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2 episodes with uksa
2 episodes with uksa
2 episodes with uksa
In this inspiring episode from the Palma Superyacht Village 2025 series, Lucie Gardiner sits down with Lauren Saltonstall from the United Kingdom Sailing Academy (UKSA) to explore how the Isle of Wight-based institution is shaping the future of the maritime industry. From watersports for youth to advanced professional training, UKSA is opening doors across the globe. Lauren dives into UKSA's international reach, their work in mental health and crew welfare, and the importance of industry-wide collaboration. She also shares insights on bursary programs, career support initiatives, and how UKSA is making maritime careers more accessible and inclusive than ever before. Whether you're a seasoned yachtie or just starting your journey, this interview offers valuable knowledge and powerful motivation. Connect with UKSA: Website: uksa.org Instagram: @uksasailing Facebook: UKSA LinkedIn: UKSA X (Twitter): @uksasailing Learn More About Palma Superyacht Village: Website: palmasuperyachtvillage.com Instagram: @palmasuperyachtvillage Facebook: Palma Superyacht Village X (Twitter): @palma_sys
The crew of Soyuz MS-26 joins Expedition 71 on the International Space Station. Varda Space has announced a research collaboration with SSPC, the Research Ireland Centre for Pharmaceuticals, that aims to advance mathematical modeling of crystallization in microgravity. The Office of Space Commerce (OSC) has announced a new opportunity for commercial space situational awareness (SSA) companies to support the development of the Traffic Coordination System for Space (TraCSS), and more. Remember to leave us a 5-star rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Miss an episode? Sign-up for our weekly intelligence roundup, Signals and Space, and you'll never miss a beat. And be sure to follow T-Minus on LinkedIn and Instagram. T-Minus Guest Our guest today is Niall Bradshaw, UKSA Senior Lead for Copernicus and International Earth Observation. You can connect with Niall on LinkedIn and learn more about UKSA and Copernicus on their websites. Selected Reading NASA Sets Coverage for Crew Launch; Trio to Join Expedition 71 Varda Announces Collaboration with SSPC to Improve Fundamental Understanding of Microgravity Crystallization Office of Space Commerce Announces New Commercial Pathfinder Project for TraCSS Successful initial tests of the KERAUNOS optical communications satellite Astroscale Awarded Contract for Next Phase of a UK National Active Debris Removal Mission Boeing Pioneering Quantum Communications Technology with In-Space Test Satellite Sidus Space Announces an Additional Contract Award for NASA ASTRA- Business Wire Chang'e-6 orbiter turns up at Sun-Earth Lagrange point after moon sampling mission - SpaceNews ESA - Juice confirms that Earth is habitable BlueHalo Accelerates Production for USSF SCAR Program with Key Supply Chain, Manufacturing Automation Investments Inversion Space accelerates orbital reentry vehicle tech with $71M Space Force contract- TechCrunch Astronaut Frank Culbertson Letter from September 11, 2001 - NASA T-Minus Crew Survey We want to hear from you! Please complete our 4 question survey. It'll help us get better and deliver you the most mission-critical space intel every day. Want to hear your company in the show? You too can reach the most influential leaders and operators in the industry. Here's our media kit. Contact us at space@n2k.com to request more info. Want to join us for an interview? Please send your pitch to space-editor@n2k.com and include your name, affiliation, and topic proposal. T-Minus is a production of N2K Networks, your source for strategic workforce intelligence. © N2K Networks, Inc. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Dinis Guarda citiesabc openbusinesscouncil Thought Leadership Interviews
Ludovic Phalippou is a financial economist, academic, author, and researcher. His research covers critical themes including the performance of private equity funds, risk and return estimation, liquidity risk premiums, and regulatory challenges in the industry. Ludovic is the Professor of Financial Economics and the Academic Area Head of Finance, Accounting & Economics at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford. Under his leadership, the school recently created the world's first cinematised educational case study titled "Redeveloping Hope". The study emphasises financial tools and impact investing for MBA and EMBA students, caters to their Gen Z and Millennial preferences for visual learning.To learn more about Ludovic Phalippou and his research work, please visit https://businessabc.net/wiki/ludovic-phalippouLudovic Phalippou Interview Questions00:01 - 03:05 Introduction03:06 - 04:24 Ludovic's background04:25 - 06:05 the psychology behind research06:06 - 07:32 Ludovic at Saïd Business School07:33 - 11:54 teaching through visual media11:55 - 21:19 Redeveloping Hope: financial literacy and education21:20 - 26:24 technology and financial literacy in society26:25 - 29:09 Research in Private Equity29:10 - 31:44 global landscape of private equity31:45 - 35:14 Private Equity Laid Bare35:15 - 37:39 risk management and governance in private equity37:39 - 40:27 the current state of global debt40:28 - 45:59 AI, big data, and financial modeling46:00 - 48:37 (financial tools for social and environmental challenges48:38 - 50:04 private equity and financial economics: current landscape50:05 - 52:13 social impact-driven v/s competitive capitalist economics52:14 - 55:55 Systematic Investing with Big Data55:56 - 56:34 Finance and Economics56:35 - 57:18 ClosureSaïd Business School, Oxford, UKSaïd Business School is the business school at the University of Oxford. The school is a provider of management education. It is focused on impactful leadership, offering degrees, executive education and programmes for organisations. The business school is fully integrated into the University of Oxford which allows them to provide excellent teaching in the areas of economics, law, sociology, psychology, politics, and international relations.Saïd Business School has participants from over 50 different countries and a global perspective is emphasised in their research, classrooms, and educational community.To know more about Saïd Business School, Oxford, UK, please visit https://businessabc.net/wiki/said-business-schoolUseful Links and Resourceshttps://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/about-us/people/ludovic-phalippouhttps://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/news/oxford-tailors-worlds-first-fully-cinematised-educational-case-study-meet-demands-gen-z-studentshttps://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/publications/4386https://uk.linkedin.com/in/ludovic-phalippou-5488b147https://www.queens.ox.ac.uk/people/prof-ludovic-phalippou/About citiesabc.comhttps://www.citiesabc.com/ About businessabc.nethttps://www.businessabc.net/About fashionabc.orghttps://www.fashionabc.org/ About Dinis Guardahttps://www.dinisguarda.com/https://businessabc.net/wiki/dinis-guardaAbout Wisdomia.aihttps://wisdomia.ai/About MStoreshttps://mstores.shopping/Support the Show.
In May this year the UKSA and ASA have been hosting the International Synaesthesia Conference at Somerville College in Oxford, UK. This weekend was full of emotions, aha moments and new connections. This is us recapping this wonderful 3 day conference. Thank you so much to the board of the UKSA and ASA for all your work. We are so excited to be part of this community! Maike & Zoe Zoe: youtube: zoesthesia Instagram: zoesthesia www.zoesthesia.com Maike instagram: maikepreissing & synaesthes_a youtube: Let's talk Synaesthesia www.maikepreissing.com www.synesthesia.at --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/maike-preissing/message
Nik Atfield talks to Chris frisby UKSA
The European Space Agency held a graduation ceremony for participants of their astronaut training program. UK-based space investment group Seraphim Space has launched its second VC fund. Slovenia has become the 39th country to sign the Artemis Accords, and more. Remember to leave us a 5-star rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Miss an episode? Sign-up for our weekly intelligence roundup, Signals and Space, and you'll never miss a beat. And be sure to follow T-Minus on LinkedIn and Instagram. T-Minus Guest Our guest today is Libby Jackson, Head of Space Exploration at the UK Space Agency. You can connect with Libby on LinkedIn and learn more about UKSA on their website. Selected Reading ESA astronaut class of 2022 graduation ceremony replay Seraphim Space launches second VC fund with nine investments already under its belt- TechCrunch ClearSpace Debris Removal Mission Passes Key Milestone - European Spaceflight Slovenia Signs Artemis Accords, Joins Pursuit of Safer Space - NASA Legislation to broaden Florida's spaceport territory signed into law- The Capitolist Contracts For April 19, 2024 US aerospace company signs MoU with Southern Launch – SASIC Dhruva Space set for galactic growth Xi Jinping tightens grip on China's military with new information warfare unit U.S. Statement - Agenda Item 12 - 63rd Session of the COPUOS LSC - April 2024 - U.S. Mission to International Organizations in Vienna Happy Earth Day 2024! NASA picks 6 new airborne missions to study our changing planet- Space T-Minus Crew Survey We want to hear from you! Please complete our 4 question survey. It'll help us get better and deliver you the most mission-critical space intel every day. Want to hear your company in the show? You too can reach the most influential leaders and operators in the industry. Here's our media kit. Contact us at space@n2k.com to request more info. Want to join us for an interview? Please send your pitch to space-editor@n2k.com and include your name, affiliation, and topic proposal. T-Minus is a production of N2K Networks, your source for strategic workforce intelligence. © N2K Networks, Inc. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
China launches a Long March-2D vehicle carrying the SuperView Neo 3-01 remote sensing satellite from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center. Test satellites Tiandu-1 and Tiandu-2, have successfully carried out experiments demonstrating their Earth-Moon transmission and routing. Japan's Interstellar Technologies has signed a Framework Agreement for Launch Services with Italian space logistics company D-Orbit, and more. Remember to leave us a 5-star rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Miss an episode? Sign-up for our weekly intelligence roundup, Signals and Space, and you'll never miss a beat. And be sure to follow T-Minus on LinkedIn and Instagram. T-Minus Guest Our guest today is Dr. Craig Brown, Director of Investment at the UK Space Agency. You can connect with Craig on LinkedIn, and learn more about UKSA on their website. Selected Reading Long March-2D launches SuperView Neo 3-01 China's Tiandu satellites take Earth-Moon transmissions, routing tests - CGTN Interstellar and D-Orbit to Enter a Framework Agreement for Launch Services – Achieves Milestone in Asian Space Transport Aerospacelab Successfully Acquires AMOS Open Cosmos Contract NASA Welcomes Switzerland as Newest Artemis Accords Signatory Contracts For April 4, 2024 Satellogic Announces $30 Million Strategic Investment from Tether Investments Limited NASA budget woes could doom $2 billion Chandra space telescope - The Washington Post National Guard Chief Makes Case for Space Guard: 'Would Work Exactly Like It is Right Now' T-Minus Crew Survey We want to hear from you! Please complete our 4 question survey. It'll help us get better and deliver you the most mission-critical space intel every day. Want to hear your company in the show? You too can reach the most influential leaders and operators in the industry. Here's our media kit. Contact us at space@n2k.com to request more info. Want to join us for an interview? Please send your pitch to space-editor@n2k.com and include your name, affiliation, and topic proposal. T-Minus is a production of N2K Networks, your source for strategic workforce intelligence. © N2K Networks, Inc. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The UK Space Agency is offering Up to £60 million for proposals that will help boost the UK's satellite communications sector. NASA has chosen the first science instruments designed for astronauts to deploy on the surface of the Moon during Artemis III. China launched a Long March-6 rocket, carrying an environmental monitoring satellite called Yunhai-3 02, and more. Remember to leave us a 5-star rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Miss an episode? Sign-up for our weekly intelligence roundup, Signals and Space, and you'll never miss a beat. And be sure to follow T-Minus on LinkedIn and Instagram. T-Minus Guest Our guest today is Brad Appel, Chief Technology Officer at Ursa Major. You can connect with Brad on LinkedIn and learn more about Ursa Major on their website. Selected Reading C-LEO programme kicks off with £60 million for satellite constellation ideas - GOV.UK Polaris And Aero Challenge Group Sign Strategic Cooperation And Investment Agreement Joint Statement of the Second Meeting of the U.S.-France Comprehensive Dialogue on Space - United States Department of State NASA Selects First Lunar Instruments for Artemis Astronaut Deployment Systems, Technologies, and Emerging Capabilities Broad Agency Announcement Sidus Space Reports Full Year 2023 Financial Results and Provides Business Update China launches new satellite for environmental monitoring - CGTN ULA Delta-4 Heavy NROL-70 | Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex Governor Abbott Launches Texas Space Commission Send robots into space rather than people, says Britain's Astronomer Royal- Reuters The Next Generation of Cancer Drugs Will Be Made in Space- WIRED Order Up: High School Students Compete to Launch Their Food into Space with NASA HUNCH Culinary Competition T-Minus Crew Survey We want to hear from you! Please complete our 4 question survey. It'll help us get better and deliver you the most mission-critical space intel every day. Want to hear your company in the show? You too can reach the most influential leaders and operators in the industry. Here's our media kit. Contact us at space@n2k.com to request more info. Want to join us for an interview? Please send your pitch to space-editor@n2k.com and include your name, affiliation, and topic proposal. T-Minus is a production of N2K Networks, your source for strategic workforce intelligence. © N2K Networks, Inc. