A minor earthquake has occurred in my life today. Last week, I ordered a new MacBook Pro, and today it arrived. I am now doing something I thought I would never do: writing on a Mac, through choice rather than necessity.

Let me explain. I have long been in the class of people who sneer at Macs and their devoted followers. Don’t get me wrong, I agree that they are beautiful machines. I recognise the innovation of the Mac operating system. It’s a combination of the cultish aspect of Mac use (less a computer, more a lifestyle) and the fact that I got used to PCs first.

I still find it slightly amazing that most people I know in science have more than one computer.  I realise this may be related to the sort of work I now do, but I grew up, scientifically speaking, in a culture where a lab of 10 would share three machines, two of which were so elderly that opening a document would cause them to make grinding noises like some experimental dance track. Almost the first lab I worked in was virtually wholly equipped with pre windows IBMs. Every time I see the white text on blue background powerpoint template I think of the word processors I used. To italicise something involved a process infinitely more complicated than pointing and clicking. You couldn’t point and click. There was no mouse. If you wanted to know how something looked on the page, you had to print it. And many were the trees I wasted as I got to grips with the system for underlining, italics and bold type.  The only beautiful thing about it was the printer that produced my figures, which was so old school it actually drew them with a precise robotic ballet of pens, which you had to top up when they ran out.

In the airy central space, where the professors had their offices, was the first Apple machine I ever saw.  It was clearly from the future, like a Connecticut yankee in King Arthur’s court. A Cro-Magnon dropped in amid the neanderthals it was to supplant. I used it mainly once everyone had gone home, other than the occasional worker on C. elegans who had struggled back to tend to those tiny charges with a life cycle so inconvenient for students and postdocs. I used the Mac to play a game. I can’t remember what the game was but it involved a spaceship, as almost all of them did back then. You used the mouse to control it, and how counterintuitive that was, for all of two minutes. Then it was obvious. I admit that at that point I viewed the mouse as being rather like a sort of crap joystick. I also thought, hazily, that Apple might have something to do with the Beatles, who had for some reason begun making computers. I know, I was all of 19 years old and an ignoramus.

When I left the lab to return to the UK my boss gave me an old machine that the lab no longer needed. I glowed at the thought of bringing it home, firing it up, and tapping out my professional looking white on blue documents. Using the hard earned skills with the idiot software. Oh yes, this was going to be the start of the new Bill Hanage. I would use the computer to write up lecture notes, work on a novel, write plays.

In reality I spent the next year of university in a pub induced haze. I don’t think any liquid that did not contain either alcohol or caffeine passed my lips. I bought an expensive transformer to allow me to use my US computer in the UK, and never switched it on. In the computer labs at the university, new machines had appeared. They were sort of like the Apple in the US, but there were more of them. Instead of a single hopeful monster, platoons of PCs running Windows and Word had appeared and taken over the campus.

And I became a PC person. I gradually got to grips with the software, which even now feels more sensible than the Mac’s supposedly uberintuitivergonomic surround sound ponce fest. Over time, I also became adapted to the shortcuts. Now, when I try doing something on a Mac, I feel slightly disabled as the keys which I normally strike without thinking yield odd results, and I keep having to go back and correct things. On the other side, I could see people I liked and respected using Macs. They were evangelical about the benefits. I thought they were basically deluded.

And possibly I still do. What has changed?

Well, in the first place there’s the iPhone. No matter whether or not new touch screen interfaces are superior, the iPhone was so clearly better than anything else I had used to date that it has staked an early claim to my affections. That was a foot in the door. Then there was the peer pressure. Over the last two years, a whole cohort of people who used to join in with me slagging off Apple and its acolytes have converted. One of them bought a Mac to use, as he put it, “as the most expensive Windows machine I have ever owned”, and has now removed the partition and left Windows behind.

Finally, I bought a new PC desktop and laptop in the last year. Both of them supposedly top of the range. The laptop is great, once it starts. The desktop seems to be as slow as any of the PCs I used during my PhD. I suspect network issues, but none of the fixes have done anything. The above mentioned friend came into my office once as I was screaming at it (it was taking upward of 5 seconds to respond to clicks) and asked why I didn’t just buy a Mac.

So I bit the bullet, and here I am.

So far, so fast, so good.

It happens now and again in research, for a variety of reasons: the momentum just skitters to a halt. In my case, it’s because I’ve just finished one manuscript for publication and am about to embark on compiling data for the next. It will be a long, grueling and mostly unexciting affair of spreadsheets and bioinformatics, so I’d like to do a few fun projects on the side to keep me awake for the duration — physical projects, I mean, involving cells and tubes and real, wet biology.

