Pictures of the day - 8 April




















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A Look in the Mirror

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As all other teams sail, walk, or swim from side to side in the beautiful little bay of Tjärnö to study the marine environment  around us, our team is about to explore something different. Something often forgotten, despite being fully part of a scientific project. Something? Better said “Someone”: the Scientist. Although it could be useful at times in research, we are not robots. We, as humans, think, act, interact with the environment. Whether it is on purpose or not, we will influence our results whatever happens during the project, as in every research ever conducted. This effect from the observer on what he observes can be marked, to the point it distorts results obtained, or tiny enough to be neglected. The objective of our team during this Spring School is precisely to explore this subject, the observer’s effect. Through various experiments, and witnessing fellow students’ research projects, we will attempt to describe the different ways experiments and results are inf...
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A Story of Skulls and Bias

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Facing a problem, a questioning or uncertainty, men always found great teaching in history. Hence, this interesting and controversial episode in the history of Science this article wishes to narrate. The first character of today’s tale is called Samuel George Morton. This natural scientist, issued from a 18th century Pennsylvanian colony of quakers, wrote between 1839 and 1849 his three volumes of Crania Americana. As this title suggests, its work focused on measuring size of skulls from people of America. It earned him a grim reputation, as it remained in memories as an attempt to prove that Caucasian having larger skulls, they were intellectually superior to other humans. A first shade of truth manipulation could be noted here, as a slight further investigation on Crania Americana reveals the objective of Morton was in reality to prove there were several different human species, and not just one. Just as wrong as the previous assumption, but carrying a different type of message. ...
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Conflicts of Interests in Science

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(Image : Giordano Bruno, an Italian philosopher, mathematician and poet from the 16th century. He was burned in 1600 by the Roman inquisition, for saying that universe was infinite, that stars were distant suns, and other things he probably should have kept for later. Image from an animated segment of the movie “Cosmos : A Spacetime Odyssey ”. Most of people whom ever read a scientific article, be it by choice or obligation, should have noticed this sentence, most likely before kicking off the festivities: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. This sentence, which appears as an automatic formula, deserves a short discussion, as in these few words lies a huge deal of questions on ethics and scientific conduct, especially in our mad modern world. In its enterprise to understand the natural world, Science has knowledge and discovery for sole purposes. Science is foreign to the logic of benefit, cost and maximum profit that rules currently our modern, ...
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