Leading UK investor spends £11.6m for extra slice of Imperial College London offshoot that funds and licenses scientific researchNeil Woodford, one of Britain’s top investors, has spent £11.6m to take his stake to more than 20% in Imperial Innovations, an offshoot of Imperial College London that funds and licenses scientific research.Imperial Innovations sold shares to investors in February to raise £100m to support existing investments. Woodford’s fund has received approval from the Financial Conduct Authority to own 20% or more of the shares as agreed at the time of the placing, Imperial Innovations said. Woodford Investment Management’s stake will rise to 21% from 19.9%. Continue reading...

Over-the-counter tests have made it easy to screen yourself for serious illnesses such as cancer and diabetes. But there are no cures for most hereditary conditionsIt’s like being told you’re going to be involved in a car crash, but you don’t know when it will hit. You know it is going to happen but you can’t do anything about it,” says Amy Burton. The 24-year-old from Kent was diagnosed with pre-type 1 diabetes in 2014 after she tested positive for auto-immune antibodies associated with the condition in a medical trial.Burton had initially signed up as her younger sister has lived with type 1 diabetes for the past six years and she thought the experience would make an interesting blog post. She wasn’t expecting to find out that, within the next five to 15 years she, too, would have the condition: “I did sob when I heard,” she says. Continue reading...

High above Mars and Saturn in the increasingly twilit night sky is a fiery star that could blow at any timeThe Sun is nearing its most northerly point at the solstice on the 20th, meaning that Britain’s nights are brief and becoming increasingly twilit if we, too, venture northwards. We do have three bright planets, though – Jupiter, which sinks towards our W horizon during the first half of the night, and Mars and Saturn which are the two brightest objects low in the S as it does so.High above Mars and Saturn is the semicircle of stars that make up Corona Borealis, the Northern Crown. It is here that a remarkable star may be preparing to brighten dramatically to justify its reputation as the Blaze Star. Continue reading...

I enjoyed Simon Jenkins’ characteristically spirited call to stop elevating scientists to godly heights; and who could disagree that disputes should be “open so that fads, conventions and vested interests can be challenged” (Scientists aren’t gods, 9 June)?Related: Scientists aren’t gods. They deserve the same scrutiny as anyone else | Simon Jenkins Continue reading...

Forget the Turner prize. This is art that reflects the true grandeur of the universe – it is the Sistine Chapel of the scientific ageIt’s all about scale. A black dot is moving across the face of a blazing giant. The shadow of the planet looks tiny, compared with the vast flaming orb of the sun embracing it, whose flares and vortices of unimaginable heat shudder the imagination. What a brilliant way to convey the size and power of the star we orbit. But these images of the transit of Mercury on 9 May are not artist’s impressions. They’re real.Many people watched the transit from Earth, but no earthbound telescope could match the view available to Nasa’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), an unmanned spacecraft launched in 2010, the five-year mission of which is to observe the sun in unprecedented detail. Its spectacular images of the transit held the front pages of newspapers, but they were merely the latest in a series of revelatory views of our star that the spacecraft has beamed back to Earth. Images from the SDO have once again been making headlines – they show in eerie ultraviolet a vast, black void that has opened in the sun’s glowing surface. Continue reading...

The award-winning children’s author on partying with dryads and goblins, Victorian crime and watching the transit of MercuryBorn in Brighton in 1973, children’s author Frances Hardinge grew up in an isolated house in the village of Penshurst, Kent, where her parents worked in book-selling. She studied English at Oxford University, where she founded a writers’ workshop, and afterwards won a short story competition. She wrote her first novel, Fly By Night, while working as a technical author for a software company; it was published in 2005 and won the Branford Boase award. Her seventh novel, The Lie Tree, about a 14-year-old girl who attempts to uncover the truth behind her father’s mysterious death, won the 2015 Costa Book award, the first children’s book to do so since Philip Pullman’s The Amber Spyglass in 2001. Continue reading...

