Patrick Blackett's Science was Vital

Please be patient while I experiment with audio to drum up support for the “Science is Vital campaign”:http://scienceisvital.org.uk/. It will only take two minutes and forty-nine seconds.
Listen!

Thank you for listening.

Update (Sun 26th Sept): For those of you who prefer to read than to listen to my measured Northern Irish burr, here the text of the audioboo:

”Science is Vital to our society — and often in ways that are quite unexpected. Let me give you an example by telling you about the physicist, Patrick Blackett.

He was very much into blue skies research – almost literally so. At Cambridge in the 1930s Blackett developed the cloud chamber*, a device that could be used to detect cosmic rays — streams of sub-atomic particles that come to Earth from all over the universe and descend from the blue sky.

His work won him a Nobel prize in 1948.

Now particle physics isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but if you think that Blackett’s science wasn’t so very vital to the UK then consider this:

During World War 2, Blackett turned his scientific mind to the defence of the nation. He worked with the armed forces to improve air defences around Britain’s cities and to find new ways of protecting convoys of navy ships from attack.

But one of his most interesting discoveries shows how unpredictably brilliant science can be.

The Royal Air Force had been inspecting its bomber aircraft for bullet holes after bombing missions and concluded that they needed to add armour-plating to the parts of the planes that had been hit.

But when Blackett looked at the same evidence he said, “No. You should put the armour plating on those areas where there are no bullet holes.”

What Blackett realised was that the RAF’s examination of only those aircraft that returned was biased.  Bullet holes in surviving planes marked positions that were not critical for staying in the air. Blackett reasoned that aircraft that had been shot down had probably been hit in places that were undamaged in the planes that managed to come home.

And he was right: by implementing his suggestions, RAF bombers suffered fewer losses.

Blackett’s aim, he said, was to base strategy not on gusts of emotion, but on numbers — on science.

Britain emerged victorious from WWII but faces fresh challenges today: economic hardship for sure, but also energy crises, global warming and the need to keep an aging population healthy.

To meet these challenges, I am pretty sure that Blackett would say, “Science is Vital”.

To find out how you can support the campaign to prevent cuts in British science, please visit the web-site at: scienceisvital.org.uk”

*Strictly speaking the Cloud chamber was invented by Charles Wilson. Blackett — and the Italian physicist G.P.S. Occhialini — developed the counter-controlled cloud chamber, a version of the device that allowed cosmic rays trigger the detector and therefore their own photographs. This made it a much more effective device for studying particles from outer space.