Boaty McBoatface Lives

I still think that that the whole boat should have been so named, but I am still heartened by the maiden voyage of the remotely operated submersible:

A yellow submarine dubbed Boaty McBoatface has obtained “unprecedented data” from its first voyage exploring one of the deepest and coldest ocean regions on Earth, scientists have said.

The robotic submersible was given the name originally chosen for a new polar research ship by irreverent contestants in a public competition. Embarrassed officials decided to ignore the popular vote and instead named the vessel the RRS Sir David Attenborough in honour of the veteran broadcaster. A storm of protest led to a compromise that allowed the name to live on.

The submarine plunged to depths as far as 4,000 metres to obtain information about temperature, water flow speed and turbulence from Orkney Passage, a region of the Southern Ocean about 500 miles from the Antarctic Peninsula.

 Huzza!

Time for a Massive Campaign of Civil Disobedience

The elitists at the UK's Natural Environment Research Council have decided to ignore the will of the people and name their new research vessel after naturalist and documentarian Sir David Attenborough, though they did throw a bone to the general public:

The UK's new £200 million polar research ship will not be called Boaty McBoatface. The decision was announced early on Friday morning by the UK science minister, Jo Johnson. Instead, the new ship will be called the RRS (Royal Research Ship) Sir David Attenborough—a name that also picked up a few votes in the same poll that saw Boaty McBoatface come out way on top.

Showing at least a little bit of political savvy, Jo Johnson didn't completely discard the people's choice: RRS Sir David Attenborough will be outfitted with a number of remotely operated underwater vehicles (see gallery above), and one of those will be called Boaty McBoatface. Hopefully they'll paint a dorky face on the front of its torpedo-like frame.

………

The Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) had originally planned to name the new ship via an online poll. Shortly after the poll began in March, James Hand, a former BBC radio presenter, proposed the name Boaty McBoatface. The name went viral and quickly picked up tens of thousands more votes than any other. The final tally was 124,109 votes for Boaty McBoatface, 34,371 for Poppy-Mai, and then a handful of others at around 10,000 (Sir David Attenborough picked up 10,284 votes).

………

Yesterday, following the naming debacle surrounding the ship, the UK's parliamentary science and technology committee began an investigation into "science communication" and NERC's approach to naming the ship.

You have to hand it to the science minister: if you're going to take a huge political hit by ignoring the public's choice, naming the ship after one of the few universally loved Britons is really quite smart. No one's going to complain about a ship being named after Sir David—and it's his 90th birthday this weekend. Damn you, Jo Johnson, damn you!

This is an outrage, and clearly it must not be allowed to stand.

Boaty McBoatface Wins!

And the crowd goes wild:

The internet has spoken -- and "RRS Boaty McBoatface" is the people's choice to name a $300 million state-of-the-art polar research ship.

Over 7,000 names were submitted to the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) poll which closed April 16, but "Boaty McBoatface" won easily with 124,109 votes. 

It all began when the NERC invited the public to christen the 129-meter long icebreaker, the largest and most advanced British research vessel to date.

They asked for names that were inspirational, such as a historical figure or a landmark.

However, after former BBC presenter James Hand cheekily suggested the Boaty moniker it quickly became the crowd favorite over more traditional names like "RRS Henry Worsley" after the British explorer who died in January while attempting a solo, unaided mission across the Antarctic.

………

It spawned countless silly riffs.

A UK train service from Portsmouth to Waterloo was briefly renamed "Trainy McTrainface" much to the amusement of its passengers.

………

There's no guarantee that they will follow through on the public's choice but whatever its name, the vessel will be setting sail for Antarctica in 2019.

I think that an MP should bring this up during question time, because it would be epic.

Don't Tug on Superman's Cape. Don't Piss into the Wind

Don't rely on internet polls to name something:

A state-of-the-art research vessel in search of a name is getting some help from the general public and their top choice is flying in the face of British nautical convention.

