“How long is a piece of string?” is an expression used in response to a question with an indeterminate answer. But an Adelaide psychologist is attempting to answer that question scientifically. He’s angling to get published in the Annals of Improbable Research and perhaps be in the running for an Ig Nobel Prize.

Stuart Cathcart is going to answer the question using random sampling.

“In the absence of every possible example of the measure, the best estimate of a measure is the average of a random sample. Further, there is at present no data on how long a piece of string is, and no data on the distribution of samples of lengths of pieces of string,” Stuart said.

“For example, there is no evidence to suggest the length of a piece of string is a normal distribution. Indeed, it would seem reasonable, we contend, that very few pieces of string are less than one micron in length, and very few pieces of string are more than fifty-thousand kilometers in length. Therefore, we suggest it is reasonable to assume there is an average universal length for a piece of string, which can be estimated through random sampling,” he explained.

If you’d like to help Stuart with his research project you can find a piece of string at home, work or wherever, measure it in millimetres or centimetres and email him the result at stuart.cathcart@unisa.edu.au. The more pieces of string sampled, the better the result.

I asked Stuart what counts as string – does a thread that I pulled off the hem of my dress count?

“We have intentionally left the definition of string open, so it could be a piece of lint or a rope,” he said.

It’s Movember. That’s not a spelling mistake, it’s a charity fundraiser!

I have the honour of living in the city where Movember originated, so along with the flowers of late spring comes the blossoming of facial hair. It’s the one time of year guys can grow a handlebar or Hitler moustache and be considered a model citizen.

Movember raises funds for men’s health issues, such as prostate cancer. It’s a great example of an innovative fundraising campaign for a good cause – relevant, distinctive and a great source of material for the media.

Now I’ve said those nice things about Movember, I’m going to criticise the Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia.

It’s come to my attention that the prostate foundation is promoting barbecues to raise funds. Whether or not they’ve actually been giving out free mini-barbecues as one of these comments said, they definitely promote barbecues on their website.

This is a pretty irresponsible campaign, given that barbecued red meat has been associated with increased cancer risk (as reported here, here here and here), including of the
prostate.

Granted, the charred red meat and cancer risk association isn’t bulletproof. But when you have a fantastic campaign like Movember, why also push a hackneyed fundraising method like hosting a barbecue, especially when you might be encouraging behaviour that increases risk for the cancer you’re trying to prevent?

A cynic might say the prostate cancer foundation is keeping itself in business, but I don’t think they have sinister intentions. I hope they just haven’t thought about it yet. And now that they do thanks to the wonders of the interwebs, I think if they still want to encourage barbecue fundraisers, they should also publicise information about how to make barbecues healthier.

Or maybe they can hire the PR team who succeeded in marketing the cervical cancer vaccine as that, rather than the human papillomavirus vaccine, to develop a campaign to get men to eat salads instead of charred red meat.

Correction: someone just emailed to inform me that the men’s health fundraiser started in Melbourne. Though my memory wasn’t just pro-Adelaide folklore; the Wikipedia entry says the Movember trend started in Adelaide in 1999, but it was to raise money for RSPCA under the slogan “growing whiskers for whiskers”. It refers to a 1999 Channel Seven story you can watch on YouTube.

I’ve recently been contributing to a draft book chapter about how clinical practice guidelines have been developed for chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) in different countries, despite uncertainty. Last week I was motivated to work on it, when I read in New Scientist that researchers have associated CFS with a retrovirus called XMRV. The paper is in Science (That’s the second time in three blog posts I’ve referenced the journal Science, while I haven’t referenced Nature yet. A faux pas, given this blog’s location?).

I duly updated the chapter with references to this latest research, and marvelled at how exciting science is. I became a journalist because I was interested in news, and to me, discoveries in science are the epitome of news. The saying goes that history repeats itself, but science, by nature, is prone to turning things upside down with a new discovery. Revolutions tend to happen in the midst of technological change.

This link between a retrovirus and CFS is not necessarily revolutionary – though CFS sufferers that have had the XMRV virus may feel that way. Other researchers in the same issue of Science called for lab and epidemiological studies to see if there’s a causative role. But for the people who’ve had the virus whose symptoms were labelled psychiatric, the discovery gives hope that they might be treated differently by doctors.

Doctors are put in a hard position, given that science is never about definitive truth (as Henry Gee recently ranted about in his blog), but doctors nevertheless need to make definitive decisions in the face of uncertainty. This contradiction is so interesting that there are two books called How Doctors Think (I read – and enjoyed – the Jerome Groopman one; I’m aware of Kathryn Montgomery’s because I saw a copy on my boss’s desk).

I don’t envy people working at the practical end of the spectrum when it comes to controversial issues. I wonder if they suffer a horrible feeling in their guts whenever they come across research suggesting they might have made a wrong decision? Or do they accept that you can’t make the right call every time?

