Impromptu Simon Jenkins spoof rallies the defenders of science

Posted on 28/06/2010 by Jon Butterworth

Some spoofs of Simon Jenkins following on from this.

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A Mammoth of Research

Posted on 25/06/2010 by Jon Butterworth

You know, there’s so much science on TV and in the papers these days.

I mean, I share in the glory of science every bit as much as people who actually work at it. I certainly know much more than they do, after all, I used to edit the London Evening Standard. But all you people who think science is interesting, fun and useful; well, yes. But, you know, it costs money. Money that the BBC could be spending on other things!

I mean, instead of a “mammoth of research” behind St. Pancras, with all those arrogant scientists making smells and stuff, we could build a big circular tent and fill it with crap. Though I wouldn’t let that Brian Cox play there this time. “Things can only get better” – I don’t know! You’d think he owns the solar system, whatever that is. Personally I think that Giordano Bruno fellow was hugely overrated. Really, he turned cosmology into some kind of religion. He was probably after some funding.

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Posted in Rambling, Science, Science Policy, Silly, Writing | Tagged | 20 Comments

Fun with data

Posted on 22/06/2010 by Jon Butterworth

Quick one, rather than my usual finely-honed prose. I am very busy and am having lots of fun.

These are jets. This is what quarks and gluons do in ATLAS. It’s cool.

We are writing papers on jet data from ATLAS. I love this, and as I tweeted I am just so impressed by the people I’m working with. From my point of view, being a relatively old fart with a family and job based in London (i.e. not CERN), I am really flattered to be able to help; for the students and postdocs working on ATLAS data right now, it is critically important for them that they succeed and are seen to succeed, if they want to progress in science. They are working like crazy, yet somehow not fighting each other but collaborating properly. A team of superstars. I will just leave any possible world cup analogies hanging there.

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Posted in Particle Physics, Physics, Science | Tagged , , , | 7 Comments

Survival of those that Fit

Posted on 09/06/2010 by Jon Butterworth

See also Chapter 3.6 of Smashing Physics.

I noticed the other day that suddenly more people were looking at my blog. So it goes – Wordpress give you lots of cool graphs to obsess over. However, that particular demon is a mere spotty imp compared to the citation-count ogre.

A citation is when one scientific publication refers to another. Counting how often your papers are cited is one way to see how much influence your work is having, and it’s very tempting to keep watching them.

baby

CITE ME!

In particle physics this is trickier that some other fields. My most highy-cited papers are measurements of proton structure from ZEUS. These were important measurements, and I helped build and run the experiment, but I made no direct input to those papers. This is common practice in particle physics, for good reasons which I alluded to here. But still I have my babies, the papers in which I recognize my own words, plots and ideas, as well as the results of my experiment.

Even amongst these, the current top two are funny ones.

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Posted in Particle Physics, Physics, Science, Science Policy | Tagged , | 12 Comments