Researchers have had promising results treating tumours with everyday medicines. So why aren’t the big pharma companies investing in trials?Helen Hewitt lost her mother, her younger brother and her baby son to cancer. Having successfully overcome breast cancer herself, she is currently battling several tumours in her lungs, and – thanks to an inherited mutation in her DNA – is at high risk of developing other cancers as well. Yet Helen, 41, is pioneering an unfamiliar approach against this all too familiar foe. Alongside conventional chemotherapy, surgery, and radiotherapy, she is taking a cocktail of experimental yet well-known medicines. Some of them might even be in your bathroom cabinet.One is the diabetes drug metformin, which besides making healthy cells more sensitive to the effects of the hormone insulin may also help to starve sugar-hungry cancer cells. The cholesterol-lowering statin and the antibiotic she’s been prescribed have the added benefit of dampening inflammation – a process cancer cells use to help them grow. Then there’s mebendazole, a common treatment for threadworm, which may also inhibit the growth of the blood vessels to her tumours. Continue reading...

It turns out that relationship satisfaction doesn’t have much to do with how funny or romantic you are…There is one personality trait that consistently predicts relationship satisfaction, and it can be measured with a few simple questions. On a scale of 1 (not at all) to 5 (very much), to what extent do you…

12 June is Hug a Climate Scientist Day. We’ll be celebrating by hugging lots of scientists (or a nearby friends or pets) and sharing the photos hereAre you prepared and ready for Hug a Climate Scientist Day (Week)?12 June is International Hug a Climate Scientist Day (this year incorporating Climate Scientist Awareness Week)!!Share your photos of hugging a scientist (or a nearby friend or pet). If you are hosting a morning tea, share photos and tell us how it went. We’ll feature a selection of them on the site. Continue reading...

The profound, transformative implications of new gene editing techniques require open, public debateThe 90s sci-fi film Gattaca envisaged a world where children conceived through genetic manipulation took all the professional jobs, while those conceived naturally did the menial ones. The 2005 movie, The Island, imagined one in which those who could afford it sponsored a clone that could be harvested for spare body parts if and when the need arose.People have been prophesying nightmarish scenarios about genetic technologies ever since the publication of Aldous Huxley’s dystopic Brave New World. It’s now 20 years since Dolly the Sheep was cloned and 13 years since the first human genome was sequenced. The fact that none of these scenarios has yet come to pass could prompt the conclusion that they were overhyped. Continue reading...

Genetic diseases may soon be a thing of the past thanks to nanotechnology, which employs tiny particles to manipulate cells and change our DNAHere’s how cancer treatment often runs today: a patient develops an aggressive tumor. A surgeon operates to remove the tumor, but a few cancer cells remain, hiding in the body. Chemotherapy is administered, weakening both patient and cancer cells. But the cancer does not die; it comes back and eventually kills the patient.Related: Gene-trification? Inside the Brooklyn lab where you can splice your own DNA Continue reading...

Archaeologists in Cambodia have discovered numerous medieval cities in the Angkor region of Cambodia. Using the latest LiDAR technology, which allows archaeologist to map the topography of an area, underneath forest floors, teams found cities ranging from 900 to 1,400 years old. Some of the settlements found rival the size of Cambodia’s capital Phnom Penh. The findings are expected to challenge theories on the development o the Khmer Empire in the 15th century Continue reading...

Exclusive: Laser technology reveals cities concealed under the earth which would have made up the world’s largest empire in 12th century

British astronaut is companion of order of St Michael and St George and dedicates it to team who make his mission possibleNo one has previously been in space when they were given an award by the Queen. In order to be certain Tim Peake would accept his honour, Sir Simon McDonald, permanent under-secretary at the Foreign Office, had to ask the European Space Agency to set up a special phone line to the International Space Station, where Peake has been stationed since December.The astronaut is made a CMG, or companion of the order of St Michael and St George. The award, a diplomatic honour instituted in the wake of the Napoleonic wars, is given on the recommendation of the Foreign Office to those who have given distinguished service overseas – or, on this occasion, in space. Continue reading...