Britain’s National Environmental Research Council (NERC) launched an online voting contest, asking for inspirational names of historical figures, landmarks and movements to christen the £200-million ship ($375-million CAD). The internet responded, and the current frontrunner is none-other than RRS Boaty McBoatface.

The 15,000-ton, 128-yard-long Royal Research Ship is currently under construction on the coast of Merseyside and is gearing up to be launched for a research mission to Antarctica in 2019.

The much more appropriate RRS Henry Worsley, RRS David Attenborough and RRS Pillar of Autumn are the current runners-up, though Boaty McBoatface is outpacing its closest competitor 10-1 with over 22,500 votes.

The online poll has proven to be so successful that NERC reported the high traffic caused the website to temporarily crash Sunday.

It appears that, much like many things on the internet, the meme started as a joke:

A man who suggested naming a new £200m ship Boaty McBoatface has apologised.

The suggestion has attracted more than 27,000 votes in an online poll of names for the Royal Research ship, causing the website to crash.

Former BBC presenter James Hand said he found the list of possible names "really funny" so decided to "throw one into the ring".

He "apologised profusely" to the Natural Environment Research Council.

There is no guarantee the ship will be given the name that tops the poll, with the final decision to be made by the chief executive of the NERC.

Other names in the running are RRS Pingu, RRS Usain Boat and RRS David Attenborough.

A NERC spokesperson said staff were "very much enjoying hearing everyone's ideas".

Mr Hand said: "I read the story about naming the ship on the BBC website on Thursday and some of the entries were really funny - my favourite was Clifford The Big Red Boat.

"I thought I would throw one into the ring. By Friday night it was leading by a couple of thousand, and when the site crashed on Sunday it was leading by 8,000. It's been utterly bizarre."

Boaty McBoatface is 25,000 votes ahead of the second place suggestion, RRS Henry Worsley.

The boat is being built at the Cammell Laird shipyard in Birkenhead on Merseyside and when completed in 2019 it will study ice sheets, ocean currents and marine life as part of the Cambridge-based British Antarctic Survey.

"I've apologised profusely to the people behind the website," the former Good Morning Jersey host said.

BTW, you can go to this link to vote.

I have already voted for Boaty McBoatface, because I am an asshole.

A Good Start

For profit academic research publishers are firmly in the category of, "Mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes."

A particularly nasty player in this sphere is Elsevier, the publisher of such items as The Lancet and Cell, and Gray's Anatomy, and it is particularly aggressive in its charges, and in its aggressive use of copyright to enforce its charges.

All for publications where the content providers, and the editors work for volunteers.

It has now engendered a boycott in its home base of the Netherlands:

A long running dispute between Dutch universities and Elsevier has taken an interesting turn. Last week Koen Becking, chairman of the Executive Board of Tilburg University who has been negotiating with scientific publishers about an open access policy on behalf of Dutch universities with his colleague Gerard Meijer, announced a plan to start boycotting Elsevier.

As a first step in boycotting the publisher, the Association of Universities in the Netherlands (VSNU) has asked all scientists that are editor in chief of a journal published by Elsevier to give up their post. If this way of putting pressure on the publishers does not work, the next step would be to ask reviewers to stop working for Elsevier. After that, scientists could be asked to stop publishing in Elsevier journals.

The Netherlands has a clear position on Open Access. Sander Dekker, the State Secretary of Education has taken a strong position on Open Access, stating at the opening of the 2014 academic year in Leiden that ‘Science is not a goal in itself. Just as art is only art once it is seen, knowledge only becomes knowledge once it is shared.’

Dekker has set two Open Access targets: 40% of scientific publications should be made available through Open Access by 2016, and 100% by 2024. The preferred route is through gold Open Access – where the work is ‘born Open Access’. This means there is no cost for readers – and no subscriptions.

However Gerard Meijer, who handles the negotiations with Elsevier, says that the parties have not been able to come close to an agreement.