But what to choose? There are so many avenues I might explore, so many genes I might dabble with…and in that grey area between contemplation and action, I feel mired in inactivity. When you know what you want to do, the hours in the lab melt away. But when you’re undecided, the second-hand drags away the moments, one tick at a time.

When it comes to willfully ignorant fuckwittery, the Daily Mail has a long and undistinguished record. But wednesday’s front page in the Daily Telegraph gave it a run for its money. Get this quote.

“The (Met Office) was accused of using a scientific model based on “probability” rather than fact to forecast the spread of the volcanic ash cloud that made Europe a no-fly zone and ruined the plans of more than 2.5 million travellers in and out of Britain.”

My more hip and net-savvy chums tell me the response to this is something like <facepalm>. Heaven forfend! A model based on probability!

Now my knowledge of vulcanology is based wholly on the brilliant “Volcano Adventure”, which while a thrilling read and including all manner of excitement is, let me be clear, a children’s book. Likewise I know little of aeroplanes other than that they have not been designed to allow anyone taller than a 7 year old to sit comfortably in economy.

But I do know something about models and probability. The Telegraph is here giving a particularly good example of the media’s contempt for statistics. It’s all in that line contrasting probability with fact, as if we should only base things on the latter. There’s a whole bookshelf of philosophy on when something should be considered a fact, but we don’t have time to deal with that.

Imagine you are crossing a busy road. You look around and see a car coming towards you. Do you know how fast the car is going? No, although you can guess. Do you know that if it hits you it will cause injury? Yes. However you intuitively estimate the probability that you can make it across the road safely.

Now in very informal terms, that is the same thing as the models we would use to assess the risk of flying. Only in the case of flights and volcanoes, it’s more complicated. Rather than just guessing (probably quite accurately) the speed of the car, we need to estimate the density of ash, and the effect it will have on the engines of aircraft. And we might want to err on the side of caution. But when it comes down to it, it’s the same thing. You use the best guess about the risk to say whether it is safe.

It is in fact very easy to see why, based on the facts, governments halted flights. Fact one: volcanic ash can damage aeroplane engines, and cause them to fall out of the sky. Fact two:  there has been volcanic ash in the sky over the UK. Does it follow from this that planes will fall out of the sky if they try to fly? Of course not. The sky is a big place, and we don’t necessarily know exactly whether the ash is. Meteorologists can help tell us where it is most likely to be, but that’s not a fact in the way the telegraph seems to be demanding.  In the absence of monitoring devices suspended all over the north west atlantic we have to estimate using some kind of model. And with that estimate comes probability.

Our friend Simon Jenkins has already weighed in with his considered and informed opinion that the ash based disruption is like swine flu.  And in today’s Guardian comment pages, Jenkins turns the Telegraph’s complaint around and carries on using it to beat the scientists. “The science offered absolutes rather than probabilities “. Talk about damned if you do and damned if you don’t.

However the most distressing thing about this is not the way an ignorant bunch of morons are stirring a story (think about it, that front page must have passed under the eyes of supposedly educated people). It’s the misuse of probability. Jenkins is concerned that a low probability is being treated as a high one, ie that it was always desperately unlikely that any plane would experience any untoward consequences. This however ignores uncertainty. If you are pretty sure that it is safe, but you think there might be a one in a thousand chance you are wrong, well you should pay attention to that. Just so you don’t think that I disagree with Jenkins about everything, I happen to think much of his analysis of the risk due to terrorism, and the abuse of civil liberties in response to it, is spot on.

The Telegraph meanwhile seems to think that if anything is expressed as a probability, then it can safely be ignored as not being a ‘fact’. This is the kind of ignorant garbage that condemns Darwinism as ‘just’ a theory, or exploits uncertainty about the rate and magnitude of climate change to justify political opinions which, in a remarkable coincidence, just happen to be exactly the same as those people would hold in the absence of any evidence about climate change at all. Both are the equivalent of stepping out into the road blindfolded.

We’re all enjoying the quiet skies over Britain as the Icelandic volcano continues to spew ash into our air space – no one in the lab had any pressing air travel, so we can afford to cloud-gaze. But we completely forgot that our scientific reagents often go to and fro by air…and just got a Fedex alert that there is a box of antibodies languishing at Stansted Airport.

The dry ice won’t last over the weekend. Thank goodness for immunoglobular stability.