Scientists describe ‘cultural loss of unprecedented magnitude’ as global atlas reveals extent of light pollution in the world’s skiesIt has inspired astronomers, artists, musicians and poets but the Milky Way could become a distant memory for much of humanity, a new global atlas of light pollution suggests.The study reveals that 60% of Europeans and almost 80% of North Americans cannot see the glowing band of our galaxy because of the effects of artificial lighting, while it is imperceptible to the entire populations of Singapore, Kuwait and Malta. Continue reading...

A team of scientists at the National Centers for Environmental Information in Boulder, Colorado have produced a digital atlas of the Earth that shows the levels of light pollution. The atlas makes use of low-light imaging now available from the NOAA/NASA Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership satellite, calibrated by thousands of ground observations. Light pollution is so severe in some parts of the world that a third of human beings cannot see the Milky Way Continue reading...

Jenkins’ broadsides against scientists have become repetitive. It’s time for him to get serious about science, and we scientists can help. I’ll even buy him a pintGoodness, is it that time of the year again already? Simon Jenkins is having another go at scientists. This time we are being denounced for claiming to be gods. A few years ago he had us down as the “new clerisy” so I guess we should be grateful for the promotion.As a scientist, I’ve struggled to formulate an effective response to his pieces. I’ve tried answering back. I’ve tried ridicule. Last time, I had a go at reasoned argument and even acknowledged that he might have a point on one or two issues. Continue reading...

Welcome to the first weekly roundup of the best of the Guardian’s science coverage. And what a week it’s been. Without question, the biggest story of the week has been the news that scientists in California trying to grow human organs inside pigs have successfully created part-human, part-pig embryos. Chimeras aside, we’ve also had the shocking news that air pollution is now a major contributor to stroke worldwide, and excitement as researchers discover the fossil remains of what appear to be the ancestors of the Flores ‘hobbits’. Noel Edmonds also distracted the internet with claims that an electronic box could “tackle cancer”. Science says no. Continue reading...

The most famous of Roman rulers was not erratic to begin with, but only became so once he was seduced by spectacle. Trump is not too different from himDonald Trump has been diagnosed in the media over and over again, called everything from a malignant narcissist to a pervert. While many would concur that he is simply personality disordered of some variety or another, maybe, some wonder, he could even be psychotic, paranoid – a real madman deep down.Diagnosing public figures that one has not conducted a “proper examination of” is forbidden by the American Psychiatric Association in what they call “The Goldwater Rule” – as is releasing the results of that examination without proper authorization. But that rule is often ignored when it comes to Donald Trump. Continue reading...

The world is covered in more than 40m miles of road networks. What if this network could act like solar panels, and what if we could power our vehicles with the energy generated by this? In 2009, these questions formed the beginning of a vision for the future for Sten De Wit at the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research in Delft, whose ideas are being put into practice with SolaRoad Continue reading...

If you or a family member have been given drugs as part of your advanced cancer treatment, or you’re a clinician who prescribes them, we’d like to hear from you

Psychopathic traits are not reserved for prisons or psychiatric hospitals - we’re all somewhere on the spectrumThere is a questionnaire, the Self-Report Psychopathy Scale, which assesses psychopathic traits in the general population. There are twenty-nine statements, and the respondent indicates the extent to which each statement applies to them, from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree”. Early in my PhD, a friend asked if he could see the questionnaire. He read out one of the items: ‘I sometimes tell people what they want to hear.’ He looked concerned. ‘But I would agree with that – I do that sometimes,’ he said. ‘Does that make me a psychopath?’ I reassured him no, it did not - only someone who scored very highly on most of the statements might meet criteria for what we think of as a “psychopath”. But he had hit on something important: very few people score zero on the questionnaire.Related: Can an online quiz spot a psychopath? Continue reading...

