Tom Whipple

Steve’s favourite bit of the story was a quote his brother had come up with: “I saw one man having sex with three women on the washing machine. At about 2am I went into one of the bedrooms and saw two boys having sex.” When asked if he took part, he replied: “We all got involved.”

BBC Radio 4 - BBC Inside Science, What’s in the wording of the COP 30 negotiations? As COP 30 draws to close in Brazil, we speak to a former negotiator.

Really lovely to be back on BBC Inside Science again today talking about record breaking and climate change (as well as moss surviving in space) with @whippletom.bsky.social and @carolinesteel.bsky.social

Listen here:

Have done! (the experts, not the clay).

They have quite the OOO

I've cleared a space in my shed, and found a hedgehog. I presume its hibernating, but it doesn't have much of a nest. What should I do?

The return of Andrew Wakefield - the anti-vax 'supervillain' To many of those gathered at this elegant stately home in Wiltshire, just one word describes the man they have come to see.

He’s back. Important to remind everyone about his original misdemeanours - good for the Mail for running such an in depth piece
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article...

BREAKING:

CofE bishops won't give their green light for 'standalone' blessing services for gay couples, or for gay priests to have civil same-sex marriages, @thetimes.com understands

Will say both would need formal rewrite of church law

Trial of blessing ceremonies can't go ahead

Is this response real? Imposters are putting health studies at risk Automated bots and people lying about their conditions risk skewing the results of medical research, Oxford academics have warned

🚨 Imposter alert 🚨

Studies into everything from cancer and HIV being plagued by "fraudulent" participants

Includes people pretending to have the diseases

It's undermining the reliability of trials and potentially harming patients

Stark warning here:
www.thetimes.com/uk/science/a...

98%! Only 2 in every 100 installations don’t need corrective action. Read it and weep

Bill Bryson: Things are bad in Britain. But America is worse The American author and honorary Brit on the state of the world, updating his bestseller A Short History of Nearly Everything, and why it’s his last interview

“There are so many things in Britain that have deteriorated. But nothing like what’s happened to my own country. And that’s not just Trump. When I go back to Iowa and just see what’s been lost... it would be hard for me to be positive" | 🗣️ Bill Bryson

Royal Albert Hall braces for sumo’s big British comeback The Grand Sumo Tournament is returning to the UK for the first time since 1991. Will it finally break the Japanese sport in Britain?

Sumo is coming to the Royal Albert Hall, and they've had to reinforce the backstage toilets to prepare

www.thetimes.com/article/2133...

Thank you!

Morning!

There is a good chance that this will be the most important economic fact in all of our lives.

I disagree on the headline, I think it's good and reasonable (I don't write them) and we need to be able to presume people read the article. But I'm happy to respect your view. Maybe try us again, you could just possibly be surprised!

Anyway, have a good night.

It would be different if *anyone*was using this to claim that paracetamol caused autism. They aren't, that I can find. But even writing everything for that - thinking at every stage, "can this be willfully misunderstood" - would be a recipe for madness that would debase us all.

I want to keep writing these articles, because the world is a complex and uncertain place. But every time this happens it becomes harder.

The only reason anyone is interpreting this headline this way is because somoene deliberately screenshotted it, without context, and told people to be outraged. It is an article attempting to explain why it can be correct to say that paracetamol correlates with autism, but doesn't cause it.

Honestly though - this ridiculous performative outrage - either we notice it, and change, and everything gets stupider. Or we don't, and you get this kind of stupidity. The only people interpreting it this way are people who want to signal their superiority. It kills nuance and actual cleverness.

The Times readership consists, by definition, of people who read its articles. In this case one about statistical confounding.

And it certainly, emphatically, doesn't write to be screenshotted.

No they didn't. The Times isn't interested in clicks, it's a subscriber paper. It writes for people to read it.

So you amplified a headline without the context that would have explained it, that *you* felt was a public health concern on its own, in order to combat a public health concern. I dunno, that's a bit weird.

In all honesty, yes. Maybe we are naive. We write for people to read us. I write 300-odd articles a year. Thinking every time, "if someone maliciously and deliberately removed context on this, how would it look" would drive us mad and be futile. Taking notice of this makes the world stupider

Honestly, I haven't seen them doing that. Maybe they have? But I've only seen the reverse.

Is there something you disagree with in the analysis?

IT IS AN ARTICLE ABOUT STATISTICAL CONFOUNDING. IF YOU HAVEN'T READ IT, MAYBE DON'T COMMENT ON IT. IF YOU THINK THE (PERFECTLY REASONABLE) HEADLINE MIGHT BE A PROBLEM, DON'T TWEET IT SHORN OF CONTEXT AND THEREBY MAKE IT A PROBLEM.

It's amazing this stuff. Presumably the people who screenshot know that they are wilfully misleading people, but they do it anyway for lovely clout.

The world is indeed complex, and the fact that (probably) statistical confounding can produce spurious correlations is also worthy of attention.

Honestly, it's a perfectly reasonable headline about an article that explains the concept of statistical confounding and why it can lead to correlations that aren't causations.

If people are screenshotting it and implying otherwise than it's them who are wilfully endangering public health....

Thank you!

(I actually think I misunderstood you - I thought you meant pay by article. Pay by edition is a bit different)