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The ONS podcast returns, this time looking at the importance of communicating uncertainty in statistics. Joining host Miles Fletcher to discuss is Sir Robert Chote, Chair of the UKSA; Dr Craig McLaren, of the ONS; and Professor Mairi Spowage, director of the Fraser of Allander Institute. Transcript MILES FLETCHER Welcome back to Statistically Speaking, the official podcast of the UK's Office for National Statistics. I'm Miles Fletcher and to kick off this brand new season we're going to venture boldly into the world of uncertainty. Now, it is of course the case that nearly all important statistics are in fact estimates. They may be based on huge datasets calculated with the most robust methodologies, but at the end of the day they are statistical judgments subject to some degree of uncertainty. So, how should statisticians best communicate that uncertainty while still maintaining trust in the statistics themselves? It's a hot topic right now and to help us understand it, we have another cast of key players. I'm joined by the chair of the UK Statistics Authority Sir Robert Chote, Dr. Craig McLaren, head of national accounts and GDP here at the ONS, and from Scotland by Professor Mairi Spowage, director of the renowned Fraser of Allander Institute at the University of Strathclyde. Welcome to you all. Well, Sir Robert, somebody once famously said that decimal points in GDP is an economist's way of showing they've got a sense of humour. And well, that's quite amusing - particularly if you're not an economist - there's an important truth in there isn't there? When we say GDP has gone up by 0.6%. We really mean that's our best estimate. SIR ROBERT CHOTE It is. I mean, I've come at this having been a consumer of economic statistics for 30 years in different ways. I started out as a journalist on the Independent and the Financial Times writing about the new numbers as they were published each day, and then I had 10 years using them as an economic and fiscal forecaster. So I come at this very much from the spirit of a consumer and am now obviously delighted to be working with producers as well. And you're always I think, conscious in those roles of the uncertainty that lies around particular economic estimates. Now, there are some numbers that are published, they are published once, and you are conscious that that's the number that stays there. But there is uncertainty about how accurately that is reflecting the real world position and that's naturally the case. You then have the world of in particular, the national accounts, which are numbers, where you have initial estimates that the producer returns to and updates as the information sets that you have available to draw your conclusions develops over time. And it's very important to remember on the national accounts that that's not a bug, that's a feature of the system. And what you're trying to do is to measure a very complicated set of transactions you're trying to do in three ways, measuring what the economy produces, measuring incomes, measuring expenditure. You do that in different ways with information that flows in at different times. So it's a complex task and necessarily the picture evolves. So I think from the perspective of a user, it's important to be aware of the uncertainty and it's important when you're presenting and publishing statistics to help people engage with that, because if you are making decisions based on statistics, if you're simply trying to gain an understanding of what's going on in the economy or society, generally speaking you shouldn't be betting the farm on the assumption that any particular number is, as you say, going to be right to decimal places. And the more that producers can do to help people engage with that in an informed and intelligent way, and therefore mean that decisions that people take on the basis of this more informed the better. MF So it needs to be near enough to be reliable, but at the same time we need to know about the uncertainty. So how near is the system at the moment as far as these important indicators are concerned to getting that right? SRC Well, I think there's an awful lot of effort that goes into ensuring that you are presenting on the basis of the information set that you have the best available estimates that you can, and I think there's an awful lot of effort that goes into thinking about quality, that thinks about quality assurance when these are put together, that thinks about the communication how they mesh in with the rest of the, for example, the economic picture that you have, so you can reasonably assure yourself that you're providing people with the best possible estimate that you can at any given moment. But at the same time, you want to try to guide people by saying, well, this is an estimate, there's no guarantee that this is going to exactly reflect the real world, the more that you can do to put some sort of numerical context around that the more the reliable basis you have for people who are using those numbers, and thinking about as I say, particularly in the case of those statistics that may be revised in future as you get more information. You can learn things, obviously from the direction, the size of revisions to numbers that have happened in the past, in order to give people a sense of how much confidence they should place in any given number produced at any given point in that cycle of evolution as the numbers get firmer over time. MF If you're looking to use the statistics to make some decision with your business or personal life, where do you look for the small print? Where do you look for the guidance on how reliable this number is going to be? SRC Well, there's plenty of guidance published in different ways. It depends, obviously on the specific statistics in question, but I think it's very important for producers to ensure that when people come for example to websites or to releases that have the headline numbers that are going to be reported, that it's reasonably straightforward to get to a discussion of where do these numbers come from? How are they calculated? What's the degree of uncertainty that lies around that arising from these things? And so not everybody is obviously going to have an appetite for the technical discussion there. But providing that in a reasonably accessible, reasonably findable way, is important and I think a key principle is that if you're upfront about explaining how numbers are generated, explaining about the uncertainty that lies around them in as quantified way as you can, that actually increases and enhances trust in the underlying production and communication process and in the numbers rather than undermining it. I think you have to give the consumers of these numbers by and large the credit for understanding that these things are only estimates and that if you're upfront about that, and you talk as intelligently and clearly as you can about the uncertainties - potential for revision, for example - then that enhances people's confidence. It doesn't undermine it. MF You mentioned there about enhancing trust and that's the crux of all this. At a time we're told of growing public mistrust in national institutions and so forth, isn't there a risk that the downside of talking more about uncertainty in statistics is the more aware people will become of it and the less those statistics are going to be trusted? SRC I think in general, if you are clear with people about how a number is calculated, the uncertainty that lies around it, the potential for revision, how things have evolved in the past - that's not for everybody, but for most people - is likely to enhance their trust and crucially, their understanding of the numbers that you're presenting and the context that you're putting around those. So making that available - as I say, you have to recognise that different people will have different appetites for the technical detail around this - then there are different ways of presenting the uncertainty not only about, you know, outturn statistics, but in my old gig around forecasts of where things are going in the future and doing that and testing it out with your users as to what they find helpful and what they don't is a valuable thing to be doing. MF You've been the stats regulator for a little while now. Do you think policymakers, perhaps under pressure to achieve certain outcomes, put too much reliance on statistics when it suits them, in order to show progress against some policy objective? I mean, do the limitations of statistics sometimes go out of the window when it's convenient. What's your view of how well certainty is being treated by those in government and elsewhere? SRC Well, I think certainly in my time as a forecaster, you were constantly reminding users of forecasters and consumers of that, that again, they're based on the best available information set that you have at the time. You explain where the judgements have come from but in particular, if you're trying to set policy in order to achieve a target for a particular statistic at some point in the future, for example, a measure of the budget deficit, then having an understanding of the uncertainty, the nature of it, the potential size of it in that context, helps you avoid making promises that it's not really in your power to keep with the best will in the world, given those uncertainties. And sometimes that message is taken closer to heart than at other times. MF Time I think to bring in Craig now at this point, as head of national accounts and the team that produces GDP at the ONS to talk about uncertainty in the real world of statistical production. With this specific example, Craig, you're trying to produce a single number, one single number that sums up progress or lack of it in the economy as a whole. What do you do to make the users of the statistics and the wider public aware of the fact that you're producing in GDP one very broad estimate with a lot of uncertainty built in? CRAIG MCLAREN Thanks, Miles. I mean, firstly, the UK economy - incredibly complex isn't it? The last set of numbers, we've got 2.7 trillion pounds worth of value. So if you think about how we bring all of those numbers together, then absolutely what we're doing is providing the best estimate at the time and then we start to think about this trade off between timeliness and accuracy. So even when we bring all of those data sources together, we often balance between what can we understand at the point of time, and then equally as we get more information from our businesses and our data suppliers, we evolve our estimates to understand more about the complex nature of the UK economy. So where we do that and how we do that it's looking quite closely at our data sources. So for example, we do a lot of surveys about businesses, and that uses data provided by businesses and that can come with a little bit of a what we call a time lag. So clearly when we run our monthly business surveys that's quite timely. We get that information quite quickly. But actually when we want to understand more detail about the UK economy, we have what we call structural surveys, and they're like our annual surveys. So over time, it can take us a couple of years actually to get a more complete picture of the UK economy. So in that time, absolutely. We may revise the estimate. Some businesses might say, well, we forgot about this. We're going to send you a revised number. We look at quite closely about the interplay between all the dynamics of the different parts of the economy, and then we confront the data set. So I think by bringing all this information together, both on the timeliness but also as we get a more complete picture, we start to refine our estimates. So in practice, what we do find is as we evolve our estimates, we can monitor that. We do look quite closely at the revisions of GDP, then we can produce analysis that helps our users understand those revisions and then we quite heavily focus on the need for rapid information that helps policymakers. So how can policymakers take this in a short period of time, but then we provide this information to understand the revision properties of what we would call that about how our estimates can change and evolve over time as we get additional information going forwards. MF So let's just look at the specifics, just to help people understand the process and how you put what you've just explained so well into action. Craig, the last quarterly estimate of GDP showed the economy contracted slightly. CM That's exactly right Miles and I think where we do produce our estimates in a timely basis, absolutely they will be subject to revision or more information as we get them. So this is why it's important, perhaps not to just focus on a single estimate. And I know in our most recent year in the economy, when that's all pretty flat, for example, or there's sort of a small fall, we do have a challenge in our communication. And that becomes a little bit back to the user understanding about how these numbers are compiled. And also perhaps how can you use additional information as part of that? So as I mentioned the UK economy is very complex, GDP is a part of that, but we also have other broader indicators as well. So when we do talk about small movements in the economy, we do need to think about the wider picture alongside that. MF Okay, so the last quarterly estimate, what was the potential for revision there? Just how big could that have been? CM We don't formally produce what we call range estimates at the moment. We are working quite closely with colleagues about how we might do that. So if you think about all the information that comes together to produce GDP, some of that is survey base which will have a degree of perhaps error around it, but we also use administrative data sources as well. So we have access to VAT records anonymized of course, which we bring in to our estimates. So the complex nature around the 300 different data sources that we bring in to make GDP means that having a range can be quite a statistical challenge. So what we do is we can actually look at our historical record of GDP revisions, and by doing that, in perhaps normal times, are quite unbiased. And by that, I mean we don't expect to see that to be significant either way. So we may revise up by perhaps 0.1 or down by 0.1, but overall, it's quite a sort of considered picture and we don't see radical revisions to our first estimates over time. MF You're saying that when revisions happen they are as likely to be up as they are to be down and there's no historical bias in there either way, because presumably, if there was that bias detectable, you would have acted some time ago, to make sure it was removed from the methodology. CM Exactly. Exactly. MF Just staying with this whole business of trying to make a very fast estimate because it is by international standards, a fast estimate of a very, very big subject. How much data in percentage terms would you say you've got at the point of that first estimate as a proportion of all the data you're eventually going to get when you produce your final number? CM It does depend on the indicator Miles. So the UK is one of the few countries in the world that produces monthly GDP. So we are quite rapid in producing monthly GDP. Robert did mention in the introduction of this session that with monthly GDP we do an output measure. So this is information we have quite quickly from businesses. So our monthly GDP estimate is based on one of the measures of the economy. So that uses the output measure. We get that from very rapid surveys, and that has quite a good coverage around 60 or 70% that we can get quite quickly. But then as we confront with our different measures of GDP, that's when the other sources come in. So we have our expenditure measure which takes a bit longer and then we have our income measure as well. So we have this process in the UK working for a monthly GDP which is quite rapid. We then bring in additional data sources and each of these measures have their own strengths and weaknesses until we can finally confront them fully in what we call an annual framework. And then often that takes us a couple of years to fully bring together all those different data sources so we can see the evolution of our GDP estimates as additional data comes in. MF Now looking back to what happened during the pandemic, of course, we saw this incredible downturn in the economy as the effects of lockdown took effect on international travel that shuddered to a halt for a while and everyone was staying at home for long periods. The ONS said at that point, it was the most significant downturn it had ever recorded. But then that was closely followed of course when those restrictions were eased by the most dramatic recovery ever recorded. Just how difficult was it to precisely manage the sheer scale of that change, delivered over quite a short period, relatively speaking, just how good a job did the system do under those very testing circumstances? CM It was incredibly challenging and I think not just for official statistics of course but for a range of outputs as well. Viewing it in context now, I think when the economy is going relatively stable, perhaps a 0.1 or 0.2 change, we might start to be a bit nervous if we saw some revisions to that but if you think about I believe at the time was around 20% drop in activity and actually the challenge of ensuring that our surveys were capturing what was happening in the economy in the UK, and in the ONS we stood up some additional surveys to provide us with additional information so we could understand what was happening. We still have that survey that's a fortnightly survey. So the challenge that we had was to try and get the information in near real time to provide us with the confidence and also obtaining information from businesses that are not at their place of work, so they weren't responding to our surveys. So we had to pivot to using perhaps telephone, collecting information in a different way really to understand the impact the economy. So when we look back now, in retrospect, perhaps a 20% drop should that have been 21 or 22%. It's all relative to the size of the drop is my main point I would make. So in the context of providing the information at the time, we were quite fortunate in the survey on the data collection front to really have a world leading survey for businesses that provided that information in near real time, which we could then use to understand the impacts on different parts of the UK economy. And I think now when we get new information in an annual basis, we can go back and just confront that data set and understand how reliable those estimates were, of course. MF Of course the UK was not alone in making some quite significant revisions subsequently to its initial estimates, what was done, though, at the time to let the users of the statistics know that because of those circumstances, which were so unusual, because the pace of change you were seeing was so