12 June is Hug a Climate Scientist Day. We’ll be celebrating all week with a special morning tea on Tuesday 14 June. Please abide by the following rules

How does our genetic makeup help or hinder our chances in life? And as our ability to unravel DNA becomes more powerful, what are the implications?Scientists are finding ways to alter the genetic makeup of children with harmful mutations such as cystic fibrosis and muscular dystrophy. Will we soon see more complex disorders such as cancers and heart disease being tackled in this way, by altering or replacing entire groups of genes?To tackle these questions and more, Ian Sample is joined in the studio by Siddharta Mukherjee, whose new book spans the history of genetics, from Gregor Mendl’s 19th century experiments to modern gene-editing techniques.

10 June 1921: A Guardian writer reflects on the significance of the honour for both Albert Einstein and Manchester UniversityIn accepting the degree of Doctor of Science conferred on him by the University of Manchester yesterday, Professor ALBERT EINSTEIN conferred a signal honour on Manchester and its University. The compliment was no vain one on either side, for the University of Manchester claims high distinction in the scientific field, and Professor EINSTEIN’S visit is in itself a very distinct recognition of the University as a home of science.EINSTEIN himself has become, with amazing rapidity, the hero not only of the scientist and the scholar, but also of the populace. The reason is not hard to seek. The man in the street, a traveller between life and death, is compact of all elements, and is neither wholly devoid of science nor of poetry. He may have few ideas in either, but he probably cherishes what he has, and whatever touches them nearly is of moment to him. Continue reading...

Government agencies work on solution to cover regulatory gap governing space activities by private companiesUS government agencies are working on temporary rules to allow a private company to land a spacecraft on the moon next year, while Congress weighs a more permanent legal framework to govern future commercial missions to the moon, Mars and other destinations beyond Earth’s orbit, officials said.Plans by private companies to land spacecraft on the moon or launch them out of Earth’s orbit face legal obstacles because the US has not put in place regulations to govern space activities, said industry and government officials. Continue reading...

High-risk transplant treatment which ‘reboots immune system’ allows some with multiple sclerosis to recover mobilityA radical and risky stem cell therapy has been shown to halt and even reverse some of the symptoms of those worst affected by multiple sclerosis, a disease that in many people has proved untreatable.Doctors in Canada conducted an experimental stem cell transplant with 24 patients who were expected to be confined to a wheelchair within 10 years. After receiving the treatment most of the patients regained control of their lives, becoming able to walk, play sport and drive. Continue reading...

After 186 days in orbit, British astronaut Tim Peake will make the descent to Kazakhstan where he will be trained to live with gravity once moreNext week, British astronaut Tim Peake will conclude his 186-day mission to the International Space Station (ISS). On Saturday 18 June he will enter the Soyuz TMA-19M capsule docked at the ISS and return to Earth.Peake will make the descent to Kazakhstan alongside fellow crew members Yuri Malenchenko and Tim Kopra. The journey will take a few hours and touchdown is scheduled at 10:12 BST. Continue reading...

Victorian celebrity’s remains should be returned to home town of Leicester, says descendant of one of his managersJoseph Merrick, who was better known as the “Elephant Man” in the late 1800s, should be given a Christian burial in his home town of Leicester, campaigners have said.His remains are stored in a glass case in a private room at Queen Mary, University of London, and can be viewed by medical students and professionals by appointment. Continue reading...

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 star says she wants to move away from acting and write for Vice to better explore her passion for ‘alternative history’Megan Fox has spoken about her wish to move away from acting to help expose the planet’s “deep mysteries”.Related: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 becomes latest sequel to underperform at US box office Continue reading...

