Science

The government has plans to fund a new research agency to back ‘cutting-edge science’. Ptolemaios (Ptolemy) I (367-282 bc), the first Greek king of Egypt, had a similar idea. When Alexander the Great died in 323 bc, his ramshackle ‘empire’ fell apart, and the generals he had left in charge of each region promptly turned themselves into autonomous kings. Egypt’s new king Ptolemy I decided to make Egypt’s ‘capital’ Alexandria the greatest cultural and scientific centre in the world, and the resultant ‘Museum’ became the world’s first scientific research institute. Wielding their cheque-books, the Ptolemies persuaded the finest minds of the day to sign up. These included Euclid, who invented

Veritas vincit Sir: Professor Dawkins eloquently and engagingly defines true truth for us (‘Matters of fact’, 19 December). It seems to me that ‘true’ is a poor little four-letter word with a heavier workload than is reasonable. Historic truth may include ascertainable facts, which I suppose he would pass, but combined with conclusions based on available evidence or ‘true-to-life’ conjecture. Theological truth combines historic fact with unassailable moral principle and a journey of imagination beyond the reach of experience. It cannot be called untrue — only unproven. Perhaps we need to find a word with more gravitas than ‘truth’ for the scientists. I suggest ‘veritas’ — as found in vino.Charles

Sir Roger Penrose was at school when he realised that his mind worked in an unusual way. ‘I thought, maybe when I go to university, I’ll find people who think like me,’ he tells me, at the beginning of what was to be a fascinating conversation, stretching long into the afternoon. ‘But it wasn’t like that at all. When I would talk to someone about an idea, I found myself not understanding a word they were saying.’ Just after we spoke, in early December, Penrose received the Nobel Prize in Physics, so perhaps it’s no surprise that he should think a little differently. But, as he explained it to me,

DNA is the blueprint that encodes the instructions to make proteins. Proteins are the building blocks and the machines that power life. And proteins make up the tissue that in turn comprise the organs and muscles that make up us. Considering how crucial proteins are to life itself, there is still so much we do not know about them. But Google’s AI firm Deepmind may just have helped us make a giant leap forward. When a protein is first made inside a living cell, it is merely a chain of connected amino acids — like beads on a string. Yet, it instantaneously folds into unique three-dimensional, beautiful shapes, which enable

To read the press releases, you would think we’ve found the panacea to racism in the form of unconscious bias training. Numerous organisations, including the Labour party, have announced they would be putting their staff through such programmes. This follows in the footsteps of the civil service, which has required all civil servants to undertake unconscious bias training since 2018, magistrates, for whom the training is compulsory, and the Met police, where it forms part of ongoing officer training. Google, Facebook, the FTSE 100, government departments — including the Ministry of Defence and Ministry of Justice — and non-profits proudly advertise the programmes they put their staff through. But the

It occurs to me that one of the most important lessons we’ve learnt so far during this time of plague is that the majority of the glitterati, TV journalists and armchair epidemiologists on Twitter, are all scientifically illiterate. This is not a new phenomenon. One of my most precious possessions is a copy of CP Snow’s 1959 Rede lecture on the ‘two cultures’ – science and the humanities. At the time he suggested you had: ‘Literary intellectuals at one pole – at the other scientists, and the most representative, the physical scientists. Between the two a gulf mutual incomprehension – sometimes hostility and dislike, but most of all a lack

In announcing the most far-reaching restrictions on personal freedom in the history of our nation, Boris Johnson resolutely followed the scientific advice that he had been given. The advisers to the government seem calm and collected, with a solid consensus among them. In the face of a new viral threat, with numbers of cases surging daily, I’m not sure that any prime minister would have acted very differently. But I’d like to raise some perspectives that have hardly been aired in the past weeks, and which point to an interpretation of the figures rather different from that which the government is acting on. I’m a recently-retired Professor of Pathology and