dramatic, that perhaps there was a need for special caution around what the data was seeming to say about the state of the economy? CM Exactly, and it was unprecedented of course as well. So in our communication and coming back to how we communicate statistics, and also the understanding as well. We added some additional phrasing, if you like Miles, to ensure people did sort of understand and perhaps acknowledge the fact that in times like this, there is an additional degree of uncertainty. So the phrasing becomes very important, of course to reflect that these are estimates they're our first estimate at the time, they perhaps will be maybe more revised than perhaps typically we would expect to happen. So the narrative and communication and phrasing, and the use of the term ‘estimate', for example, became incredibly important in the time of the pandemic. And it's also incredibly important in the context of smaller movements as well. So while we had this large impact on COVID, it was our best estimate at the time, and I think it's important to reflect that, and as we get more and more understanding of our data sources, then those numbers will be revised. So what we did do was really make sure that was front and centre to our communications just to reflect the fact that there can be additional information after the fact but this is the best estimate at the time and there's a degree of uncertainty. And we've continued that work working closely with colleagues in the regulator to understand about how best we can continue to improve the way that we communicate around uncertainty in what is a complex compilation process as well. MF Professor Mairi Spowage. You've heard Sir Robert talking earlier about the importance of understanding uncertainty in statistics and the need to make sure our statistical system can deal with that, and explain it to people properly. You've heard Craig also there explain from a production point of view the length to which the ONS goes to deal with the uncertainty in its initial estimates of GDP and the experience of dealing with those dramatic swings around the pandemic. What is your personal take on this from your understanding of what the wider public and the users of economic statistics have a right to expect? What do you make of all that? MAIRI SPOWAGE So I think I'd just like to start by agreeing with Robert, that explaining uncertainty to users is really important. And in my view, and certainly some research that some of my colleagues at the Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence have done, which show that actually it increases confidence in statistics, because we all know that GDP statistics will be updated as more information comes in when these are presented as revisions to the initial estimates. And I think the more you can do to set expectations of users that this is normal, and sort of core part of estimation of what's going on in the economy, the better when these revisions inevitably happen. We very much see ourselves as not just a user of statistics, but also I guess a filter through which others consume them. We discuss the statistics that ONS produce a lot, and I think we like to highlight for example, if it's the first estimate that more information will be coming in where revisions have happened. And particularly when you're quite close to zero, as we've been over the last year or so, you know, folks can get quite excited about it being slightly above or below zero, but generally the statistics are in the same area even though they may be slightly negative or slightly positive. MF Yes, and I'd urge people to have a listen to our other podcast on the whole subject of ‘what is a recession' to perhaps get some more understanding of just how easily these so called technical recessions can in fact be revised away. So overall then Mairi, do you think the system is doing enough that people do appreciate, particularly on the subject of GDP, of course, because we've had this really powerful example recently, is doing enough to communicate the inherent uncertainty among those early estimates, or perhaps we couldn't be doing more? MS Yeah, absolutely. Obviously, there's different types of uncertainty and the way that you can communicate and talk about uncertainty when you're producing GDP statistics is slightly different to that, that you might talk about things like labour market statistics, you know. I know there are a lot of issues with labour market statistics at the moment, but obviously, the issues with labour market statistics in normal times is really about the fact it's based on a survey and that therefore has an inherent uncertainty due to the sampling that has to be done. And it might mean that a seemingly you know, an increase in say unemployment from one quarter to the next isn't actually a significant difference. Whereas with GDP, it's much more about the fact that this is only a small proportion of the data that will eventually be used to estimate what's happened in this period in the economy. And over time we'll sort of be building it up. I think the ONS are doing a good job in trying to communicate uncertainty in statistics but I think we could always do more. I think having you know, statisticians come on and talk about the statistics and pointing these things out proactively is a good idea. So much more media engagement is definitely a good idea. As I said, we try and through you know informal means like blogs and podcasts like this, to talk about the data that have been produced. And you know, when there are interesting features of it, which are driving some of the changes and to what extent those might change. So, one of the features over the last year for 2023 has been the influence of, you know, things like public sector strikes on the data, because when there's less activity in the public sector that also changes the profile of growth over the year quite a lot. And that's been very influential over 2023. So I think it's important that there's more discussion about this and, to be honest, more knowledge in economic circles about how these statistics are put together. Or you know, I'm an economic statistician rather than an economist per se, and I think the more knowledge and awareness that can be amongst economic commentators on these issues, I think the better because if we're upfront about the uncertainty, I think it increases the confidence when these revisions inevitably happen. MF Perhaps then it is the way the statistics are told in the media and elsewhere? Of course, they're invested by those observers with more authority perhaps than they deserve. Particularly, of course, it must be very tempting if you're a politician and the numbers are going your way, then obviously you want people to believe they are absolutely 100% accurate. MS Absolutely. We're in a funny situation at the moment. I mean, you know, our research institute focuses a lot on the Scottish economy. And the data for Scotland for 2023 shows... Yes, it shows two quarters of contraction and two quarters of growth, but they're not joined together. So there wasn't a technical recession in Scotland. But you know, over the year, basically, the Scottish and UK economies have had a really poor year with hardly any growth. But you know, I haven't seen it yet, but I'm expecting that there will be some people, you know, sort of crowing about that, like it's really showing that the Scottish economy is doing better or something when it's not really. So there will always be politicians who try to you know, over interpret changes in the data. Another example would be the first estimates of quarterly growth in the first part of 2023 showed 0.4 growth in Scotland compared to 0.1 in the UK, and there were politicians saying that Scotland was growing four times as fast as the UK. These things will happen, but you know, one of our roles to be honest is in our regular blogs and communications with the policy community, particularly in Scotland, but also beyond, is to point these things out and say that they're a bit silly. That no doubt these things will be revised and come closer together and nobody should get too excited about them. MF Thinking particularly about when you're looking at levels of geography different from the UK for yourselves in Scotland and from where I'm sitting here in Wales as well, for that matter. Do the data tend to become more or less accurate, should we have more or less confidence in the sort of datasets we're seeing for those different levels of geography? MS Well, generally it becomes more unreliable, and it's subject to more uncertainty. A lot of the data that's used is based on business surveys for estimating what's going on in the economy. And there are two areas of uncertainty there. The samples at smaller geographies are smaller so it's greater uncertainty because of sampling variability. But there's also a key problem on the data infrastructure in the UK that business data - this is across GB because Northern Ireland's is collected slightly differently - is collected on units which are GB wide. So it does make estimating what's going on in the parts of GB quite challenging. And there are some additional estimation procedures that need to be done to actually say what's going on in Scotland or in Wales. So it does add an additional layer of uncertainty to any sort of economic estimation at sub-UK geographies. MF I should add at that point that improving the quality of regional sub-national data has always been an important part of the ONS's work and continues to be part of its strategic drive. But Sir Robert, from what you've seen recently, particularly over the last year, the way that GDP estimates have been used in the media and in politics, and particularly the whole business of comparing quite small differences in GDP change internationally and the significance that's invested in that, the relative growth rates between one country or another. Has there been too much discussion around that; has too much weight being put on that recently from where you've been sitting? SRC Well, I think just to pick up on the point that Mairi was making, you can end up investing, you know, much too much significance in comparisons of what's going on in one place and in another place over a relatively short period of time in which there's likely to be noise in those numbers. So, as she said, the idea that you know, taking one area where the growth is 0.4 in a quarter and another where it's 0.1 and saying that one economy is growing four times more quickly, while strictly true on the basis of those that is really not an informative comparison, you have to look over a longer period for both. When you get to international comparisons, there's the additional issue of the extent to which although there are international standards and best practices as to how, for example, national accounts are put together. The way in which this is actually carried out from place to place can be done in different ways that make those sorts of comparisons again, particularly over short periods, but also when the economy is doing strange things as it was during the course of the pandemic, particularly tricky. So in the GDP context, obviously, there was the question mark about having big changes in the composition of what the education and health sectors were doing as we went into the period of lockdown and therefore judging how the output of those sectors had changed was a really very tricky conceptual judgement to make. And one of the issues that arose about trying to make international comparisons is that different people will be doing that in different ways, depending in part on how they measure the outputs of health and education under normal circumstances. So if you are going to do international comparisons, it's certainly better to look over a longer period. So you're avoiding being misled by short term noise but also having a care to the way in which methodologies may differ, and that that may matter that sometimes more than it does allow others to see if this is actually a meaningful comparison of like for like. MF It's also worth pointing out, as I think we have in previous podcasts, that the UK is one of the few economies that does actually seek to measure the actual output of public services, whereas some countries just make broad assumptions about what those sectors have been doing. But it's also worth mentioning, I think that some countries simply don't revise as much as we do because their system makes an initial estimate, and then they don't return to it for some years in the case of a number of countries. SRC Yes, that's true. And so then the question is sometimes - and I think this arose relatively recently in the UK context - of the set of revisions that you look at and change the international comparison, but you know that some countries have not yet essentially done the same set of revisions. For example, the way in which you try to pull together the estimates of output income and expenditure at times afterwards as you have more information from annual surveys you have more information on incomes for example, from the tax system. So, again, at any given moment, even though you know, you're in both cases, trying to say well, what's our best sense of what was going on a year ago, different countries will be at different stages of the statistical production process and the proportion of the eventual total information set on which you base your estimates, you know, some countries will have incorporated more of that than less, and so a revision that you're doing this month, somebody else may not do for six months, and that again, complicates the picture, and really again, suggests that looking at international comparisons at too high frequency or too much in the recent past, there are bigger uncertainties and caveats that you ought to be placing around big calls and big interpretations based on that. MF Yes, and while it's hard enough to know where you are at any given point in the economy, it's even harder of course - infinitely harder you might say - to work out where on earth you're going to go next. You've spent a lot of time in the forecasting business, how are forecasters, and I know the Bank of England in particular is taking a good look at this at the moment - the data it relies upon in order to make its forecast - what can the statistical system be doing to support organisations with that unenviable task of having to look into the future and guide us on what is going to happen next? SRC Well, I think from the perspective of the forecasters themselves, many of the same principles that we've been talking to in terms of how the statistical system should communicate uncertainty applies in spades, in the case of forecasts where explaining how you've reached the judgements that you have, the uncertainty that you know, past forecast errors, that particular sensitivity of a forecast, a judgement that you'd be maybe making in some part of it, the more you can do to explain that increases people's trust rather than reduces it. From the perspective of the statistical producer helping the forecaster, I think, again, explanation, if you have got particular difficulties, particular reasons why you think there might be greater uncertainty than in the past around particular numbers, it's very important. The current evolution of the labour market statistics is a good example of that - you need to be talking to the big users and the big forecasters about the particular uncertainties, there may be at a given time so they can take account of that as best they can. On the other hand, having been a forecaster for 10 years, I certainly took the view that for forecasters to complain about revisions in economic data is like sailors complaining about waves in the sea. I'm afraid that is what you're dealing with. That's what you have to sail on and everybody makes their best effort to come up with the best possible numbers, but it's a fact of life. And your knowledge and understanding of what's going on in the past now, and how that informs your judgements in the future evolves over the time. It doesn't remain static and you're gazing through a murky cloud at some time, but that doesn't reduce the importance of doing the best job you can. MF Final word then for the forecasters and for everybody else. The statistics are reliable but understand their limitations. SRC Yeah. MF Well, that's it for another episode of Statistically Speaking. Thanks to Sir Robert Chote, Professor Mairi Spowage, and Dr. Craig McLaren, and of course, thanks to you, as always for listening. You can subscribe to future episodes of this podcast on Spotify, Apple podcasts, and all the other major podcast platforms. And you can follow us on X, previously known as Twitter, via the @ONSfocus feed. I'm Miles Fletcher and from myself and producer Steve Milne. Goodbye ENDS.