A study showing psychotherapists are less likely to offer appointments to working-class people comes as researchers say poor communities and communities of colour grapple with inordinate levels of traumaWhen Terrell Jermaine Starr, a high-profile 35-year-old political reporter, entered therapy for the first time in 2013 after having faced months of suicidal ideation and depression, he says he quickly realised that his mental ordeal came in part from unresolved childhood trauma.Starr grew up in Detroit, at a time when the city was already topping national charts for unemployment, infant mortality and crime. His working mother was absent, and he had not yet met his father. Continue reading...

Crisps! Everyone has their favourites, from salt and vinegar to roast chicken, prawn cocktail to cheese and onion. But how much are our preferences for those allegedly delicious flavours influenced by clever packaging and suggestive naming? We tested this by asking people to sit a blindfolded taste test. Identifying one crisp flavour from another sounds easy, right? Continue reading...

Scientists hope large-scale maps will offer new insight into effects of warming and pollution as previous studies have almost always been done up close in the waterCoral reefs have almost always been studied up close, by scientists in the water looking at small portions of larger reefs to gather data and knowledge about the larger ecosystems. But Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory is taking a step back and getting a wider view, from about 23,000 ft above.Nasa and top scientists from around the world are launching a three-year campaign on Thursday to gather new data on coral reefs like never before. Continue reading...

Rolling sand dunes of Arabia, thinning glaciers of Greenland and wildfires of Fort McMurray in Canada were among the images captured by European Space Agency and Nasa satellites last monthNasa astronaut Jeff Williams captured this image of the ancient Potidea canal in Greece from the International Space Station. For 2,000 years this canal has connected the Thermaikos and Toronaios Gulfs. Williams posted the photograph on Twitter, saying: ‘Coastal currents and erosion over 2,000 years appear to have displaced the two sides of this isthmus, which may explain the coastline’s misalignment.’ Continue reading...

Jim Thomas: ‘Gene drives’ seem to be the ultimate high-leverage technology. Yesterday’s report from the US National Academies begun the job of describing what is at stake, but it missed some important questions.

Fifty years ago, a priest started searching for the ‘hobbits’ of the Indonesian island. Now a research team has finally found themArchaeological research on Flores began in 1950 by Father Theodor Verhoeven, a Dutch Jesuit priest who had been stationed on the island since 1948 as a missionary at the local Catholic seminary. Having been trained as a classicist and with a keen interest in archaeology, he used his spare time to explore the many caves on the island. In 1956, his attention was drawn to the So’a Basin, a hot and dry area in the central part of the island, by the discovery of a fossilized tusk from the ancient elephant Stegodon near the abandoned village of Ola Bula. Intrigued, Verhoeven undertook excavations at the nearby sites, Mata Menge, Bo’a Leza and Lembah Menge, where he unearthed more Stegodon remains with stone artifacts in close association.Now, finding stone tools next to a fossil elephant is not unusual. Scientists had been finding stone tools next to the bones of extinct megafauna all across Europe, Africa and North America. But Flores was different. Located in eastern Indonesia, it is part of Wallacea, the group of islands in between the Australian and Asian continental shelves. Whereas other Indonesian islands, such as Java and Borneo, sit comfortably on the Sunda continental shelf, most Wallacean islands arose from the ocean floor and are surrounded by deep sea straits. During glacial periods, when sea levels dropped, the Sunda shelf would become exposed, and dry land would connect Sumatra, Java and Borneo to mainland Asia. Yet anything beyond the eastern edge of the continental shelf remained surrounded by water at all times. Continue reading...

Only Prozac found to show measurable benefit, though authors caution their findings are not comprehensive due to a lack of available unbiased dataMost available antidepressants do not help children and teenagers with serious mental health problems and some may be unsafe, experts have warned.

Discovery that there are more categories of disease than previously thought could aid diagnosis and lead to new treatmentsThe blood cancer known as acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) is not one disease but at least 11 different types, scientists have concluded by studying the genes that cause the condition.Scientists say the discovery could aid diagnosis and lead to new treatments geared towards tackling the different types of the disease. Continue reading...

