Libel has no place in science

This is a slightly messy post, because I do not have the time to make a cleaner one.

The central problem is this: Libel and defamation laws (in Australian law, defamation is anything spoken and libel is anything printed, recorded or transmitted, but we can safely ignore that distinction) exist for the very important purpose of protecting the very valuable social and professional reputations of members of society. But, they are all too easily twisted into a tool for the suppression of dissent or criticism of those in power, or those who have the power of money or the ear of politicians or the courts.

These problems are well recognised - click the "FOE" (Freedom of Information) tag on the left to see a couple of other posts discussing this, or google the chilling effect of libel.

In terms of world libel laws, the UK and Australia are well recognised as being plaintiff-friendly (i.e., it's very easy to sue someone successfully) and the USA, buttressed by their First Amendment right to freedom of speech, is extremely defendant-friendly - if you try and sue someone, you'd better by really positive that you have a case.

In the UK, in recent times, Guardian columnist, blogger and qualified MD Ben Goldacre was sued by vitamin pill salesman Matthias Rath over statements made by Ben that he, Rath, was trying to sell a useless product to people who needed proper medical care. The Guardian, to their credit, backed Ben and the case eventually went in the right direction.

More recently, columnist, author and blogger Simon Singh has been sued by the British Chiropractic Association for saying that it, the BCA, was promoting therapies that had not a shred of evidence to back them up. There are many, many commentaries online about this. Google, or go to Bad Astronomer for a starting point.

The key problem is this: Singh, and Goldacre before him, are making statements of scientific truth - given therapies do, or do not, work. These claims may be correct, incorrect or partially correct under given circumstances, but they are statements which can be assessed scientifically. The statement that a given person or organisation is peddling bogus therapies is therefore dependent upon a scientific test.

The courts are most emphatically not the place where science should be determined. Not for evolution, not for homeopathy or mega-vitamin therapy, not for chiropractic "medicine". The BCA are using a legal trick in their suit - complaining not that Singh was accusing them of promoting falsehoods, but that Singh was accusing them of knowingly misleading the public, which is of course a claim which directly impacts upon their reputation.

Ignoring, for one second, the Evidence Based Medicine position that the BCA may not deserve to have a good public reputation, we can come to two either-or conclusions: Either chiropractic treatments are worthless, in which case the BCA is deliberately misleading, or speaking in ignorance, or: Chiropractic treatments are worthwhile, in which case Singh made an incorrect allegation either way.

Now: Wouldn't it be so much better for a body which claims medical authority to defend themselves on the basis of medical worth and scientific validity first, so that they can dump the full weight of bullshit upon Singh, rather than just "He's picking on me!"? Well, of course not - they know they'd lose.

Either way, the courts should not now, nor should ever, have any authority over science. Courts attempt to discover truth (of a sorts) via a given set of techniques. Science attempts to discover the truth via its own set of techniques. Occasionally, they look similar. Never, however, is a court the correct avenue for deciding what a scientific truth is. And the efficacy of chiropractic treatments is a matter of scientific truth.

Therefore, the button I have just added on the top left - Keep Libel Laws out of Science, by the British group SenseAboutScience.org.uk. Unfortunately, the layout may not be friendly to the width of the button.

I wish Singh all the best for his appeal against the atrocious preliminary ruling.

Notes from the N95: v6

Another, quite short, collection of random notes from the new smartphone, composed on the phone:

AppManager really needs to be able to filter by first letter, at the very least. It's so crude it looks as though they threw it together as a stop-gap and forgot to go back and fix it. "Broken gets fixed, mediocre lasts forever."

No facility to set appointments, memos or to-dos to repeat at set intervals, or to copy. What the fuck? Four years ago, my T630 could do that!

Massive credit, still, for letting you select the previous entry in the T9 options.

How can it lose a wi-fi interface it was using only two seconds ago, and have to search for it again? Repeatedly? This is REALLY ANNOYING.

If I send a txt to a number not in my phonebook, there is no way to then select that txt, and save the number. God dammit.

This is just plain stupid: the N95 has a dual slide mechanism, much hyped at release and re-used in just about every sliding Nokia since, that puts a line of audio player controls - stop, play/pause and forwards and backwards - at the top of the phone, accessed when you push the screen down. This also activates landscape mode. The thing is, although they apparently work as controls in the N-gage (what? Exactly) gaming application, they are otherwise stubbornly linked to the built-in media player. Which means that if you're in a third-party music player, or Nokia Audiobook player, which is a beta application written by a Nokia engineer who realised that if wanted a proper audiobook player he was going to have to write it himself, all that happens when you press one of the control buttons is that the media player launches. This is annoying enough, but what is totally ridiculous is that they don't work in the Voice Recorder application either, and that's part of the standard phone suite, not an add-on! Insanely, insanely, frustrating.