This month we talk about what might have been in the Arthur C Clarke Awards, the latest weird discovery from JWST, the most detailed simulation of the Universe yet, British space plans, giggle at a Space Force painting, and have a look at what you can see in the sky this month. Produced by Paul, Jen, John, Damien & Dustin
In this episode we talk about the growth of data use in the media and the potential impact of misinformation on the public's trust in official statistics. Navigating podcast host Miles Fletcher through this minefield is Prof Sir David Spiegelhalter, from the University of Cambridge; Ed Humpherson, Head of the Office for Statistics Regulation; and award-winning data journalist Simon Rogers. Transcript MILES FLETCHER Welcome again to Statistically Speaking, the official podcast of the UK's Office for National Statistics, I'm Miles Fletcher. Now we've talked many times before in these podcasts about the rise of data and its impact on our everyday lives. It's all around us of course, and not least in the media we consume every day. But ‘what' or ‘who' to trust: mainstream media, public figures and national institutions like the ONS, or those random strangers bearing gifts of facts and figures in our social media feeds? To help us step carefully through the minefields of misinformation and on, we hope, to the terra firma of reliable statistical communication, we have three interesting and distinguished voices, each with a different perspective. Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter is a well-known voice to UK listeners. He's chair of the Winton Centre for Risk Evidence Communication at the University of Cambridge and was a very prominent voice on the interpretation of public health data here during the COVID pandemic. Also, we have Ed Humpherson, Director General of regulation and head of the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR), the official stats watchdog if you like, and later in this podcast, I'll be joined by award winning data journalist and writer Simon Rogers, who now works as data editor at Google. Professor, you've been one of the most prominent voices these last few years – a fascinating few years, obviously, for statistics in which we were told quite frankly, this was a golden age for statistics and data. I mean, reflecting on your personal experience as a prominent public voice in that debate, when it comes to statistics and data, to be very general, how well informed are we now as a public, or indeed, how ill-informed on statistics? DAVID SPIEGELHALTER I think things have improved after COVID. You know, for a couple of years we saw nothing but numbers and graphs on the news and in the newspapers and everywhere, and that went down very well. People didn't object to that. In fact, they wanted more. And I think that has led to an increased profile for data journalism, and there's some brilliant ones out there. I'm just thinking of John Burn-Murdoch on the FT but lots of others as well, who do really good work. Of course, in the mainstream media there is still the problem of non-specialists getting hold of data and getting it wrong, and dreadful clickbait headlines. It is the sub editors that wreck it all just by sticking some headline on what might be a decent story to get the attention and which is quite often misleading. So that's a standard problem. In social media, yeah, during COVID and afterwards, there are people I follow who you might consider as - I wouldn't say amateurs at all, but they're not professional pundits or media people - who just do brilliant stuff, and who I've learned so much from. There are also some terrible people out there, widespread misinformation claims which are based on data and sound convincing because they have got numbers in them. And that, I mean, it's not a new problem, but now it is widespread, and it's really tricky to counter and deal with, but very important indeed. MF So the issue aside from - those of us who deal with the media have heard this a hundred times - “I don't write the headlines”, reporters will tell you when you challenge that misleading kind of headline. But would you say it's the mainstream media then, because they can be called out on what they report, who broadly get things right? And that the challenge is everything else - it's out there in the Wild West of social media? DS Yeah, mainstream media is not too bad, partly because, you know, we've got the BBC in this country, we've got regulations, and so it's not too bad. And social media, it's the Wild West. You know, there are people who really revel in using numbers and data to make inappropriate and misleading claims. MF Is there anything that can be done? Is it the government, or even those of us like the ONS who produce statistics, who should we be wading in more than we do? Should we be getting out there onto the social media platforms and putting people right? DS It's difficult I mean, I don't believe in sort of censorship. I don't think you can stop this at source at all. But just because people can say this, it doesn't give them a right for it to be broadcast wide, in a way and to be dumped into people's feeds. And so my main problem is with the recommendation algorithms of social media, where people will see things because it's getting clicks, and the right algorithm thinks persona will like it. And so we just get fed all this stuff. That is my real problem and the obscurity and the lack of accountability of recommendation algorithms right across social media is I think, a really shocking state of affairs. Of course, you know, we come on to this later, but we should be doing something about education, and actually sort of pre-empting some of the misunderstandings is something I feel very strongly about with my colleagues. You've got to get in there quick, and rather than being on the backfoot and just reacting to false claims that have been made, you've got to sort of realise how to take the initiative and to realise what misunderstandings, misinterpretations can be made, and get in there quickly to try to pre-empt them. But that of course comes down to the whole business of how ONS and others communicate their data. MF Because when you ask the public whether they trust them - and the UK statistics authority does this every two years - you ask the public if they trust ONS statistics, and a large proportion of them say they do. But of course, if they're not being presented with those statistics, then they're still going to end up being misled. DS Yeah, I mean, it's nice to get those responses back. But, you know...that's in terms of respondents and just asking a simple question, do you trust something or not? I think it's good to hear but we can't be complacent about that at all. I'm massively influenced by the approach of the philosopher, Baroness Onora O'Neill, who really makes a sharp distinction between organisations wanting to be trusted and revelling in being trusted, and she says that shouldn't be your objective to be trusted. Your objective should be to be trustworthy, to deserve trust, and then it might be offered up to you. And so the crucial thing is trustworthiness of the statistics system and in the communications, and that's what I love talking about, because I think it's absolutely important and it puts the responsibility really firmly back to the communicator to demonstrate trustworthiness. MF So doing more as stats producers to actually actively promote data and get people to come perhaps away from the social platforms, and to have their own websites that present data in an accessible way, in an understandable way, where people can get it for nothing without requiring an expensive subscription or something, as some of the best of the media outlets would require. DS The other thing I'd say is there's no point of being trustworthy if you're dull, as no one's going to look at it or take any notice, and other media aren't going to use it. So I think it's really worthwhile to invest, make a lot of effort to make what you're putting out there as attractive, as vivid and as grabbing as possible. The problem is that in trying to do that, I mean, that's what a lot of communicators and media people want to do, because of course they want people to read their stuff. But what that tends to do largely is make their stuff kind of opinionated and have a very strong line, essentially to persuade you to either do something or think something or buy something or vote something. So much communication has to do with persuading that I think it's just completely inappropriate. In this context, what we should be doing is informing people. In a way we want to persuade them to take notice, so that's why you want to have really good quality communications, vivid, get good people out there. But in the end, they're just trying to inform people, and that's why I love working with ONS. I just think this is a really decent organisation whose job is just trying to raise the...to obviously provide official statistics...but in their communications, it's to try to raise the level of awareness raise the level of discussion, and by being part of a non -ministerial department, they're not there, the comms department, to make the minister look good, or to make anyone look good. It's just there to tell people how it is. MF Exactly. To put that data into context. Is this a big number or is this is a small number, right? Adjectives can sometimes be very unhelpful, but often the numbers don't speak for themselves, do they. DS Numbers never speak for themselves, we imbue them with meaning, which is a great quote as well from Nate Silver. MF And in doing that, of course, you have to walk the same line that the media do, in making them relevant and putting them into context, but not at the same time distorting them. There's been a big debate going on recently, of course, about revisions. And if you've listened to this podcast, which we'd always advise and consume other articles that the ONS has published, we've said a lot about the whole process of revising GDP, and the uncertainty that's built into those initial estimates, which although helpful, are going to be pretty broad. And then of course, when the picture changes dramatically, people are kind of entitled to say, oh hang on, you told us this was something different and the narrative has changed. The story has changed because of that uncertainty with the numbers, shouldn't you have done more to tell us about that uncertainty. That message can sometimes get lost, can't it? DS Yeah, it's terribly important. You've got to be upfront. We develop these five points on trustworthy communication and the first one was inform, not persuade. And the second is to be balanced and not to have a one-sided message to tell both sides of the story, winners and losers, positives and negatives. And then to admit uncertainty, to just say what you don't know. And in particular, in this case, “provisionality”, the fact that things may change in the future, is incredibly important to emphasise, and I think not part of a lot of discussion. Politicians find it kind of impossible to say I think, that things are provisional and to talk about quality of the evidence and limitations in the evidence, which you know, if you're only basing GDP on a limited returns to start with, on the monthly figures, then you need to be clear about that. And the other one is to pre-empt the misunderstandings, and again, that means sort of getting in there first to tell you this point, this may change. This is a provisional judgement, and you know, I think that that could be emphasised yet more times, yet more. MF And yet there's a risk in that though, of course the message gets lost and diluted and the... DS Oh no, it always gets trotted out - oh, we can't admit uncertainty. We can't tell both sides of story. We have to tell a message that is simple because people are too stupid to understand it otherwise, it's so insulting to the audience. I really feel a lot of media people do not respect their audience. They treat them as children - oh we've got to keep it simple, we mustn't give the nuances or the complexity. All right, if you're going to be boring and just put long paragraphs of caveats on everything, no one is going to read that or take any notice of them. But there are ways to communicate balance and uncertainty and limitations without being dull. And that's what actually media people should focus on. Instead of saying, oh, we can't do that. You should be able to do it. Good media, good storytelling should be able to have that nuance in. You know, that's the skill. MF You're absolutely right, you can't disagree with any of that, and yet, in communicating with the public, even as a statistics producer, you are limited somewhat by the public's ability to get used to certain content. I mean, for example, the Met Office recently, a couple of years back, started putting in ‘percentage of chance of rainfall', which is something that it hadn't done before. And some work on that revealed just how few people actually understood what they were saying in that, and what the chances were actually going to be of it raining when they went out for the afternoon's work. DS Absolute nonsense. That sorry, that's completely I mean, I completely rely on those percentages. My 90-year-old father used to understand those percentages. Because it's a novelty if you are going to ask people what they understand, they might say something wrong, such as, oh, that's the percentage of the area that it's going to rain in or something like that. No, it's the percentage of times it makes that claim that it's right. And those percentages have been used in America for years, they're completely part of routine forecast and I wouldn't say the American public is enormously better educated than the British public. So this is just reluctance and conservatism. It's like saying oh well people don't understand graphs. We can't put up line graphs on the news, people don't understand that. This is contempt for the public. And it just shows I think, a reluctance to make an effort to explain things. And people get used to stuff, once they've learned what a graph looks like, when they see it again, then they'll understand it. So you need to educate the public and not, you know, in a patronising way, it's just that, you know, otherwise you're just being misleading. If you just say, oh, you know, it'll rain or not rain you're just misleading them. If you just say it might rain, that's misleading. What does that mean? It can mean different things. I want a percentage and people do understand them, when they've got some experience of them. MF And what about certainty in estimates? Here is a reaction we add to the migration figures that ONS published earlier in the summer. Somebody tweeted back to say, well estimates, that's all very good but I want the actual figures. I want to know how many people have migrated. DS Yeah, I think actually, it's quite a reasonable question. Because, you know, you kind of think well can't you count them, we actually know who comes in and out of the country. In that case it's really quite a reasonable question to ask. I want to know why you can't count them. And in fact, of course ONS is moving towards counting them. It's moving away from the survey towards using administrative data to count them. So I think in that case, that's quite a good question to ask. Now in other situations, it's a stupid question. If you want to know if someone says, oh, I don't want an estimate of how many people you know, go and vote one way or do something or other, I want to know how many, well then you think don't be daft. We can't go and ask everybody this all the time. So that's a stupid question. So the point is that in certain contexts, asking whether something is an estimate or not, is reasonable. Sometimes it's not and that can be explained, I think, quite reasonably to people. MF And yet, we will still want to be entertained. We also want to have numbers to confirm our own prejudices. DS Yeah, people will always do that. But that's not what the ONS is for, to confirm people's prejudices. People are hopeless at estimating. How many, you know, migrants there are, how many people, what size ethnic minorities and things, we know if you ask people these numbers, they're pretty bad at it. But people are bad at estimating all numbers. So no, it's ONS's job to try to explain things and in a vivid way that people will be interested in, particularly when there's an argument about a topic going on, to present the evidence, not one side or the other, but that each side can use, and that's why I really feel that the ONS's migration team, you know, I have a lot of respect for them, when they're changing their format or consulting on it, they go to organization's on both sides. They go to Migration Watch and the Migration Observatory and talk to them about you know, can they understand what's going on, is this data helping them in their deliberations. MF Now, you mentioned earlier in the conversation, education, do we have a younger generation coming up who are more stats literate or does an awful lot more need to be done? DS A lot more needs to be done in terms of data education in schools. I'm actually part of a group at the Royal Society that is proposing a whole new programme called mathematics and data education, for that to be put together within a single framework, because a lot of this isn't particularly maths, and maths is not the right way or place to teach it. But it still should be an essential part of education, understanding numbers, understanding data, their limitations and their strengths and it uses some numeracy, uses some math but it's not part of maths. The problem has always been where does that fit in the syllabus because it doesn't, particularly at the moment. So that's something that every country is struggling with. We're not unique in that and, and I think it's actually essential that that happens. And when you know, the Prime Minister, I think quite reasonably says people should study mathematics until 18. I mean, I hope he doesn't mean mathematics in the sense of the algebra and the geometry that kids do, get forced to do