A year or so ago I was discussing the Royal Institution’s (RI) multi-million pound refurbishment to incorporate (among other things) an expensive restaurant and bar. “Why did they go and do that?” wondered my friend, “there’s a perfectly good pub just round the corner.”

Typical scientist. Why do we need an expensive restaurant when a pub is available? We’re an unworldly lot. And generally speaking, don’t earn enough to eat out in Mayfair that often. So what on earth was the RI thinking? Now, famously, they are up to their eyeballs in debt, said refurbishment having run over budget, and facing a case from former director Baroness Greenfield (of whom more later) for unfair dismissal amid a sulphurous cloud of sexism.

Of course, the RI is not just for scientists. The RI Christmas lectures are a deservedly beloved institution. Even if I can’t recall who has delivered them for, jeez, decades, I still recall being bowled over by a certain Dawkins chap (1991) and before him, Colin Blakemore (1982). The way Blakemore held my attention is especially impressive considering that at the time I was far more interested in Battle of the Planets than almost anything else.  Both these were broadcast before I became a professional scientist, and probably had something to do with my becoming one eventually. The RI has always had a high profile among the public at large. Perhaps it was hoped that the bar and restaurant would benefit from the recent flowering of interest in science, which has led at least one national newspaper to run a feature on how science is cool (really?).

If so, it would have helped if the restaurant was any good. Instead it opened to the sort of reviews that you’d kill for. If, that is, you were running a competing restaurant next door which sold battered shit on a stick. After reading Jay Rayner’s review in the Observer, I think I’d have gone for the turd tempura. Ouch.

It’s not obvious that the refurbishment was necessarily going to be such a costly mistake. The RI and other organizations like it are rightly trying to shed the slightly musty image they’ve developed. It is a dreadful shame when the press you get talks about all the interesting things which you did in the past. But the RI’s attempts have been a costly catastrophe. If they wanted to see how it should have been done, the Dana Centre and the Wellcome Collection have both produced excellent modern spaces for engagement with science.

And now, having generously micturated 22 million quid up the wall on the refurbishment, the RI is seized by political strife. On Monday, a meeting forced by some RI members considered whether to remove the RI council, and possibly pave the way for the return of Greenfield, who was made redundant in January. Followed by a secret ballot, the council was left in place, the rebels having been comprehensively defeated.

Susan Greenfield is, as she admits herself, a divisive figure. She is quite right that women are appallingly underrepresented at the top of academia, and that sexism continues to distort scientific careers. However it is also true that in science, as in many fields, there are both men and women who through their skills in networking, their aggressive appetite for career advancement, and an almost supernatural imperviousness to criticism which would wither a weaker soul into submission, come to occupy positions out of all proportion to their talent or achievement. I do not mean to imply that this is the case with Susan Greenfield, I merely wish to point out that such people exist, and they are found among both genders.

Her views on computer games however (among other things), seem to directly contradict her statement that “I love the way that science is absolutely ruthless, saying ‘Where is the evidence, prove it’. It is impartial, or should be.” But heck, one person’s cognitive dissonance is another’s attempt to start a high profile national debate on which they can be a self-appointed authority.

The RI’s work in outreach is now probably more important than the actual science done there. Despite its storied history as a place where discoveries have been made and Nobel prizes won, it is time to move on. I wish them luck,  but devoutly hope they look before their next leap.

The campus is closed today for Easter term, though of course our building carries on uninterrupted. To cheer us up, we all found the following email in our inboxes from the Head of Department:

“Dear All,

You will be aware that in the last financial year our funds were exhausted before the end of the 12 month period and we issued instructions to prevent further spending on accounts until the new financial year. To ensure we get through the new accounting period without similar end of year restrictions we need to implement a savings plan now. In the coming weeks I will be issuing advise on strategies to rationalise our use of antibody reagents, etc. In the meantime, I want to start a policy of savings in the common room. With immediate effect tea bags are to be used at least twice. A stand will be placed in the sink area – when you have used a tea bag, please rinse it in clean water and attach to the stand (using one of the clips) to dry. When you next want tea, use the tea bags hanging on the stand first. When the tea bags are exhausted they can of course be discarded.

Compliance is mandatory – not only will this make more funds available for your next experiment, but it will also help with environmental problems in Sri Lanka, Darjeeling and other tea producing areas where soil erosion is a major issue.”

Unfortunately, my own cup of tea ended up all over my keyboard as a result, so now I’m worried about the poor Sri Lankans.

It was cold in lab meeting today.

Preternaturally cold.

