fake science news' story can impact on perceptions of real medical research - some times with negative consequences.
Almost all Europeans and Asians carry Neanderthal genes. Until recently these were thought to have little impact on us today, but new research shows they may be involved with determining height and aspects of both our physical and mental health.
And what were Lennon and McCartney really thinking when they wrote their hit songs? Thanks to the number crunching power of computer algorithms the emotional content of 23 years worth of their compositions have been analysed. The results are both startling and for Beatles fans perhaps a little unsurprising.
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 23rd of February 2017. |
| 0:08.0 | I'm Adam Rutherford. |
| 0:10.0 | Thanks to Gareth Mitchell for science in this seat for the last couple of weeks while I was off Robotting. |
| 0:14.8 | My three-part series, Rise of the Robots, is on the web and just for you guys, we're going to |
| 0:19.3 | podcast it on this very feed because we love you lots. In the meantime here's this week's |
| 0:24.4 | inside science. You're all a bit Neanderthal, don't take offense it's just |
| 0:29.0 | genetics. Today we're looking at what genes Neanderthals gave to us and how they still work in us. |
| 0:35.0 | And everyone loves Beatles. |
| 0:37.0 | We've got the textual algorithmic analysis of the emotional relationship between Lenin and McCartney. But first, fake news is the thing of the day, isn't it? |
| 0:46.0 | Talk of made up stories that spread like wildfire is rife. As Winston Churchill never said, |
| 0:51.4 | a lie can travel around the world before the truth has had a chance to put its pants on in the morning. |
| 0:56.0 | I checked that quote on the internet. |
| 0:58.0 | Anyway, you'd think science might be somewhat immune to that wildfire, because we've got all these checks and |
| 1:04.1 | balances in place to make sure that what scientists publish is verifiable and can be |
| 1:09.1 | checked by others. It's not the truth because science doesn't deal in the truth, but we do like a rock-solid |
| 1:15.5 | testable fact. So imagine my surprise when this hairy headline thundered into my inbox last week. |
| 1:23.0 | Woolley Mammoth on verge of resurrection scientists reveal. |
| 1:27.0 | Holy Mammoth Batman. You probably saw the story because it flew around the world before I could get my pants on. |
| 1:34.0 | In short, according to the reports in the press, the Harvard Geneticist George Church |
| 1:38.0 | is a mere two years away from creating a hybrid of a mammoth and an Asian elephant by splicing the genes of the |
| 1:45.4 | former into the latter and growing the embryo in an artificial womb. |
| 1:50.9 | Now my initial reaction was not broadcastable on BBC Radio 4 as there are many |
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