essentially, for GCSE, and some of whom absolutely loathe it. And so, but that's not really the sort of mathematics that everyone needs. Everyone needs data literacy. Everyone needs that. MF Lies, damned lies and statistics is an old cliche, it's still robustly wheeled out in the media every time, offering some perceived reason to doubt what the statisticians have said. I mean looking ahead, how optimistic are you, do you think that one day we might finally see the end of all that? DS Well my eyes always go to heaven, and I just say for goodness sake. So I like it when it's used, because I say, do you really believe that? You know, do you really believe that, because if you do you're just rejecting evidence out of hand. And this is utter stupidity. And nobody could live like that. And it emphasises this idea somehow, among the more non-data-literate, it encourages them to think that numbers they hear either have to be sort of accepted as God given truths or rejected out of hand. And this is a terrible state to be in, the point is we should interpret any number we hear, any claim based on data, same as we'd interpret any other claim made by anybody about anything. We've got to judge it on its merits at the time and that includes do we trust the source? Do I understand how this is being explained to me? What am I not being told? And so why is this person telling me this? So all of that comes into interpreting numbers as well. We hear this all the time on programmes like More or Less, and so on. So I like it as a phrase because it is so utterly stupid, then so utterly, easily demolished, that it encourages, you know, a healthy debate. MF We're certainly not talking about good statistics, we're certainly not talking about quality statistics, properly used. And that, of course, is the role of the statistics watchdog as we're obliged to call him, or certainly as the media always call him, and that's our other guest, Ed Humpherson. Ed, having listened to what the professor had to say there, from your perspective, how much misuse of statistics is there out there? What does your organisation, your office, do to try and combat that? ED HUMPHERSON Well, Miles the first thing to say is I wish I could give you a really juicy point of disagreement with David to set off some kind of sparky dialogue. Unfortunately, almost everything, if not everything that David said, I completely agree with - he said it more fluently and more directly than I would, but I think we are two fellow travellers on all of these issues. In terms of the way we look at things at the Office for Statistics Regulation that I head up, we are a statistics watchdog. That's how we are reported. Most of our work is, so to speak, below the visible waterline: we do lots and lots of work assessing reviewing the production of statistics across the UK public sector. We require organisations like the ONS, but also many other government departments, to be demonstrating their trustworthiness; to explain their quality; and to deliver value. And a lot of that work just goes on, week in week out, year in year out to support and drive-up evidence base that's available to the British public. I think what you're referring to is that if we care about the value and the worth of statistics in public life, we can't just sort of sit behind the scenes and make sure there's a steady flow. We actually have to step up and defend statistics when they are being misused because it's very toxic, I think, to the public. Their confidence in statistics if they're subjected to rampant misuse or mis explanation of statistics, it's all very well having good statistics but if they go out into the world and they get garbled or misquoted, that I think is very destructive. So what we do is we either have members of the public raise cases with us when they see something and they're not they're not sure about it, or indeed we spot things ourselves and we will get in contact with the relevant department and want to understand why this thing has been said, whether it really is consistent with the underlying evidence, often it isn't, and then we make an intervention to correct the situation. And we are busy, right, there's a lot there's a lot of there's a lot of demand for work. MF Are instances of statistical misuse on the rise? EH We recently published our annual summary of what we call casework - that's handling the individual situations where people are concerned. And we revealed in that that we had our highest ever number of cases, 372, which might imply that, you know, things are getting worse. I'd really strongly caution against that interpretation. I think what that increase is telling you is two other things. One is, as we as the Office for Statistics Regulation, do our work, we are gradually growing our profile and more people are aware that they can come to us, that's the first thing this is telling you; and the second thing is that people care a lot more about statistics and data now, exactly as Sir David was saying that this raised profile during the pandemic. I don't think it's a sign that there's more misuse per se. I do think perhaps, the thing I would be willing to accept is, there's just a generally greater tendency for communication to be datafied. In other words, for communication to want to use data: it sounds authoritative, it sounds convincing. And I think that may be driving more instances of people saying well, a number has been used there, I want to really understand what that number is. So I would be slightly cautious about saying there is more misuse, but I would be confident in saying there's probably a greater desire to use data and therefore a greater awareness both of the opportunity to complain to us and of its importance. MF Underlying all of your work is compliance with the UK code of practice for statistics, a very important document, and one that we haven't actually mentioned in this podcast so far… EH Shame on you, Miles, shame on you. MF We're here to put that right, immediately. Tell us about what the code of practice is. What is it for? what does it do? EH So the Code of Practice is a statutory code and its purpose is to ensure that statistics serve the public good. And it does that through a very simple structure. It says that in any situation where an individual or an organisation is providing information to an audience, there are three things going on. There's the trustworthiness of the speaker, and the Code sets out lots of requirements on organisations as to how they can demonstrate they're trustworthiness. And it's exactly in line with what David was saying earlier and exactly in line with the thinking of Onora O'Neill – a set of commitments which demonstrate trustworthiness. Like a really simple commitment is to say, we will pre-announce at least four weeks in advance when the statistics are going to be released, and we will release them at the time that we say, so there is no risk that there's any political interference in when the news comes out. It comes out at the time that has been pre-announced. Very clear commitment, very tangible, evidence-based thing. It's a binary thing, right? You either do that or you do not. And if you do not: You're not being trustworthy. The second thing in any situation where people are exchanging information is the information itself. What's its quality? Where's this data from? How's it been compiled? What are its strengths and limitations? And the code has requirements on all of those areas. That is clarity of what the numbers are, what they mean, what they don't mean. And then thirdly, in that exchange of information, is the information of any use to the audience? It could be high, high quality, it could be very trustworthy, but it could, to use David's excellent phrase, it could just be “dull”. It could be irrelevant, it could not be important. And the value pillar is all about that. It's all about the user having relevant, insightful information on a question that they care about. That's, Miles, what the Code of Practice is: it's trustworthiness, it's quality and it's value. And those things we think are kind of pretty universal actually, which is why they don't just apply now to official statistics. We take them out and we apply them to all sorts of situations where Ministers and Departments are using numbers, we always want to ask those three questions. Is it trustworthy? Is it quality, is it value? That's the Code. MF And when they've satisfied your stringent requirements and been certified as good quality, there is of course a badge to tell the users that they have been. EH There's a badge - the badge means that we have accredited them as complying with that Code of Practice. It's called the National Statistics badge. The term is less important and what it means what it means is we have independently assessed that they comply in full with that Code. MF Most people would have heard, if they have heard of the OSR's work, they'll have seen it perhaps in the media. They'll have seen you as the so-called data watchdog, the statistics watchdog. It's never gently explained as it it's usually ‘slammed', ‘criticised', despite the extremely measured and calm language you use, but you're seen as being the body that takes politicians to task. Is that really what you do? It seems more often that you're sort of gently helping people to be right. EH That's exactly right. I mean, it's not unhelpful, frankly, that there's a degree of respect for the role and that when we do make statements, they are taken seriously and they're seen as significant, but we are not, absolutely not, trying to generate those headlines. We are absolutely not trying to intimidate or scare or, you know, browbeat people. Our role is very simple. Something has been said, which is not consistent with the underlying evidence. We want to make that clear publicly. And a lot of time what our intervention does actually is it strengthens the hand of the analysts in government departments so that their advice is taken more seriously at the point when things are being communicated. Now, as I say, it's not unwelcome sometimes that our interventions do get reported on. But I always try and make these interventions in a very constructive and measured way. Because the goal is not column inches. Absolutely not. The goal is the change in the information that's available to the public. MF You're in the business of correcting the record and not giving people a public shaming. EH Exactly, exactly. And even correcting the record actually, there's some quite interesting stuff about whether parliamentarians correct the record. And in some ways, it'd be great if parliamentarians corrected the record when they have been shown to have misstated with statistics. But actually, you could end up in a world where people correct the record and in a sort of tokenistic way, it's sort of, you know, buried in the depths of the Hansard parliamentary report. What we want is for people not to be misled, for people to not think that, for example, the number of people in employment is different from what it actually is. So actually, it's the outcome that really matters most; not so much the correction as are people left understanding what the numbers actually say. MF Surveys show - I should be careful using that phrase, you know - nonetheless, but including the UKSA survey, show that the public were much less inclined to trust in the words of the survey. Politicians use of statistics and indeed, Chris Bryant the Labour MP said that politicians who have been who've been found to have erred statistically should be forced to apologise to Parliament. Did you take that on board? Is there much in that? EH When he said that, he was actually directly quoting instances we've been involved with and he talks about our role very directly in that sense. Oh, yeah, absolutely. We support that. It will be really, really good. I think the point about the correction, Miles, is that it shows it's a manifestation of a culture that takes fidelity to the evidence, truthfulness to the evidence, faithfulness to the evidence, it takes that seriously, as I say, what I don't want to get into is a world where you know, corrections are sort of tokenistic and buried. I think the key thing is that it's part of an environment in which all actors in public debate realise it's in everybody's interests or evidence; data and statistics to be used fairly and appropriately and part of that is that if they've misspoken, they correct the record. From our experience, by and large, when we deal with these issues, the politicians concerned want to get it right. What they want to do is, they want to communicate their policy vision, their idea of the policy or what the, you know, the state of the country is. They want to communicate that, sure, that's their job as politicians, but they don't want to do so in a way that is demonstrably not consistent with the underlying evidence. And in almost all cases, they are… I wouldn't say they're grateful, but they're respectful of the need to get it right and respect the intervention. And very often the things that we encounter are a result of more of a cockup than a conspiracy really - something wasn't signed off by the right person in the right place and a particular number gets blown out of proportion, it gets ripped from its context, it becomes sort of weaponized; it's not really as a deliberate attempt to mislead. Now, there are probably some exceptions to that generally positive picture I'm giving. but overall it's not really in their interests for the story to be about how they misuse the numbers. That's not really a very good look for them. They'd much rather the stories be about what they're trying to persuade the public of, and staying on the right side of all of the principles we set out helps that to happen. MF Your remit runs across the relatively controlled world sort of government, Parliament and so forth. And I think the UK is quite unusual in having a body that does this in an independent sort of way. Do you think the public expects you to be active in other areas, we mentioned earlier, you know, the wilder shores of social media where it's not cockup theories you're going to be hearing there, it's conspiracy theories based on misuse of data. Is there any role that a statistics regulator could possibly take on in that arena? EH Absolutely. So I mentioned earlier that the way we often get triggered into this environment is when members of the public raised things with us. And I always think that's quite a solemn sort of responsibility. You know, you have a member of the public who's concerned about something and they care about it enough to contact us - use the “raise a concern” part of our website - so I always try and take it seriously. And sometimes they're complaining about something which isn't actually an official statistic. And in those circumstances, even if we say to them, “well, this isn't really an official statistic”, we will say, “but, applying our principles, this would be our judgement”. Because I think we owe it to those people who who've taken the time to care about a statistical usage, we owe it to take them seriously. And we have stepped in. Only recently we're looking at some claims about the impact of gambling, which are not from a government department, but from parts of the gambling industry. We also look at things from local government, who are not part of central government. So we do we do look at those things, Miles. It's a relatively small part of our work, but, as I say, our principles are universal and you've got to take seriously a situation in which a member of the public is concerned about a piece of evidence. MF Professor Spiegelhalter, what do you make of this regulatory function that the OSR pursues, are we unusual in the UK in having something along those lines? DS Ed probably knows better than I do, but I haven't heard of anybody else and I get asked about it when I'm travelling and talking to other people. I have no conflict of interest. I'm Non-Executive Director for the UK Stats Authority, and I sit on the regulation committee that oversees the way it works. So of course, I'm a huge supporter of what they do. And as described, it's a subtle role because it's not to do with performing, you know, and making a big song and dance and going grabbing all that attention but working away just to try to improve the standard of stats in this country. I think we're incredibly fortunate to have such a body and in fact, we know things are never perfect and there's always room for improvement of course, but I think we're very lucky to have our statistical system. MF A final thought from you...we're at a moment in time now where people are anticipating the widespread implementation of AI, artificial intelligence, large language models and all that sort of thing. Threat or opportunity for statistics, or both? DS Oh, my goodness me, it is very difficult to predict. I use GPT a lot in my work, you know, both for sort of research and making inquiries about stuff and also to help me do codings I'm not very good at. I haven't yet explored GPT-4's capacity for doing automated data analysis, but I want to, and actually, I'd welcome it. if it's good, if you can put some data in and it does stuff - that's great. However, I would love to see what guardrails are being put into it, to prevent it doing stupid misleading things. I hope that that does become an issue in the future, that if AI is automatically interpreting data for example, that it's actually got some idea of what it's doing. And I don't see that that's impossible. I mean, there were already a lot of guardrails in about sexist statements, racist statements, violent statements and so on. There's all sorts of protection already in there. Well, can't we have protection against grossly misleading statistical analysis? MF A future over the statistics watchdog perhaps? DF Quite possibly. EH Miles, I never turn down suggestions for doing new work. MF So we've heard how statistics are regulated in the UK, and covered the role of the media in communicating data accurately, and now to give some insight into what that might all look like from a journalist's perspective, it's