Even though it was a chill, rainy afternoon in London, the institute’s air-conditioning was inexplicably blasting into the conference room. (When it’s in the height of summer, the heaters will invariably come on, but that’s another story.)

“We could start up the portable electric radiator,” one post-doc suggested.

“No,” said the boss. “It uses oil and takes about three hours to warm up.”

“I know,” said another, older and wiser post-doc. “We can just cover the vents.”

London’s finest scientific minds, hard at work.

It took three of us to work out how to get liquid out of this stupid bottle of lab disinfectant, which is plugged permanently with a purpose-built green plastic thing where you’d expect the opening to be. Instead, you have to allow the liquid to flow into the little side tunnel which dispenses only about a milliliter at a time, with the operator having to tip it all the way back and all the way forward again at a precise angle to reload it. At this rate, it took me five minutes to milk out 50 mL.

My question is, why? What crazy control-freak designer thought it would be a good idea not to allow users to pour exactly how much liquid they wanted to all in one go?

“I’ll make them do it in tiny aliquots – the more hurry they’re in, the more diabolic it will be! I’ll show them! I’ll show them aallllllll!”

In other news, in a real “who’s on first” moment later on this afternoon, one post-doc kept asking another, “Have we got heaps?”

“Heaps of what?”

“Heaps!”

“Heaps of heaps?”

After a few more rounds of this, it transpired that they were actually talking about HEPES buffer.

My boss, just now, introducing his graduating PhD student to the audience of his viva talk:

“And he had a very unusual career path into Biology. In addition to doing a Bsc in Physics and a Master’s in computer science, he spent a couple of years working for the Ministry of Defense. So not only does he look like he can kill you, but he actually can.”

Knock ’em dead, Michael.

Can you hear it? All around us, that tinny tiny tinkling is the sound of homeopathic hopes shattering into teeny pieces. It would take the proverbial heart of stone not to laugh. The question now, and it should be asked, is to what extent are homeopathic practitioners dishonest or merely deluded?

That might sound harsh, but it’s the pachyderm in the parlour. There was a hint of it in the evidence check held by the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee, when Paul Bennett, superintendent pharmacist at Boots the chemist, admitted that the chain stocked homeopathic medicines because there was a market for them. “It’s about consumer choice for us”. Sod evidence of efficacy, proof of profit is what matters.

As Edzard Ernst has pointed out far better than I could, the essentially fraudulent nature of homeopathy is fully compatible with people going to a homeopath and feeling better. Homeopathy is centred around the ‘empathic encounter’ where the homeopath sits with the patient and considers their problems ‘holistically’ (a typical session with a homeopath will last much longer than a GP consultation. The reasons, if you think about it, are obvious). This is an obvious source of a strong placebo effect. Placebo is stunningly powerful. Daniel Moerman’s brilliant book “Meaning, Medicine and the ‘Placebo Effect” documents its extraordinary impact on of all sorts of illnesses. And one of the things which can influence its potential is whether the practitioner has drunk the same Kool-Aid (in homeopathic concentrations or not) as the patient. The more you believe something is going to work, the more likely you are to see an effect. This is one of the reasons why double blind trials are so bloody important. It also may explain why drugs with newer brand names tend to outperform their older competitors (even when the chemical content is exactly the same, as several trials have shown). People expect them to work more. Truly, we ignore the placebo at our peril.

But that is not to say that makes it OK for people to start pushing it at patients. Any placebo effect is in addition to the pharmacological properties of a drug. So why not have both. Furthermore, it is plainly unethical to lie to people about the active ingredients in the stuff they are taking.

And it’s not just placebo. People with the sort of self limiting illnesses which are popular with homeopaths tend to get better anyway, a phenomenon known as regression to the mean. This does suggest one possible use for homeopathy. Otitis media causes misery for parents and children. And it is the cause of a large number of totally unnecessary antibiotic prescriptions, because in the vast majority of cases it resolves in a short period of time without any intervention. So why not license homeopathic remedies for otitis? Pushy parents demand a pill for little Peter or Penny who’s screaming and clutching his/her ear – just give them a ‘powerful’ homeopathic remedy made of, I know, water. It would be at least as effective, and cheap. I know it’s unethical but you’ve got to think outside the box.

That last bit was not serious by the way.

In the main, I would guess that homeopaths fit into the deluded category, at least partially because they will be more effective the more they believe in their own medicine. If they want to persuade gullible people to part with their money they are welcome. But I am not gullible, and so like many I have long objected to my taxes being used to fund this parasitic and ignorant industry on the NHS. Hopefully, the conclusions of the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee will now bring an end to this shameful practice.