Essential free software installations:

• Jbak TaskMan - The control panel that S60 should have built-in.
• Active File - what the built-in file manager should be.
• Dedit - Text editor - the world's most basic and useful utility. From the same programmer as TaskMan. Clever man, this Russian.
  
• ShoZu - jack of all trades, master of none, but free and comprehensive. Just make sure it's what you want - it's too powerful to just use randomly.
  
• Google maps - less annoying than Nokia Maps, has a neat non-GPS location finding trick using network towers (imperfect, but surprisingly good), and you don't need a subscription to get basic directions, but does use data.
• Free iSMS - bringing Palm's threaded SMS to Symbian, by way of iPhone aesthetics.
• Mobipocket Reader. Because it's just about the only option available.
  

I won't put in Opera Mini, because S60 is good and doesn't need replacing, unlike the built-in file manager. Opera is a nice adjunct, not an essential. N.B.: Most of the controls in S60 Web aren't documented. You'll need to do some googling.

Updated: Why feature-rich social networking clients for smartphones aren't really there yet.

(Edited to update: See below)

There is a beguiling seductiveness to the thought that, on a modern smartphone where the menu structure may be a little hectic already, you may be able to install just one multi-function client for all your social networking needs.

Have a care, however, should one of these clients try to attract your gaze with a come-hither look.

Jacks of all trades are frequently, as everybody who has ever paid attention to trite sayings well knows, not masters of any.

I have, or have had, ShoZu, Widsets and Snaptu installed, to cover the fairly limited set of Facebook, Twitter and Blogger. I have NOT given these an exhaustive workout, but by the time I'm finished you should see why that's not necessary for me to make my point.

The first problem is that Facebook, according to the folks at ShoZu when I asked them about this, does not release an API for commenting on items, so you're stuck with reading other people's updates, and can't say anything.

Another thing: I demand speed. I don't run programs all day so that I can glance at them when I feel like it, so they have to be fast to start. I don't have an unlimited data plan and, with an N95, I don't have an unlimited battery, either.

Let's get Widsets out of the way first, because I did. It's shiny, yes, but for a program with official support from Nokia, it's a slow pig to start, login and be available. The Facebook widget is pretty, and nice. The Twitter widget, however, doesn't work at all and, if the comments on the websites when I tried it were anything to go by, it hadn't been working for a while now. So, piss off.

Then there's Snaptu. It's java, starts much faster than Widsets, and is very clean and pretty. It's also a network client proper: only the one piece of software is installed on the phone, which makes the footprint small and means that when the program loads, it's available to use and isn't still trying to load data in the background. But it has one fatal flaw, even next to the inability to make comments on Facebook. It can't open links from Twitter. So, goodbye.

Then, and anybody who knows anything about social networking on mobiles will have been waiting for me to get here, there's ShoZu. The swiss-army knife of social networking clients, ShoZu makes available more sites than I knew about, or even wanted to know about. And it's the only Twitter client I've seen (at least, among the free ones) that lets you view individual feeds, not just the whole lot, so if there's someone you really don't want to miss out on reading, you don't have to.

However: ShoZu, being the most powerful of the lot, has the most problems. To start with, it refuses to die. Oh, sure, it has an option for "Run in background" which can be set to "no", but it doesn't bloody work. I've caught the naughty little fucker using my data connection while my back has been turned. ShoZu is a major reason I have KillMe installed.

And then there's the main problem - it's SLOW. Not to start, that's commendably fast, but to load content. It will sit while loading updates for EVERYTHING, and give you absolutely no notice of how fast it's going. Oh sure, it will put a star next to updated feeds, but only within Twitter, or Facebook, or whatever, and it sometimes gets that wrong.

Oh, and I can't seem to get the Blogger posting to work.

Edit: I forgot another issue. Because ShoZu has just so much to download every time it starts up, if all you want to do is load, fire off a tweet and close down (tweet by SMS doesn't seem to be available in Australia, unless I've missed something), it can take a fair old time for the twit to be sent, while it sits in a queue. At least, that's my experience. Another reason why it's only a great tool is you run it in the background, all the time.