time to introduce our next guest, all the way from California, award-winning journalist and data editor at Google, Simon Rogers. Simon, welcome to Statistically Speaking. Now, before you took up the role at Google you were actually at the forefront of something of a data journalism movement here in the UK. Responsible for launching and editing The Guardian's data blog, looking at where we are now and how things have come on since that period, to what extent do you reckon journalists can offer some kind of solution to online misinterpretation of information? Simon Rogers At a time when misinformation is pretty rampant, then you need people there who can make sense of the world and help you make sense of the world through data and facts and things that are true, as opposed to things that we feel might be right. And it's kind of like there is a battle between the heart and the head out there in the world right now. And there are the things that people feel might be right, but are completely wrong. And where, I think, Data Journalists can be the solution to solving that. Now, having said that, there are people as we know who will never believe something, and it doesn't matter. There are people for whom it literally doesn't matter, you can do all the fact checks that you want, and I think that is a bit of a shock for people, this realisation that sometimes it's just not enough, but I think honestly, the fact that there are more Data Journalists now than before...There was an EJC survey, the European Journalism Centre did a survey earlier this year about the state of data journalism. There are way more data journalists now than there were the last time they did the survey. It's becoming much more...it's just a part of being a reporter now. You don't have to necessarily be identified as a separate data journalist to work with data. So we're definitely living in a world where there are more people doing this really important work, but the need, I would say it has never been greater. MF How do you think data journalists then tend to see their role? Is it simply a mission to explain, or do some of them see it as their role to actually prove some theories and vindicate a viewpoint, or is it a mixture, are there different types of data journalists? SR I would say there were as many types of data journalists as there are types of journalists. And that's the thing about the field, there's no standard form of data journalism, which is one of the things that I love about it. That your output at the end of the day can be anything, it can be a podcast or it can be an article or a number or something on social media. And because of the kind of variety, and the fact I think, that unlike almost any other role in the newsroom, there really isn't like a standard pattern to becoming a data journalist. As a result of that, I think what you get are very different kind of motivations among very different kinds of people. I mean, for me, personally, the thing that interested me when I started working in the field was the idea of understanding and explaining. That is my childhood, with Richard Scarry books and Dorling Kindersley. You know, like trying to understand the world a little bit better. I do think sometimes people have theories. Sometimes people come in from very sophisticated statistical backgrounds. I mean, my background certainly wasn't that and I would say a lot of the work, the stats and the way that we use data isn't necessarily that complicated. It's often things like, you know, is this thing bigger than that thing? Has this thing grown? You know, where in the world is this thing, the biggest and so on. But you can tell amazing stories that way. And I think this motivation to use a skill, but there are still those people who get inured by maths in the same way that I did when I was at school, you know, but I think the motivation to try and make it clear with people that definitely seems to me to be a kind of a common thread among most of the data journalists that I've met. MF Do you think that journalists therefore, people going into journalism, and mentioning no names, as an occupation...used to be seen as a bit less numerous, perhaps whose skills tended to be in the verbal domain. Do you think therefore these days you've got to have at least a feel for data and statistics to be able to be credible as a journalist? SR I think it is becoming a basic skill for lots of journalists who wouldn't necessarily consider themselves data journalists. We always said eventually it is just journalism. And the reason is because the amount of sources now that are out there, I don't think you can tell a full story unless you take account of those. COVID's a great example of that, you know, here's a story that data journalists, I think, performed incredibly well. Someone like John Burn-Murdoch on the Financial Times say, where they've got a mission to explain what's going on and make it clear to people at a time when nothing was clear, we didn't really know what was going on down the road, never mind globally. So I think that is becoming a really important part being a journalist. I mean, I remember one of my first big data stories at the Guardian was around the release of the coins database – a big spending database from the government - and we had it on the list as a “data story” and people would chuckle, snigger a little bit of the idea that there'll be a story on the front page of the paper about data, which they felt to be weird, and I don't think people would be snickering or chuckling now about that. It's just normal. So my feeling is that if you're a reporter now, not being afraid of data and understanding the tools that are there to help you, I think that's a basic part of the role and it's being reflected in the way that journalism schools are working. I teach here one semester a year at the San Francisco Campus of Medill. There's an introduction to data journalism course and we get people coming in there from all kinds of backgrounds. Often half the class are just, they put their hands up if they're worried about math or scared of data, but somehow at the end of the course they are all making visualisations and telling data stories, so you know, those concerns can always be overcome. MF I suppose it's not that radical a development really if you think back, particularly from where we're sitting in the ONS. Of course, many of the biggest news stories outside of COVID have been data driven. think only of inflation for example, the cost of living has been a big running story in this country, and internationally of course, over the last couple of years. Ultimately, that's a data driven story. People are relying on the statisticians to tell them what the rate of inflation is, confirming of course what they're seeing every day in the shops and when they're spending money. SR Yeah, no, I agree. Absolutely. And half of the stories that are probably about data, people don't realise they're writing about data. However, I think there is a tendency, or there has been in the past, a tendency to just believe all data without questioning it, in the way that as a reporter, you would question a human source and make sure you understood what they were saying. If we gave one thing and that thing is that reporters would then come back to you guys and say ask an informed question about this data and dive into a little bit more, then I think we've gained a lot. MF So this is perhaps what good data journalists are bringing to the table, perhaps and ability to actually sort out the good data from the bad data, and actually, to use it appropriately to understand uncertainty and understand how the number on the page might not be providing the full picture. SR Absolutely. I think it's that combination of traditional journalistic skills and data that to me always make the strongest storytelling. When you see somebody, you know, who knows a story inside out like a health correspondent, who knows everything there is to know about health policy, and then they're telling a human story perhaps about somebody in that condition, and then they've got data to back it up - it's like the near and the far. This idea of the near view and the far view, and journalism being the thing that brings those two together. So there's the view from 30,000 feet that the data gives you and then the individual view that the more kind of qualitative interview that you get with somebody who is in a situation gives you. The two things together - that's incredibly powerful. MF And when choosing the data you use for a story I guess it's about making sound judgements – you know, basic questions like “is this a big number?”, “is this an important number?” SR Yeah, a billion pounds sounds like a lot of money, but they need to know how much is a billion pounds, is it more about a rounding error for the government. MF Yes, and you still see as well, outside of data journalism I stress, you still see news organisations making much of percentage increases or what looks like a significant increase in something that's pretty rare to start with. SR Yeah, it's all relative. Understanding what something means relatively, without having to give them a math lesson, I think is important. MF So this talk about supply, the availability of data journalism, where do people go to find good data journalism, perhaps without having to subscribe? You know, some of the publications that do it best are after all behind paywalls, where do we find the good stuff that's freely available? SR If I was looking from scratch for the best data journalism, I think there are lots of places you can find it without having to subscribe to every service. Obviously, you have now the traditional big organisations like the Guardian, and New York Times, and De Spiegel in Germany, there is a tonne of data journalism now happening in other countries around the world that I work on supporting the Sigma Data Journalism Awards. And over half of those entries come from small one or two people units, you know, practising their data journalism in countries in the world where it's a lot more difficult than it is to do it in the UK. For example, Texty in Ukraine, which is a Ukrainian data journalism site, really, and they're in the middle of a war zone right now and they're producing data journalism. In fact, Anatoly Barranco, their data editor, is literally in the army and on the frontline, but he's also producing data journalism and they produce incredible visualisations. They've used AI in interesting ways to analyse propaganda and social media posts and stuff. And the stuff happening everywhere is not just limited to those big partners behind paywalls. And what you do find also, often around big stories like what's happened with COVID, people will put their work outside of the paywall. But um, yeah, data is like an attraction. I think visualisation is an attraction for readers. I'm not surprised people try and monetize that, but there is enough going on out there in the world. MF And all that acknowledged, could the producers of statistics like the ONS, and system bodies around the world, could we be doing more to make sure that people using this data in this way have it in forms have it available to be interpreted? Is there more than we can do? SR I mean, there was the JC survey that I mentioned earlier, it's definitely worth checking out because one thing it shows is that 57% of data journalists say that getting access to data is still their biggest challenge. And then followed by kind of like lack of resources, time pressure, things like that. PDFs are still an issue out there in the world. There's two things to this for me, on one side it's like, how do I use the data, help me understand what I'm looking at. On the other side is that access, so you know, having more kind of API's and easy downloads, things that are not formatted to look pretty but formatted for use. Those kinds of things are still really important. I would say the ONS has made tremendous strides, certainly since I was working in the UK, on accessibility to data and that's a notable way, and I've seen the same thing with gov.us here in the States. MF Well it's good to hear the way the ONS has been moving in the right direction. Certainly I think we've been tough on PDFs. SR Yes and to me it's noticeable. It's noticeable and you've obviously made a deliberate decision to do that, which is great. That makes the data more useful, right, and makes it more and more helpful for people. MF Yes, and at the other end of the chain, what about storing publishers and web platforms, particularly well you're at Google currently, but generally, what can these big platforms do to promote good data journalism and combat misinformation? I mean, big question there. SR Obviously, I work with Google Trends data, which is probably the world's biggest publicly available data set. I think a big company like Google has a responsibility to make this data public, and the fact that it is, you can download reusable datasets, is incredibly powerful. I'm very proud to work on that. I think that all companies have a responsibility to be transparent, especially when you have a unique data set. That didn't exist 20 years earlier, and it's there now and it can tell you something about how the world works. I mean, for instance, when we look at something like I mean, I've mentioned COVID before, but it's such a big event in our recent history. How people were searching around COVID is incredibly fascinating and it was important information to get out there. Especially at a time when the official data is always going to be behind what's actually happening out there. And is there a way you can use that data to predict stuff, predict where cases are going to come up... We work with this data every day and we're still just scratching the surface of what's possible with it. MF And when it comes to combating misinformation we stand, so we're told, on the threshold of another revolution from artificial intelligence, large language models, and so forth. How do you see that future? Is AI friend, foe, or both? SR I work for a company that is a significant player in the AI area, so I give you that background. But I think in the field of data, we've seen a lot of data users use AI to really help produce incredible work, where instead of having to read through a million documents, they can get the system to do it for them and pull out stories. Yeah, like any other tool, it can be anything but the potential to help journalists do their jobs better, and for good, I think is pretty high. I'm going to be optimistic and hope that that's the way things go. MF Looking optimistically to the future then, thank you very much Simon for joining us. And thanks also to my other guests, Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter and Ed Humpherson. Taking their advice on board then, when we hear or read about data through the news or experience it on social media, perhaps we should first always ask ourselves – do we trust the source? Good advice indeed. You can subscribe to new episodes of this podcast on Spotify, Apple podcasts, and all the other major podcast platforms. You can also get more information, or ask us a question, by following the @ONSFocus on X, or Twitter, take your pick. I'm Miles Fletcher, from myself and our producer Steve Milne, thanks for listening. ENDS
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Ein Vortrag des Islamwissenschaftlers Simon W. FuchsModeration: Katrin Ohlendorf**********Wissenschaftliche und einflussreiche populärwissenschaftliche Arbeiten zum modernen Islam und der sogenannten muslimischen Welt sind noch immer überwiegend auf den Westen bezogen, sagt der Islamwissenschaftler Simon W. Fuchs. Und das sei ein Problem.Simon W. Fuchs ist Islamwissenschaftler und derzeit Akademischer Rat auf Zeit am Orientalischen Seminar der Universität Freiburg. Ab Oktober 2023 tritt er eine Professur in Jerusalem an. Seinen Vortrag "A/Symmetrien, Europa und der globale Islam" hat er am 17. Januar 2023 im Rahmen des Kolloquiums "A/Symmetrie – Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven" gehalten. Veranstalter war die Junge Akademie, deren Mitglied er auch ist.**********+++ Islam +++ Islamwissenschaften +++ Geschichte +++ Europa +++ Westen +++ muslimische Welt +++ Aufklärung +++ Kolonialismus +++ Ungleichheit +++ Asymmetrie +++ Eurozentrismus +++ Wissenskanon +++ Vorurteile +++ Mythen +++ Stereotype +++ Islamophobie +++ Othering +++ Orientbild +++ Naher Osten +++ Südasien +++ Säkularisierung +++ Modernisierung +++ Demokratisierung +++ Demokratie +++**********Ihr hört in diesem Hörsaal:00:01 - Einführung mit Infos zu Vortrag und Redner02:31 - Vortragsbeginn05:19 - Überblick über den Vortragsinhalt05:53 - Literatur-Beispiele für den Vergleich der "muslimischen" mit der "westlichen" Welt20:17 - Prüfung der Argumente für angebliche Unterschiede44:40 - Fazit**********Quellen aus der Folge:Thilo Sarrazin, Feindliche Übernahme. Wie der Islam den Fortschritt behindert und die Gesellschaft bedroht (FinanzBuch Verlag: München, 2018) Cemal Kafadar, “The Question of Ottoman Decline,” Harvard Middle East and Islamic Review 4, no. 1-2 (1997-1998): 30-75. Bernard Lewis, Der Untergang des Morgenlandes. Warum die islamische Welt ihre Vormacht verlor (Bergisch Gladbach: Lübbe, 2002). Nabil Matar, In the Lands of the Christians. Arabic Travel Writing in the 17th Century (New York: Routledge, 2003) Kathryn A. Schwartz, “Did Ottoman Sultans Ban Print?,” Book History 20, no. 6 (2017): 1-39. Rushain Abbasi, “Did Premodern Muslims Distinguish the Religious and Secular? The Dīn-Dunyā Binary in Medieval Islamic Thought,” Journal of Islamic Studies 31, no. 2 (2020): 185-225. Wael Abu-'Uksa, Freedom in the Arab World. Concepts and Ideologies in Arabic Thought in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2016). weitere Quellen auf Anfrage **********Mehr zum Thema bei Deutschlandfunk Nova:Flüchtlingspolitik: Das Wir und die anderenSprache: Unlautere und böse RhetorikPostkolonialismus: Islamwissenschaftlerin Schirin Amir-Moazami**********Den Artikel zum Stück findet ihr hier.**********Ihr könnt uns auch auf diesen Kanälen folgen: Tiktok und Instagram.
