Andrew Orlowski

Collected Journalism

Tag: science

  • On Climategate

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    Andrew Orlowski

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    at The Register This piece originally had a much longer section summing up the state of climate “science” – which the CRU leak has verified. The peculiar nature of the problem is why anecdote and modelling play such an important part in the persuasion business. Scientific theories fall by the wayside when they fail to…

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  • To the Moon – with extreme engineering

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    Andrew Orlowski

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    Apollo space program as a triumph of power and industrial might. The superpowers’ space programs were, of course, political and chauvinistic, designed to showcase national wealth. But there’s a better way of looking at the program, Dennis Wingo reminded me recently. Masses of money helped put man on the Moon of course, but the Moon…

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  • Breaking Bad: the joy of chemistry

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    Andrew Orlowski

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    Here’s a show with the perfect profile to be a huge cult British hit – black humour, suspense, all the stuff we love. But what’s puzzling is how the British public broadcasters dropped the ball by failing to notice the show – particularly the BBC. …Read more at The Register… Read More

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  • BBC’s science: ‘Evangelical, shallow and sparse’

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    Andrew Orlowski

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    The BBC’s environmental coverage has come under fire from a former science correspondent. Award-winning author and journalist David Whitehouse says the corporation risks public ridicule – or worse – with what he calls “an evangelical, inconsistent climate change reporting and its narrow, shallow and sparse reporting on other scientific issues.” Whitehouse relates how he was…

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  • Junk science and booze tax – a study in spin

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    Andrew Orlowski

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    “Let’s find out what everybody is doing, and stop them doing it” – A P Herbert Putting the price of alcohol up to a minimum of 40p a unit would keep 41,000 people a year out of hospital, save the NHS £116m a year, and avoid 12,400 cases of unemployment, a report from Sheffield University…

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  • The Large Hadron Collider: Anton Wylie

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    Andrew Orlowski

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    The LHC comes at a crucial time for particle or quantum physics. In particular, it comes at a crucial time for the dominant theory, known as the Standard Model. The Standard Model has been to modern particle physics rather what the periodic table was to 19th century chemistry. It served both to organise the known…

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