The observation, made accidentally by astronomers in Chile, provides the first direct evidence for the theory that black holes feed on clouds of gasAstronomers in Chile have caught the first-ever glimpse of a “supermassive” black hole preparing to gorge itself on gas clouds about a billion light years from Earth.Using the ALMA telescope in the Atacama desert, the international team spotted three clouds streaming towards a black hole at speeds of up to 800,000 miles (1.3m km) per hour. Continue reading...

Experts preaching the ‘truth’ on healthy eating or cancer cures are not immune to the murky worlds of politics and commerceI am not obese or dying of cancer. Nor am I a hypochondriac. But not a day passes without my absorbing news of imminent salvation or disaster from some branch of science. And whereas the panjandrums of big science used to maintain an aura of lofty objectivity as they demand our attention and cash, they now seem all over the shop, fighting like rats in a sack.Take obesity. I am reeling from last month’s BBC knuckle fight between the dietician Aseem Malhotra and the government obesity tsar, Susan Jebb, over whether fat makes you fat. As they hurled accusations of deceit and corruption back and forth, there seemed only one fact. Whatever we had been told on this subject before no longer applied. I was left with a nasty sense that the phrase “the science” should now read “the money”. The following week a television programme advised me to avoid “healthy breakfasts” and tuck into bacon and eggs instead. I buried my head in a pillow. Continue reading...

Report by US committee warns it is too early to rely on genetic engineering technology that could eventually be used to tackle multiple diseasesThe US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine have warned that it is too early to roll out a controversial technology that could help tackle malaria and other mosquito-born diseases, but backs further research.Scientists say the approach, known as gene drive, could be used to solve a host of problems, from controlling agricultural pests to eliminating invasive species and tackling diseases such Zika, dengue and malaria.

Conservationists raise serious questions about the widespread incineration of ivory stockpiles confiscated from poachersAt the end of April, Kenya incinerated 105 tonnes of confiscated elephant ivory, aiming to send a clear signal to the poachers and public alike: killing elephants for their tusks and buying ivory-based products is simply not acceptable.But do such spectacles really help conserve elephants? Or could they, in fact, be counterproductive? Continue reading...

International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry says names will pay tribute to Japan, Moscow, Tennessee and a Russian scientistThere will soon be four new names on the periodic table after scientists decided to use recently discovered elements to pay tribute to Japan, Moscow, Tennessee and a Russian scientist.The names moscovium, nihonium, tennessine and oganesson were recommended on Wednesday by an international scientific group. Continue reading...

Studies on embryos made with extra DNA showed majority were indistinguishable from standard IVF embryosDoctors are a step closer to creating babies with DNA from three people after research on healthy embryos found the procedure was likely to produce normal pregnancies.Studies on embryos made with extra DNA showed that the majority were indistinguishable from standard IVF embryos, although further tests hinted that the procedure still carried risks.

Approximately 700,000-year-old fossils from Indonesian island of Flores reveal long history of enigmatic ‘hobbits’It was August 2003 and we were at the Hotel Sindha in Ruteng on the Indonesian island of Flores. We were sitting on the verandah drinking tea and passing around a strange tooth that had just been unearthed from nearby Liang Bua cave. It was clearly human in origin, but unlike the tooth of any person living or dead. We had no idea that this fossil was from a creature that would soon rewrite our understanding of human evolution.A few weeks later, on the 2nd of September 2003, the dig at Liang Bua uncovered the partial skeleton of a tiny, small-brained human adult. Now it was clear where the mystery tooth had come from. That fossil had been unusual, but the remains of this individual were truly extraordinary. A year later, the world was introduced to a previously undiscovered human species: Homo floresiensis, the Flores ‘hobbit’. Continue reading...