Welcome to The So SO Show with Visit Southampton - light up your social life It's a look at life in the SO postcode with Zoe Hanson and Simon Clarke. This week Zoe gets her sea legs with the UKSA and we the tails of Southamptons dogs will be wagging for Dogstival. PLUS - it's our third birthday !! Thank you so much for listening and if you have a moment to leave a review we'd really appreciate it! Zoe and Simon xx
Welcome to The So SO Show with Visit Southampton - light up your social life It's a look at what's happening in the SO postcode with Zoe Hanson and Simon Clarke. This week we celebrate the long weekend with cocktails at Revolution in Bedford Place and discover more about training for a life in the maritime industry with UKSA. Plus we've been to see a very emotional performance of Annie at The Mayflower, you're invited to Southamptons biggest Eurovision party and Zoe does something unusual at Parkrun on The Common. Thanks for listening and if you've enjoyed please tell a friend and leave a review. Zoe and Simon xx
UKSA's £1.6million investment in space projects. Is the UK now investing in ‘spy balloons'? New test developed for deadly asian bat virus. Headteacher's warning over TikTok school protests. In this episode:UK Space Agency's Andrew Kuh on moon and Mars missionsJapan forced to destroy flagship H3 rocket in failed launchResearchers: Plants' genetic defences may hold key for crop protectionBritish scientist Maggie Aderin-Pocock honoured with her own Barbie dollHow beavers practise a good work/life balanceFollow us on Twitter #TechScienceDaily Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Jake Geer is the UK Space Agency's Chief of Staff. We talk about the agency, an overview of the UK space sector, civilian-military collaboration and much more. Jake on LinkedIn: Jacob Geer Link to UKSA funding: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/apply-for-funding-academic-community-and-educational Civil Service Job Search: https://www.civilservicejobs.service.gov.uk/csr/index.cgi UKSEDS https://ukseds.org/ Social media: Instagram Twitter LinkedIn YouTube Facebook For more resources on careers in space: https://spacecareers.uk/ Isaac on Twitter: @isaaccaletrio Intro and outro tracks: "Fanfare for Space" and "Discovery Hit" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ News segment background music from https://www.FesliyanStudios.com
Many of us ponder what lies in outer space. When we look up at the night sky, we see stars, the twinkle of a moving satellite and occasionally a distant planet. But one thing we don't see is the millions of pieces of junk filling up space. It's this debris that's causing problems for the existing technology that's up there and which we rely on.我们中的许多人都在思考外层空间的内容。当我们仰望夜空时，我们会看到星星，移动卫星的闪烁，偶尔还有一颗遥远的行星。但我们看不到的一件事是数百万块垃圾填满了空间。正是这些碎片给我们所依赖的现有技术带来了问题。The amount of space junk is increasing. Over the last few decades, satellites and rockets have been launched into space, littering the cosmos as they go. It's estimated there are now millions of discarded pieces of metal and other materials in orbit – everything from old rocket segments to accidentally dropped astronaut tools, and even flecks of paint. The fear is that if we don't start taking this litter out of the sky soon, it will become a significant threat to active satellites. Nobu Okada, Chief Executive of Astroscale – a company working on ways to clean up space junk – says hitting “even a small paint fleck… has enough power to blow up other satellites.”太空垃圾的数量正在增加。在过去的几十年里，卫星和火箭被发射到太空中，随处可见的垃圾。据估计，现在轨道上有数百万件废弃的金属和其他材料——从旧火箭部件到意外掉落的宇航员工具，甚至是油漆斑点。令人担忧的是，如果我们不尽快开始将这些垃圾带出天空，它将成为对活动卫星的重大威胁。致力于清理太空垃圾的公司 Astroscale 的首席执行官 Nobu Okada 表示，“即使是一个小的油漆斑点……也有足够的力量炸毁其他卫星。”Several ideas are being looked at to capturethe debris floating around in space. In 2018, the RemoveDebris spacecraft carried out various experiments, including testing a net that could snare a satellite and firing a harpoon at a target in orbit to try to catch it.正在研究几种想法来捕捉漂浮在太空中的碎片。 2018 年，RemoveDebris 航天器进行了各种实验，包括测试可以诱捕卫星的网，并向轨道上的目标发射鱼叉以试图捕捉它。This year the UK Space Agency is helping to fund new approaches to tracking satellites and debris in space. Jacob Geer from UKSA told the BBC: “Space surveillance and tracking is one of the key things we can do to keep safe those satellites we rely on now, and to make sure certain orbits don't become inaccessible for future generations because there's too much debris in them.”今年，英国航天局正在帮助资助追踪太空卫星和碎片的新方法。来自 UKSA 的 Jacob Geer 告诉 BBC：“太空监视和跟踪是我们可以做的关键事情之一，以确保我们现在依赖的那些卫星的安全，并确保某些轨道不会因为有太多里面有碎片。”It's clear that a solution is needed so a celestial deep clean can take place. But looking to the future, like any litter problem, we need to look at ways of creating less – and that shouldn't be the stuff of science fiction.很明显，需要一种解决方案才能进行天体深层清洁。但展望未来，就像任何垃圾问题一样，我们需要寻找减少创造的方法——这不应该是科幻小说的内容。词汇表outer space 外层空间，太空twinkle 闪烁，闪耀satellite 人造卫星junk 废弃的旧东西，垃圾debris 碎片，残片rocket 火箭launch 发射litter 丢弃垃圾the cosmos 宇宙orbit （天体围绕行星或恒星运行的）轨道segment （事物的） 部分，段astronaut 宇航员float 漂浮spacecraft 宇宙飞船snare 用罗网捕捉space surveillance and tracking 宇宙空间监视跟踪系统celestial 天空的，天外的deep clean 深层清洁science fiction 科幻小说，科幻电影
Meet CEO Ben Willows. Find out all there is to know about UKSA, how to be part of the program or how to support the program! "For over 30 years, we've been providing transformational on-the-water experiences and education. We're committed to widening access to maritime training, enhancing employment opportunities in the sector and, ultimately, transforming the lives of young people. From our unique waterfront campus in Cowes, on the Isle of Wight, we offer over 150 industry-leading courses, as well as personal development programmes and trips for schools and groups." Source: www.uksa.org For more information: www.uksa.org https://www.linkedin.com/in/ben-willows-63288b49/ #yachting #yacht #yachtlife #sailing #yachts #boat #boating #luxury #superyacht #luxuryyacht #boats #boatlife #sea #yachtdesign #luxurylifestyle #yachtlifestyle #yachtworld #megayacht #yachtcharter #motoryacht #sail #travel #yachtinglife #superyachts #sailboat #sailinglife #ocean #yachtinglifestyle #vlog #yachtinginternationalradio
In Today's Episode: We take a look back at the Black Arrow rocket, which flew Prospero to space 50 years ago this week; Space Forge cut the ribbon on a new facility; Astroscale team up with MDA and Thales Alenia Space on a UKSA funded feasibility study; Government announced R&D Spending increase with comment from the Minister; and ESA are looking to celebrate European space enthusiasts, educators and communicators. We'll talk about how you could win some incredible prizes. Today's #JoboftheWeek comes from Oxford Space Systems. Find us on https://Patreon.com/GiantLeap for unique membership perks such as access to our discord server and early roundup releases! If you'd like to feature your job as Job of the week, or you simply need to either visit our awesome space merch store; or find out more about other formats, head over to https://Giant-Leap.Space! #JoboftheWeek Link: https://oxford.zohorecruit.eu/recruit/Portal.na?iframe=false&digest=yvq63P39lvrWDf8ux5d0dN%405tAQ0enTMhYHZI4E.qa4
Jemima is now floating helplessly and untethered in deep space after Pod-Zero (who had gone mad chasing her for so long) tried to kill our heroic UK space engineer. Pod is trying to rescue her by liaising with everybody at UKSA, but they all seem to be at some big nationwide celebration and are all horribly drunk. So it now looks like their only chance of surviving this grave situation is by venturing into the smashed dark remains of Pod-Zero. Then trying to quickly land or crash upon on the surface of Pluto? ‘Pod to Pluto' is a scifi comedy audiodrama about a space engineer and a sarcastic AI on a 4 billion mile trip to Pluto to go turn off a lightbulb. Starring Laura England as Jemima Belafonte and Wayne Russell as Pod.