It’s Open Access Week, as Martin Fenner has noted already on the Nature Network.

Last week the head of Australia’s National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), Warwick Anderson, told the Australasian Medical Writers Association conference that the NHMRC was planning to introduce a new requirement in the Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research, regarding publication.

Research funded by the NHMRC will need to be made open access within six months of publication. This doesn’t mean researchers need to publish in open access journals. If they don’t, they can release their research papers through university repositories, Warwick suggested.

Another speaker for that session of the conference was Sally Murray, Deputy Editor of Open Medicine. She talked about open access models of publication, stressing the integrity of the journal she helped launch, including its non-profit emphasis. She talked about how seeking advertising and print sales undermines the independence of traditional journals. She also mentioned how her university job allows her to edit the journal, as there isn’t money to pay the editors (yet).

Warwick mentioned this in his presentation following, to demonstrate that open access publishing isn’t entirely successful yet. He raised concern that Sally’s university was subsidising her work on the journal. Sally was perturbed by this, which is fair enough in my opinion.

In my experience, researchers don’t edit journals or chair committees for money, but for credibility. It’s in a university’s interests to have senior researchers on the pulse of their field internationally, acting as gatekeepers in editorial roles.

Also, as Sally pointed out, universities pay journal publishers massive amounts of money to access them. They’re already paying for the administration of journals, but as consumers rather than contributors. Open access journals just reverse that model.

Am I missing something here?

The Nobel committee in Sweden recently announced that a woman has won the prize for economics for the first time. American Elinor Ostrom won for her work on natural resource governance, demonstrating that tragedy of the commons doesn’t prevail when local communities take responsibility for sustaining their environment.

I also tweeted recently about how it was great to see an Australian woman share the prize for medicine for the first time. This year’s firsts are a reflection of the increasing impact of women in science; perhaps also the increasing pressure on the Nobel committee to balance the gender split of Nobel winners, which stands at 40 women (Marie Curie won twice) to more than 700 men.

I visited the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and Nobel Museum in 2008 with a group of science communicators, where we had the chance to throw some questions at two (male) laureates and a representative of the selection committee. The gender imbalance of the Nobels was a hot topic in our discussion. The contrasting overrepresentation of women in science communication perhaps had something to do with it.

Ostrom’s work resonates beyond the field of natural resource management. For example, in my area of deliberative democracy and science policy there is much debate over whether or not laypeople have the capacity to make decisions that we tend to leave to policymakers and their science advisors.

I’m amongst those who think that everyday people can – and should – contribute to science policy. Ostrom showed that local communities are better placed to decide how to use shared resources than governments or companies. Similarly, local communities are well placed to decide how to use our discoveries in science. It’s the job of scientists to discover things – but the context and application of those discoveries should be decided by society.

The question is which society? Community participation is well established in issues with clear boundaries, such as the provision of local health services, or placement of wind farms. However the pervasive impact of emerging technologies like synthetic biology or nanotechnology makes it hard for public engagement specialists to decide who should participate in making decisions.

In a globalized world, everyone should be able to participate. But the reality is that a tiny percentage of people will have the opportunity. How can we scale up Ostrom’s work on local communities to issues without boundaries?

Perhaps a future Nobel Prize winner will find out.

I’ve been told I’m supposed to write an introductory entry before I launch into the juicy stuff. I’m going to keep it simple and cover who, what, when, where and why, just like a well trained journalist should.

Who

I’m Cobi. Nice to meet you.

What

This is becoming increasingly complicated. Once I was a broadcast journalist, mostly radio, some TV production. Then I went freelance, to pursue my interest in science supporting sustainable international development. Then I edited some books for a publisher. Then I decided I needed to try my hand at peer-reviewed research, so I started a research degree in science communication through Australian National University. I’m (hopefully) near the end of that now.

So I’m a journalist/editor/researcher – mostly.

When

I’m starting this blog now because all I have to do for the next few months is to write for academic publications. I’m craving the regular high I get from finishing a piece of work, whether for broadcast or print. So I thought dedicating a bit of time to writing a blog amongst the heavier, drawn-out pieces I’m working on will keep me sane motivated.

Where

I live in Adelaide, Australia. I work for the University of Adelaide. My research degree is through Australian National University, so I travel to Canberra every few months to meet with my supervisor and peers at the Centre for the Public Awareness of Science. I’ve previously been based in Cambridge, UK; near Seville, Spain; Calgary, Canada; and Turin, Italy. Adelaide is my home town.

Why

This is half covered in what, but you might wonder why I’m writing on the Nature Network. The reason is to keep on topic. This blog is about my professional interests, which sit nicely with Nature. My portfolio and my travel blog are hosted on WordPress.