deadpopstar.com

This website has been running for five years this month. Over this time traffic has steadily grown from a few hundred to several thousand visits a month. From my interpretation, this reflects the growth of a small, but regular, group of readers. I don’t receive many comments, which doesn’t particularly bother me, but I am a little curious as to who you enigmatic lot are.

I therefore invite you to provide a little feedback, by comment, or email, if you prefer. Who are you, what you’re interested in, those sorts of things. It’s not all idle curiosity either; a better understanding of my audience will allow me to tailor my posts accordingly.

Lim, M.S.C. et al. (2005) The case of the disappearing teaspoons: longitudinal cohort study of the displacement of teaspoons in an Australian research institute. BMJ, 331 (7531): 1498.

In January 2004 the authors found their tearoom bereft of teaspoons. Although a flunky (MSCL) was rapidly dispatched to purchase a new batch, these replacements in turn disappeared within a few months. Exasperated by our consequent inability to stir in our sugar and to accurately dispense instant coffee, we decided to respond in time honoured epidemiologists’ fashion and measure the phenomenon.

Whilst the authors were able to characterise the extent of teaspoon shrinkage, their explanations remained speculative. I reckon if I can implement satellite teaspoon tracking, I’ll get a paper published in the British Medical Journal by years end…

The Age reports that several Australian university student associations are lobbying against the use of TurnItIn.com, an anti-plagiarism database, on the grounds that it violates the intellectual property rights of students. I’m inclined to agree. While it could be argued that Google Books similarly utilises others IP for profit, they are indexing published works, and offer an opt-out to authors.

Elisabeth Tarica (Feb, 2007) The Age, Education Section.

Liz Thompson, a students’ rights officer at RMIT Student Union, says Turnitin is taking millions of previously submitted papers - where the copyright resides with the student author - and using them to make money without consent.

Any work that is submitted to Turnitin automatically becomes part of the company’s database.

“When people sign online for enrolment there’s a little bit down the bottom that says you agree to have your work transmitted for the purposes of detecting plagiarism. If you don’t sign on for that, you can’t enrol. That is taken by RMIT as permission for Turnitin, who then use it to make a whole lot of profit because their pitch is that they have the hugest database,” Ms Thompson says.

Unfortunately, the complete aforementioned article is only available by subscription/purchase.

Also See: TLF: TurnItIn and Google Book Search: the same thing?

There was a lovely demonstration of shifty scientific reporting last month with multiple newspapers reporting “Drought may be ending - sunspots reveal”…

The worst drought in a century could end this year, according to a scientist who has linked the cycle of sunspots and the “looping” of the sun’s magnetic field to Australia’s weather patterns.( The Age, Courier Mail, SMH, nineMSN…)

Exactly one scientist was quoted in this article, Associate Professor Robert Baker, of the University of New England. The reports, originating from an AAP wire, did not bother to query any other climate scientists, nor check for the existence of any supporting peer-reviewed publications.

This came back to bite only two days later…

[...] Bureau of Meteorology climate scientist Dr Blair Trewin dismisses Prof Baker’s theory.

He says a few weeks ago, Australia’s top peer-reviewed meteorological publication Australian Meteorological Magazine rejected a paper on Prof Baker’s research.

“That was essentially on the grounds that the statistical analysis used in the paper was significantly flawed,” said Dr Trewin, who edits the publication. (ABC Online and others)

This second story, though pleasing, was by no means a universally published retraction - flaws in statistical analyses are seemingly far too dull for widespread appeal. It’s likely to be the first story, however, that certain polemists use to subvert assertions of human influence over global climate.