On this edition, UKSA CEO Ben Willows talks about the importance of the UK Sailing Academy to the maritime industry and to the Isle of Wight's youngsters. How world class and record-breaking sailors use their facilities alongside primary schools. And how their new sea.change initiative is designed to encourage teenagers into maritime careers. Podcast compiled and presented by Neil Sackley. email: h2o@bbc.co.uk
In this week's episode of BOAT Briefing, the team discuss the news of a rescue plan for Perini Navi, the new super-slick ClubSwan 125, and we dig into data around superyacht manufacturing in the US to discover if America is as good at building superyachts as it is at buying them. This week we talk to Ben Willows, the CEO of the UKSA, one of the world's foremost superyacht crew training facilities, about his ambitious plans for the organisationLinks:New Dockwalk: www.dockwalk.com Benetti Zazou: https://www.boatinternational.com/yachts/news/benetti-superyacht-launch-zazou Perini Navi rescue: https://www.boatinternational.com/yachts/news/perini-navi-bankruptcy ClubSwan 125: https://www.boatinternational.com/yachts/news/photos-construction-update-on-first-clubswan-125--34443 BOAT Pro: https://www.boatinternational.com/boat-pro Contact us: podcast@boatinternationalmedia.com
Today Mike and I are delighted to introduce Yvonne Ebdon from the UK Spa Association. Thank you to everyone who has listened so far. We would love to hear from you so please send us your emails to pooltalkuk@outlook.com or find us on facebook @PoolTalk.
Beth started out working with travel companies, and ended up settling on the Isle of Wight working with UKSA, a Watersports and sailing charity that has helped students from all over the world find a passion for the outdoors. When Covid hit in 2020 Beth ended up on furlough, and feeling a little lost she took herself off into the kitchen, and that’s where the magic happened. Over lockdown Beth has quickly become the ‘go to’ Instagram foodie for all things plant based, and now works in collaboration with some amazing brands who approach her because of her skill at recipe building. If you want more inspiration from Beth you can find her www.instagram.com/positive.pantry
Edmiston and the UKSA are pleased to announce an important collaboration between Edmiston, one of the world's leading yachting companies, and the UKSA, the leading maritime training organisation. The Edmiston Foundation has been established to address diversity within the Superyacht industry; specifically providing young people, especially those in the most underrepresented and disadvantaged groups, the opportunity to forge a career within the maritime industry.Source: https://uksa.org/edmiston-and-uksa-partner-to-launch-the.../Ben Willows, Chief Executive of UKSA, joins Yacht Crew Vlogs to talk about the new collaboration between Edmiston and the UKSA, promoting diversity within the Superyacht Industry!We are proud to highlight companies that are going above and beyond to highlight diversity and inclusion within the SuperYacht Industry. This is well worth a listen and well worth your support. For more information, or to support this initiative, please do head over to their website at https://uksa.org/
Ben Willows, Chief Executive at UKSA Superyacht joins us to discuss the new inclusivity programme for 1,200 young people, primarily those from disadvantaged backgrounds, to get into the superyacht industry, recently launched by UKSA and the Edmiston Foundation This will provide an excellent opportunity to forge a career in the industry at a time when prospects are challenging, as well as broadening diversity and inclusivity in our industry. In a broader context, according to a study from The Prince's Trust 1/4 of young people claim their future career prospects have already been damaged by COVID, and half feel no longer in control of their lives, this programme will be making a start for 1200 young people. #yachtcrew #training #diversity #yachtingpodcast #yachtcast
For a roundup of the latest information in the industry, with chat, banter and humor! - New training program launched by UKSA & Edmiston creating diversity & opportunities for young people. - #GreenWingsChallenge with Gym Marine Yachts & Interiors & Yacht Carbon Offset - New Addiction support for crew with launch of www.thecrewmess.org - Autonomous vessels, a new maritime potential worth £120 billion in next 10 years - #GreatBarrierReefCensus with Citizens of the Great Barrier Reef gaining great momentum and impact. - Economic Impact of Superyachts presented by #GenovaforYachting ...and much more! #superyachts #yachting #yachtcrew #maritime #marine #yachtnews #podcasting #yachtingpodcasts #yachting #yachtcast #yachtcrew
In Conversation with the dynamic Bianca Cefalo; she's a Space Systems Thermal Product Manager who enables Airbus Defence and Space UK to create and implement disruptive thermal management solutions on Next Generation Telecommunication Spacecraft. After a childhood spent playing with spare parts in her dad's garage and dreaming of tuning Formula 1 cars, in 2010 she founded 'UniNa Corse' - the first engineering Formula Student Team in Naples, then she graduated in Aerospace and Astronautics Engineering at the University 'Federico II' of Naples, Italy. Bianca has been playing Rocket Science across Berlin and London since 2013, contributing to the delivery of multiple Science Missions and Commercial Telecommunication Satellites sponsored by NASA, ESA, DLR, UKSA and EU – including the instrument HP3 of the NASA/JPL InSight Mars Mission.STEM Consultant, Space Advocate, Youths Mentor and Public Speaker - Bianca is cherishing every single minute in her Rocket Scientist suite and she is pursuing her most heartfelt quest: inspiring and empowering young girls across the World to unleash their inner fierce STEM fire! In this episode, Bianca shared her journey and how she became an accidental Rocket Scientist. She is a dynamic and fascinating individual who lives life fully, 360 degrees. We discussed how Space Technology powers our businesses and lives today; the importance of telemedicine which is critical right now among other products and technologies which are emerging to address pandemic times. We also get a little personal to get a look into how she manifests joy into her life. You are simply going to love this episode. Golden Nuggets: How to adapt when taking a leap and moving to a new country and city to integrate in your new environment 1. Take a risk to go on your new journey where you will most definitely experience a paradigm shift in your life; 2. Be open minded even if it comes with talking to strangers; 3. Immerse yourself in the city/country culture and make deep connections; 4. Find like minded individuals you can resonate with in this shared life experience, during this current space and time; 5. Shift your mindset to receive new knowledge and embrace diversity.This will help you to take bigger risks in your career and life. . . Connect with Bianca on Social Media LinkedIn: Bianca Cefalo Facebook: Bianca Cefalo Instagram: @cosmical_b Twitter: @Btherocketstar Website: biancacefalo.com . My mission is to help you find your vibes wherever you may be in your life journey! In life we have different seasons, highs and lows, this show will help you and hopefully change the trajectory of your life for good! I hope you like what you hear and stay tuned to this dial! #ireniavibes2020 If you have questions about booking me for your podcast/conference/workshop email me at infolivewithirenia@gmail.com. Connect with me on social media: Instagram:@livewithirenia Twitter: @livewithirenia The podcast hashtag is: #livewithirenia To have your questions and stories featured in future episodes, please connect with me here infolivewithirenia@gmail.com. . . Pay It Forward Subscribe to my podcast for free and leave a review on iTunes! This will help to increase the visibility of the show and help others to discover it even more. Please share it with a friend who will find this valuable. Feel free to take a picture of an episode which resonates with you and tag me on twitter/instagram. I would love this. Thank you so much! Until next time, find your vibes! . . @Livewithirenia Podcast was produced by Irenia Roussel including all branding, social media and artwork.
Ludwina Dautovic, Founder and CEO of The Room Xchange, in conversation with Bianca Cefalo - The Accidental Rocket Scientist.Ludwina and Bianca talk about the benefits of space exploration, how much rely on it and how it's changing how we live, work and play.In this episode we discuss:4.33 - Bianca's story of how she became the accidental rocket scientist5.20 - I love the oily engines and working with cars8.30 - How Bianca had to deal with sexism and judgment in the industry 11.59 - Benefits of space travel and what it provides us14.09 - No one would ever believe that posting on Facebook, or using an app or watching Netflix would be rocket science15.13 - The benefits of rocket science15.54 - The age of exploration - how the world was discovered17.01 - Can we live on Mars? Are there resources we can use?19.06 - Space exploration isn't as expensive as we think. Bianca compares the cost of professional football to space travel costs20.19 - Rocket scientists looking like our daughters will become the norm22.28 - Space for Women - Gender equality for women and girls in stem25.00 - Gender should not be part of the conversation26.30 - Don't miss Bianca's answer to my question - 'What are you doing that is changing how you live, work or play?'30.28 - Space for Women show online every SaturdayAbout Bianca CefaloBianca Cefalo is a Space Systems Thermal Product Manager who enables Airbus Defense and Space UK to create and implement disruptive thermal management solutions for Next Generation Telecommunication Spacecraft.After nearly a decade spent designing, simulating and qualifying innovative technologies that span from the Automotive to the Space industry, Bianca has learned that - in light of the ever shifting Global Geopolitical, Economic and Ethical landscapes - what truly protects market competitiveness for any business is the ability to consistently entrust change, diverse communication and creative thinking at multiple human and organizational levels.Since 2013 Bianca has been supporting Thermal Engineering and R&D communities across Berlin and London, contributing to the delivery of several Science and Commercial Telecoms Missions sponsored by NASA, ESA, DLR, UKSA and EU - including HP3 instrument embarked on the NASA/JPL InSight Mars Mission.Bianca holds a degree in Aerospace and Astronautical Engineering from the University of Naples 'Federico II'.At present, Bianca is cherishing every single minute in her Rocket Scientist suite and - as STEM Ambassador and Committee Member of the ‘Women's Engineering Society’ London and ‘Women in Aerospace’ Europe - she is ultimately pursuing her utmost heartfelt quest: inspiring young girls to become future fierce leaders in STEM industries.
While Anthony is away in Europe, Jake is joined by fellow space podcasters Matt and Jamie from the Interplanetary Podcast to discuss Jake's trip to California to see InSight and what's going on in the UK Space Industry. Beers Cold Spark - Big Smoke Brewing Company | Untappd Curious Brew Lager - Chapel Down | Untappd Belgian Red - Postmark Brewing | Untappd Topics NASA's List of Human Health Risks Mars Nation Event | Interplanetary Podcast Thirty Years to the Centre of Mars | WeMartians Podcast The Frosty Plains of Utopia Planitia (feat. Cassie Stuurman) | WeMartians Podcast British Government formally considering its own satellite navigation system | Financial Times The U.K. Space Agency wants Britain to capture 10 percent of the global space economy by 2030 | CNBC Goonhilly | Interplanetary Podcast NASA's Orion Laser Communication | NASA When Biospheres Collide | NASA Gödel, Escher, Back | Goodreads What a Planet Labs Dove looks like Picks (plus the items we discussed after Picks in the spontaneous discussion that followed) The Last Man on the Moon | imdb Interview with Mark Craig, Director | Interplanetary Podcast The Americans | imdb NASA's Eyes on the Solar System Software Stellarium Software Gunter's Space Page Interview with Moon Hoaxer Marcus Allen Part 1 | Interplanetary Podcast Interview with Moon Hoaxer Marcus Allen Part 1 | Interplanetary Podcast Why People Believe Weird Things | Goodreads Mars One Waning | WeMartians Podcast Mars Special (feat. Jake) | Interplanetary Podcast Follow The Interplanetary Podcast The Interplanetary Podcast - Putting the Ace Back in to Space The Interplanetary Podcast (@interplanetypod) | Twitter Follow Jake WeMartians Podcast - Follow Humanity's Journey to Mars WeMartians Podcast (@We_Martians) | Twitter Jake Robins (@JakeOnOrbit) | Twitter Follow Anthony Main Engine Cut Off Main Engine Cut Off (@WeHaveMECO) | Twitter Anthony Colangelo (@acolangelo) | Twitter
Paolo is Pulp’s in-house sommelier and CEO. Prior to founding Pulp, Paolo worked in the financial industry, including the Singaporean sovereign fund GIC. Paolo is a WSET and UKSA certified sommelier and lifelong wine lover. He is Italian and comes from one of the best kept wine 'secrets' of Italy - a region of Friuli, well known within Italy as the best white wine region. Will be happy to have a chat about wine, wine making, Pulp and what we are trying to achieve - ie desnobbify wine and the wine industry. From Pulp Wine: The wine tasting experience in the comfort of your own home. We've combined wine and technology to make wine tasting accessible to everyone, everywhere. How does Pulp work? Every month, we deliver four great wines, carefully selected by our somm Paolo, to your door. Each box comes with an online lesson that talks about wine with a simple, no-nonsense approach. At the end of each lesson, you rate each wine you drink to create your own personalized taste profile.
Simon Davies from UKSA talks to Jon Weeks about the Cowes charity's project to get every Year 6 child on the Island on the water. #iwnews
How do you answer the biggest questions in the Universe? In this month's Naked Astronomy, we'll find out how Stuart Clark tackles these issues, why satellites the size of a Rubic's cube can help launch new and innovative technology, and how to measure Earth's magnetic field. Plus, news about the birth of massive stars, the asymmetric death of old stars and extreme weather on exoplanets. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists
How do you answer the biggest questions in the Universe? In this month's Naked Astronomy, we'll find out how Stuart Clark tackles these issues, why satellites the size of a Rubic's cube can help launch new and innovative technology, and how to measure Earth's magnetic field. Plus, news about the birth of massive stars, the asymmetric death of old stars and extreme weather on exoplanets. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists
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