Badgers, Skeptics and the Need for Evidence

So I haven't been active on this blog for a long time but today two things happened to motivate me to write here again. Firstly I gave a speech on why a UK wide badger cull would be a success, and secondly I attended my first skeptics in the pub talk.

As part of a university course I had to write a debate siding with the pro badger cull lobby. They argue that badgers should be culled in order to reduce bovine TB in cattle. Armed with access to scientific journals and DEFRA reports, I went in search of the evidence that Owen Paterson used to back up his plans for the cull. Surprisingly or not, I did not find any. You see, there aren't any papers which provide conclusive evidence that a cull would effectively reduce TB, in fact there is a lot of evidence that it could increase bovine TB incidence. And even the governments own reports show that all trials so far have been ineffective.

Slightly put out but determined none the less, I started writing my talk. And today I gave a 12 minute long argument for culling badgers in the UK. It made sense, all of the data was from scientific reports and I made nothing up. After my talk was over I realised with shock that I, a fairly intelligent undergraduate science student, had managed to debate something I knew was scientifically unsound, using peer reviewed scientific articles. All I had done was carefully select my facts and figures.

Of course a brief scan of my references would tell you that my argument had several gaping holes in it, but a lot the general public take media reporting of science at face value, and often the supporting evidence is not provided for scrutiny. Even I am occasionally guilty of laziness when reading about science. We need to make sure that we are able to see past the media spin and truly understand the evidence in order to make science based decisions.

This brings me on to the second thing that happened today: I had a lovely evening out with a friend and a glass of wine at a skeptics in the pub talk. This was a really interesting talk about a campaign called Ask for Evidence by a charity called Sense About Science, which is trying to improve the evidence behind stories reported in the media and claims from politicians and companies.

After my foray into the world of twisting science for political means, I felt like this talk really helped to show how the public can question the sweeping claims about science made to us every day. The campaign challenges people to chase up the evidence behind scientific claims, and also gives access to a group of people who can help to decipher any evidence provided. I would really recommend you check out their website here because I think its a really important thing to get involved in.

You don't even have to leave the house to get involved with this, it won't cost you anything AND you get to feel smug about calling out the media, government and big businesses. We might even learn something along the way.

Right, I'm off, if you know anyone looking for a political spin doctor, please point them my way, it could be a new career path...

References (because evidence is important!)

ANOTHER link to Ask for Evidence because I think it's such a cool campaign: Ask for Evidence

If anybody in Aberdeen is interested in going to a skeptics in the pub talk in the future: Skeptics in the pub, Aberdeen

The 2011 DEFRA report for the bovine TB eradication programme: TB eradication 2011

A 2007 DEFRA report finding that culling is ineffective: 2007 DEFRA TB report

If you have access to scientific papers: Donnelly et al, 2006. Positive and negative effects of widespread badger culling on tuberculosis in cattle. Nature 439

Beautiful Butterflies

Last summer I couldn't help but notice the lack of butterflies fluttering around the garden, which was probably due to some pretty miserable weather. luckily, this year could not be any more different. The sun has been shining (ok, it rained today but shh), and there are butterflies everywhere! The flowers in my garden and the surrounding marsh are absolutely covered in them, and I decided to take my camera on a walk with me and take some photos. Butterflies make the prettiest pictures!

walking onto the marsh on a beautiful day. All the nettles at the side of the track definitely helped the surge in numbers, providing food for the caterpillars. 

The flowers on the marsh were completely covered in butterflies. 

Peacock butterflies seem to be everywhere at the moment!

Nettles are still covered in caterpillars, so hopefully there are even more butterflies to come this year.

Below are some pictures of the different butterfly species that I managed to find (all in one afternoon).

Peacock butterfly (Inachis io)

Small blue (Cupido minimus)

A pair of cabbage whites (Pieris rapae) on budliea.

The butterflies go crazy for budliea flowers. If you want to encourage them in your garden this is definitely the thing to plant.

Painted lady (Vanessa cardui)

Meadow brown (Maniola jurtina)

Small skipper (Thymelicus sylvestris) 

I was impressed at the number of species I found just on one walk around the marsh and the garden. I was really pleased to find a small skipper, I have never seen a butterfly like it before. It was tiny and it was only with the help of google that I realised it wasn't a moth.

I hope that you are all enjoying the large number of beautiful butterflies this year (unless you are like my friend who is absolutely terrified of them. In which case you probably shouldn't have read this. Sorry). If you want to encourage more butterflies into your garden, then this website gives some really good tips, including which plants butterflies love best and how to plant them. Enjoy!

Introducing Monty

I mentioned in my previous blog that I have a pet axolotl, called Monty. He is so adorable and axolotls are literally the coolest animals ever, so I thought I would tell you a bit about their awesomeness and explain to you how I look after Monty (and share some cute axolotl photos of course).

Axolotls are a type of salamander, which are amphibians. The unusual thing about them is that they never actually turn from a newt into a salamander. They breed and reproduce as newts, something no other type of salamander can manage. The only time they ever turn into salamanders is when they are exposed to high levels of iodine. Apparently it’s really painful (well, I doubt anyone has ever asked an axolotl but that seems to be what humans think), so I will not be subjecting Monty to that, even in the name of science.

They can also regenerate. Sadly not in the Doctor Who way, but if an axolotl looses a limb, it grows back! This means that they have been involved in a lot of research into limb regeneration (a lot of which is sponsored by the military which is a little scary). See, I told you they were awesome!

So now you know a bit more about axolotls, let me introduce Monty:

The feathery projections on either side of his head are gills which mean he can breathe underwater.

Monty is speckled with gold, he almost glitters in some lights. This colour is called the wild type.

He lives in a large tank in the dining room in my house, out of direct sunlight. I chose to keep him in this room because there is no TV or radio and axolotls are very sensitive to noise, so he can watch people walking by without being deafened (also I couldn’t carry the tank up the stairs).

Monty’s tank. plants provide shelter and a plant pot adds interest.

Monty in his tank

The tank has lots of big stones in the bottom and a couple of plants and a plant pot for him to hide in. I did use gravel for the bottom when I first started keeping axolotls but this is bad for them when they get larger because they start swallowing the stones, so I switched to larger rocks (I would recommend this from the beginning).

I (well, my Dad most of the time because he can’t come to uni with me. I really doubt he would enjoy the train journey), feed Monty worms from a wormery we have outside. If you don’t have one of these you should totally get one, it’s a great eco-friendly way of disposing vegetable waste and if you have axolotls you can harvest the worms! Monty also loves water daphnia and even sea monkeys (although these really don’t last long out of sea water), because he has to hunt for them which he seems to really enjoy. I love to watch him with his nose touching the stones, waiting for an unsuspecting water daphnia to swim across his vision.

The wormery which converts kitchen waste to compost, and gives Monty a tasty dinner!

Me feeding Monty a live a worm. Yummy.

You may have realised by now that Monty lives on his own. This is really not ideal for axolotls; they do best with a companion. Sadly Monty’s companion Zuma died quite a while ago, leaving him on his own. I would love to get Monty another friend, but unless I can find another axolotl of the same size then the larger one will nibble on the smaller one which would be horrific (I don’t think they do it on purpose, they are just greedy). Hopefully one day I will find his perfect companion, but until then he seems happy enough.

Axolotls come in several colours, including this really pretty white colour. This was the colour Zuma was.

I hope this blog post opened your eyes to the adorable and incredible axolotl.  Maybe it even inspired you to look into owning one. (If so I hope this also provides some information on how to care for them. Remember to do lots of research before you decide to buy any pet). If you have any questions then please feel free to ask in the comments.