RoboHog
The world鈥檚 science journalists were on tenterhooks in August, as billionaire tech entrepreneur Elon Musk dropped intriguing hints on Twitter about a forthcoming demo of Neuralink, his sci-fi brain-computer interface.
Musk has a wide internet fanbase thanks to his pioneering work in futuristic fields, such as space rocketry and self-driving cars 鈥� but he does have form for overpromising on what he can deliver.
According to Musk, the coin-sized device will eventually let people control gadgets with their minds and download their memories. The display on 28 August would, he said, show neurons firing in real time. Or, in other words, 鈥溾��.
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As The Matrix depicts a future in which wires jacked into our necks can simulate a virtual world indistinguishable from reality, Feedback was atremble with anticipation.
Sadly, the presentation didn鈥檛 quite live up to the heights of the Keanu Reeves blockbuster. Out trotted , one of whom, Gertrude, had the Neuralink implanted in the region of the brain that receives input from the snout. When her nose was booped, the sensory signals were transmitted to a monitor and speaker.
The audience whooped and clapped, but it is by no means the first time that researchers have recorded from the brains of live animals, nor even the first time they have done so wirelessly.
Neuroscientists that have been doing this stuff for years took on an aggrieved tone on Twitter, reminiscent of older siblings when a new baby gets attention for basic feats like smiling. 鈥淭he device is way off downloading memories,鈥� . 鈥淲e鈥檒l definitely be living on Mars b4 that happens.鈥�
At least the press had a good name for Gertrude鈥檚 half-pig-half-machine nature: she is now, officially, a Cypork.
Hokey saga
We return to the debate over the world鈥檚 many versions of the Hokey Cokey. For those who missed last week鈥檚 shock news, UK neuroscientist Sophie Scott discovered that the US incarnation of that music hall classic is referred to as the Hokey Pokey, and unaccountably omits the best part: the chorus with its life-endangering mass collision.
We were left wondering 鈥� along with the whole of philological Twitter 鈥� what could explain the English-speaking world鈥檚 divergence of names for essentially the same song. But after speaking with Scott herself, Feedback has learned that the Hokey Cokey has also crossed linguistic borders into non-English-speaking countries and has only improved with translation. In Denmark, for instance, it is known as the Boogie Woogie, while in Finland it is the Hoogie Googie.
Then came a plot twist. Scott divulged that the Hokey Cokey is not, in fact, the first incarnation of this song. The original ancestor of all modern Hokey Cokeys 鈥� the ur-Hokey Cokey, if you will 鈥� seems to be a Scottish folk dance known as the Hinkum-Booby. Mind. Blown.
Mask slips
People who refuse to wear face coverings are sociopaths 鈥� at least according to . These are based on a study that found that people who break lockdown guidelines on face coverings, social distancing and so on are more likely to score highly in the so-called dark triad of personality traits: narcissisim, Machiavellianism and psychopathy.
Although the findings might seem to explain those recent altercations in shops that people love to film and share online, Feedback has a policy of scepticism towards any research conveniently finding that people with frowned-upon opinions have undesirable personality traits. What鈥檚 more, there are a couple of problems with the study. Firstly, it ignores people who are genuinely unable to wear face coverings. And if we only consider people who can wear masks but choose not to, the finding seems tautological.
A propensity to rule-breaking is associated with all three of the cited personality traits. So what the study seems to have found is that people who break rules are more likely to be people who break rules.
Heads or fails
Speaking of research with unsurprising conclusions, a study has emerged on an important question in today鈥檚 era of fake news and conspiracy theories: can politicians be trusted? The answer turns out to be 鈥淣ot much鈥�, according to researchers who came up with to test their honesty en masse.
The team sent 816 elected mayors a survey and said that participants could receive the results if they had obtained heads on a coin flip 鈥� something that they were trusted to do in real life, unsupervised. Astoundingly, 68 per cent of the mayors reported that they had successfully landed on heads. For those who don鈥檛 have their thinking caps on, the actual figure should have been close to 50 per cent.
Either something has gone fundamentally awry with the laws of statistics, or, , politicans can鈥檛 even be trusted to tell the truth about the toss of a coin.
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