To be honest, it would be a great tool if I wanted to run it all the time, (it can even geotag photos if your phone has GPS) or if I didn' have any feeds to download and only wanted to upload to Twitter, Flikr, Picassaweb, or whatever, but I do and I can't afford to, which means it's not the tool for me. It's simply too annoying.

So what am I left with? Well, Facebook's mobile site is actually pretty good, and Twibble, particularly the latest, very new version, makes a great little java Twitter client, because the Twitter mobile website is absolutely pathetic. There are other Twitter clients, and there are even mobile websites which reproduce Twitter, more powerfully.

There is of course a bigger problem here, quite apart from Facebook's mean approach to application developers. Those who try to do all things, must do all things, and spend just as much time on each of them. This is no less relevant in making software than it is in building cars, and sets the bar just as high for programs such as Widsets, where the widgets seem to be mainly developed by different individuals, as it does for programs like ShoZu, where the development effort appears to be much more coordinated and centralised.

Jack-of-all-trade programs also face the problem that if one component is sub-par, witness the Twitter widget not working, you can't just swap it for another, the way you can for a built-up collection of different tools.

They're a nice idea, but not quite there yet.

Random headline wool-gathering and commentary - 3

Greetings all,

Another collection of more-or-less random gems pulled from the news this chilly morning:

Vitamin supplements may cut benefits of exercise - New Scientist. Ha! Suck on that, supplement freaks! Question, however: What about eating fruit after exercise?

Via William Gibson's twitter (@GreatDismal): Cave Panting Depicts Extinct Marsupial Lion - LiveScience. That's rather cool.

Patient declared dead was actually alive - Courier Mail. Cue Monty Python: "I'm not dead yet!" "Yes he is!"

Violent inmate tricks hospital in escape - Courier Mail. For the love of Cthulhu, this is why you insist upon paperwork!

Cool! Zombie animals!


US Biker runs a red light, crashes into police car - Visor Down. You dickhead.

Apparently, reading really is outdated

The requirements for an ebook reader for a mobile phone would appear to be fairly simple:

• It can read plain text files, html, and the old Palm pdb/prc would be nice. The ability to read zipped files would be nice, as well. Other formats, like mobi and lit, have more options but can all be converted into plain text, which is how files from places like Project Gutenberg tend to come.
• It can remember where you were in the file from session to session.
• Bookmarks.
• A find utility would be nice.
• A file browser, possibly with a library management feature.

And that's about it, really. Other, flashy stuff like putting a clock on the screen, or full-screen, or control of the phone's backlight, are all nice extras but none of them are core functionality compared to that little list above (unless you've got a touch-screen phone, like S60 5th edition, where the UI needs to be a little more clever).

So why the hell is it so hard to find a decent reader, when there are at least two already available for the comparative babe-in-arms iPhone?

The main poster-child is Mobipocket reader, or Mobireader, which hasn't been developed since 2007 and, because they've been purchased by Amazon, may never be developed again. It doesn't have a find feature, and it can't handle directories, so if you categorise your ebooks on your phone (or memory card) using nice, handy, convenient subdirectories, Mobireader will still present you with a huge list of everything under ebooks/.

For S60 phones, there is also Qreader, but it has been saying "will be updated soon" for about two years now, is nice but looks dated and has problems with different file formats.

The situation has become so bad for so long that Symbian Guru has started distributing a beta version of Mobireader which was released to testers in June 2007 and has never gone anywhere since.

Others have commented on how bad this situation now is.

So let's review what else we've got:

• eReader: The interface is frankly awful, and Steve Litchfield couldn't even get it to find his test files, let alone open them.
• iSilo: Commercial software, with their own format and a 30-day trial version so crippled that it's hard to tell if it would be any good if you bothered buying a licence.
• Shortcovers: Developing a Symbian client, apparently. Already have iPhone, Blackberry & Android clients, all free. Promising, but no beta release yet, and I can't see if their client can handle multiple formats, or just theirs (whatever that might be).
  
• Mobile Bookshelf: J2ME. Development has been "Suspended indefinitely" since 2005.
• ReadManiac: J2ME. Development suspended due to lack of interest. The interface is incredibly crude-looking, which would be fine, but it asks for permission so many times when attempting to access the phone's file system that I got fed up and deleted it.
• Book Reader by Tequilacat: J2ME. You have to create a JAR file containing the text of the ebook, and then put that on your phone. That is way too much like hard work.
• ReadM: The home page appears to have disappeared, and although there are numerous download sites, development seems to have stopped sometime in 2006(?)
• Wattpad: Free, but can only read files downloaded from the wattpad website, although the installed software can search the wattpad catalogue itself. Some books are from Gutenberg, most are pirated copies of commercial ebooks. Nice software, but only their files? Sod that!
  