Researchers find what appears to be predecessors of tiny humans whose bones were first unearthed on Indonesian island in 2004More than a decade ago, researchers in a limestone cave on the Indonesian island of Flores unearthed the bones of an ancient race of tiny humans. Now, in sandstone laid down by a stream 700,000 years ago, they have found what appear to be the creatures’ ancestors.The new fossils are not extensive. A partial lower jaw and six teeth, belonging to at least one adult and two children, are all researchers have. But the importance of the remains outweighs their number. They suggest that dwarf humans roamed the island - hunting pigmy elephants and fending off komodo dragons - for more than half a million years. Continue reading...

The number of people trying to register to vote in the EU referendum, moments before the deadline, caused the site to crash. Why do some of us procrastinate – and can it ever be helpful?It’s been three years coming, yet on Tuesday night, thousands of us had spent too long chillin and chattin to get registerin for #votin; the government’s online voter registration site for the EU referendum crashed as midnight approached, leaving many unsure whether they would have a say on 23 June.Like a kindly but not disinterested teacher in need of good results, David Cameron has extended the deadline, allowing the mainly youthful (and, he might quietly hope, more EU-friendly) late surge to register. It’s safe to assume most of them were aware of the deadline but had just put things off. Continue reading...

After almost six months floating aboard the International Space Station and ten days before his scheduled to return to Earth, British astronaut Tim Peake says on Wednesday it will take several months to fully adjust to life back on earth. He also admits he missed the rain and comments on the EU Referendum Continue reading...

One of the world’s foremost theoretical physicistsSir Tom Kibble, who has died aged 83, was one of the world’s foremost theoretical physicists and, with the Nobel laureate Peter Higgs, discoverer of the “Higgs-Kibble mechanism” for giving mass to the fundamental particles of the universe. Kibble’s specific contribution to this breakthrough, half a century ago, underpinned Nobel physics prizes on at least three occasions, although he never attained this singular honour himself. But he had a distinguished career in research that has applications to all scales of size and temperature: from the microscopic constituent particles that seed matter to the large-scale structure of the entire cosmos, and from near the absolute zero of temperature to the searing heat of the hot big-bang.He was born in Madras (now Chennai), India, the son of missionaries, Walter and Janet (nee Bannerman). In 1944, Tom went as a boarder to Melville college, Edinburgh. He entered Edinburgh University as an undergraduate in 1951, and remained there until his PhD in 1958. After a year at Caltech (the California Institute of Technology), as a Commonwealth fund fellow, in 1959 he joined the theoretical physics department at Imperial College London, newly formed under Abdus Salam. Five years later, Kibble would be at the centre of an annus mirabilis in the department. Continue reading...

Jerome Ravetz has been one of the UK’s foremost philosophers of science for more than 50 years. Here, he reflects on the troubles facing contemporary science. He argues that the roots of science’s crisis have been ignored for too long. Quality control has failed to keep pace with the growth of science.As noted already in the Guardian’s science pages, there is no lack of initiatives to tackle science’s crisis in all its aspects, from reproducibility to the abuse of metrics, to the problems of peer review. This gives good grounds for hope that the crisis will eventually be resolved, and that it will not become a general crisis of trust in science. Should that occur, and ‘science’ ceases to be a key cultural symbol of both truth and probity, along with material beneficence, then the consequences could be far-reaching. To that end, we should consider what lies behind the malpractices whose exposure has triggered the crisis over the last decade.It is clear that a combination of circumstances can go far to explain what has gone wrong. Systems of controls and rewards that had evolved under earlier conditions have in many ways become counterproductive, producing perverse incentives that become increasingly difficult for scientists to withstand. Our present problems can be explained partly by the transformation from the ‘little science’ of the past to the ‘big science’ or ‘industrialised science’ of the present. But this explanation raises a problem: if the corrupting pressures are the result of the structural conditions of contemporary science, can they be nullified in the absence of a significant change in those conditions? Continue reading...