 ………

The 2015 Dutch boycott is significant. Typically negotiations with publishers occur at an institutional level and with representatives from the university libraries. This makes sense as libraries have long standing relationships with publishers and understand the minutiae of the licencing processes . However the Dutch negotiations have been led by the Vice Chancellors of the universities.  It is a country-wide negotiation at the highest level. And Vice Chancellors have the ability to request behaviour change of their research communities.

This boycott has the potential to be a significant game changer in the relationship between the research community and the world’s largest academic publisher. The remainder of this blog looks at some of the facts and figures relating to expenditure on Open Access in the UK. It underlines the importance of the Dutch position.The 2015 Dutch boycott is significant. Typically negotiations with publishers occur at an institutional level and with representatives from the university libraries. This makes sense as libraries have long standing relationships with publishers and understand the minutiae of the licencing processes . However the Dutch negotiations have been led by the Vice Chancellors of the universities.  It is a country-wide negotiation at the highest level. And Vice Chancellors have the ability to request behaviour change of their research communities.

These folks are leeches, who have made their business plan out of the free effort of academics.

I'd love to dance on their corporate grave.

1000 Words on Big Pharma Research Spending

9 Out Of 10 Big Pharma Companies Spent More On Marketing Than On R&D

I would also note that 84% of the basic R&D funding is by the taxpayers.

What I am talking about is the research that discovers the basic science that leads to drugs.

I would argue that if we were to repeal the Bayh-Dole act, and once again require that federally funded inventions be assigned to the federal government, we would get more innovation, because universities would not be acting like private companies regarding their (our) inventions, and it would save enormous amounts of money, particularly with regard to pharmaceuticals.

The Washington consensus, which is that no matter how badly the private entities loot the rest of society, we must privatize everything, because ……… Capitalism!

It's why we have hepatitis C drugs that are costing over $1,000.00 a pill.

As an alternative, have the government fund taking basic research to a marketable drug, and then allow drug manufacturers to bid for the right to manufacture those medications.

H/t The Big Picture.

Remember When I Said that Newspapers Should Fact Check Their Own OP/EDs?*

Well, it's finally happened, and the paper was to do it was the Kansas City Star, an unlikely journalistic innovator, but they fact checked the editorial they published from Stephen Moore, head economist at the frequently fact challenged Heritage Foundation, ^{† and} discover that he is lying through his teeth:

The Kansas City Star probably thought it was on solid ground when it published an op-ed by Stephen Moore defending the draconian, and economically debilitating, tax cuts instituted by Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback. (We reported on how the tax cuts have turned Kansas into a smoking ruin here.)

Moore's conservative credentials are impeccable: A former member of the Wall Street Journal editorial board, he's currently chief economist at the Heritage Foundation and a familiar face on Fox News and CNBC. So when his piece asserted that "over the last five years," the no-income-tax states of Texas and Florida gained jobs while the high-tax states of New York and California lost jobs, the editors waved it through.

Moore punctuated his statistical victory over Brownback's critics with the ironic refrain "Oops."

Oops, indeed.

It turns out Moore's statistics were dead wrong. He later explained that he was citing figures from 2007-2012, not the last five years. But--oops again--he got those figures wrong too. His errors were discovered by Yael T. Abouhalkah, a Star columnist, who took the simple step of cross-checking them against the source, the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In this age of the Google machine, it would be a trivial matter for a newspaper to assign a junior reporter to fact check every statistic in every editorial that they publish on their own (syndicated editorials are a more complex matter).

In fact, any decent Googler could fact check a couple of hours.

To quote the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, "'You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts."

An OP/ED should not be a license to lie.
^*Here is one example from juxtaposition the former Kaplan Test Prep company and Sarah Palin.
^†Full disclosure: I have a personal reason for hating the ratf%$#s at the Heritage Foundation. They fired a friend of mine for having cancer.