Andrew Orlowski

Collected Journalism

Tag: junk science

  • Captain Cyborg: Computers are alive, like bats or cows

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    Andrew Orlowski

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    Self-harming attention-seeker Kevin Warwick has admitted to snooping on the public in a previous life. Warwick made the creepy confession on Radio 4, recalling an earlier job as a GPO engineer: “I remember taking ten different calls and plugging them all together; one call would continue, the other nine would listen in. Then I’d patch…

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  • Greatest Living Briton gets £30m for ‘web science’

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    Andrew Orlowski

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    As an alliance of the desperate, this one takes some beating. The Greatest Living Briton (Sir Timothy Berners Lee) has been thrown £30m of taxpayers’ money for a new institute to research “web science”. Meanwhile the Prime Minister waxed lyrical today about the semantic web – how “data” would replace files, with machine speaking unto…

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  • Mystic Met Office abandons long range forecasts

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    Andrew Orlowski

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    The Met Office has confirmed it is to abandon long range weather forecasts, finally acknowledging criticism. The most recent forecasts were so inaccurate, that even the BBC is reconsidering whether to appoint an alternative supplier, such as Accuweather, after 88 years of continuous service from the 1,700-strong MoD unit. The Mystic Met predicted a barbecue…

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  • Nu Lab’s favourite boffin

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    Andrew Orlowski

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    New Labour’s favourite boffin has lost her job – for a very New Labour reason – and has responded with a classically New Labour riposte. Oxford neuroscientist Susan Greenfield was made redundant from her post as the Director of the Royal Institution after failing to balance the books. The full-time post itself is being abolished.…

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  • The BBC, Thermageddon, and a Giant Snake

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    Andrew Orlowski

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    Listeners to BBC World Service’s Science in Action program got a nasty surprise last week. In the midst of a discussion about the large snake fossil, a scientist dropped this bombshell: “The Planet has heated and cooled repeatedly throughout its history. What we’re doing is the rate at which we’re heating the planet is many…

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  • Climate Models vs. Reality: Anton Wylie

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    Andrew Orlowski

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    Climate models appear to be missing an atmospheric ingredient, a new study suggests. December’s issue of the International Journal of Climatology from the Royal Meteorlogical Society contains a study of computer models used in climate forecasting. The study is by joint authors Douglass, Christy, Pearson, and Singer – of whom only the third mentioned is…

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