• Dedit. Technically, this is a text editor, but if you only want to read plain text files, it can be told to remember its position in the file. May as well use this, it is at least under development!

So. One powerful text editor, a bunch of java programs which haven't been touched in years, the best of the bunch hasn't been touched in years anyway, and a couple of limited and commecial programs which aren't worth the price over Mobireader which is, we have already established, ageing badly.

If Shortcovers ever do release a Symbian program (I've emailed them to express interest in beta testing, which they do invite people to do), it will be interesting to see how flexible it is.

Otherwise, the future looks rather bleak. You can play a thousand different games on an S60 handset, but try reading one book.

Edit: For what it's worth, I use a Nokia N95 - Symbian with S60 3rd edition, Feature Pack 1. Not the biggest screen, but not the smallest, and a good quality screen.

Some suggestions for bio-fuels

The world has gone biofuel crazy. Ethanol and biodiesel are apparently going to save the planet and our effluent ways of life.

The problem beings first, that ethanol is really nasty to engines that aren't engineered to cope, and secondly that we have to produce tonnes upon tonnes of biomass to convert into biofuels, and it's a loss-making sum at the moment.

We need oily plants for biodiesel, high-starch plants for ethanol, or some really clever genetic engineering or hunting of yeasts or bacteria to convert inappropriate substances to appropriate substances.

All of which has, of course, been happening.

I, however, would like to make a couple of suggestions for plants which should be investigated as source stocks, other than labour-intensive food crops like corn or rapeseed/canola:

• Bamboo. Grows amazingly fast in the right conditions. Would need a bit of processing, I think.
• Kudzu vine. Grows so fast that it frightens people into introducing biological controls. This strikes me as an opportunity, rather than a problem.
  
• Aloe vera. Grows bloody everywhere, where it's not wanted, and fairly quickly. It's got to be useful for something apart from hippies rubbing it on their skin. I've got several patches if any processing plant wants to buy it off me.
  
• Hemp. I mean, come on: People have been arguing this since before it was first outlawed - grows insanely quickly, in all sorts of conditions. And we're already really good at growing it hydroponically, so we save on farmland!
• Grass. If we collect an entire suburb's weekly production of grass clippings, couldn't we fuel at least one Landcruiser?
  

Drivers die in hot cars

Road safety just never goes away as a news item. People continue to die in ludicrous numbers, the police continue to labour under the delusion that hiding speed cameras is an effective deterrent, and the media continue to not point out the obvious questions.

Take the article on the front cover of last Friday's Courier Mail: "Highway hoons on M1 race at triple the speed limit."

Now, obviously, nobody should be surprised if a small group of people decide that a wide, straight, well-maintained section of highway will make for a good bit of late-night fun. What's really interesting, however, is that these "hoons" claim to be "middle-aged professionals and businessmen with the money to afford expensive modifications to their cars."

Question: If you can afford expensive modifications, can't you afford the entry fee for a track-day? Or, say, a dedicated race car and a competition licence?

Are you not, in actual fact, just embarrassed to admit that you can't go around corners very well?

And now we have this one: "Drivers dying in lone crashes, survey reveals."

Apparently, the police have investigated their crash data and noticed that just about half of all fatal accidents have been single-vehicle.

So?

Superintendent Col Campbell's comment, that this "may come as a surprise to those motorists who believed other drivers posed the only danger on the roads" is particularly fatuous.

Yes, most drivers certainly are labouring under the misapprehension that they're fine, it's everyone else who is the problem. But nobody is going to be surprised - if you're convinced that everyone else is an idiot, you won't be surprised that they keep crashing by themselves, will you?

Nobody is going to take these results as a warning to themselves, if they don't already think that they have a problem.

The really stupid part is this:

"We've looked at the causes of single-vehicle fatalities and they are the same causes as multi-vehicle crashes - alcohol, speed, fatigue, not wearing seatbelts, and you can throw inattention in there as well," Supt Campbell said.

I'm sorry, not wearing a seat belt is a cause of a crash, not a cause of getting hurt in the event of a crash?

Language such as this does not promote confidence in the authorities, it really doesn't.