All data points are imperfect copies of a Platonic Data Point, an underlying Grand Truth. All data points, provided the experiment that collected them is well-designed, fit into “The grand scheme of things”. It is Not Done in Science to look solely at results that fit with what you’ve recently discovered, and ignore the ones that don’t. You have to take them all together, because they’re all equally approximations to the Truth.

However, based on my interactions with a “real” science department last summer and over the course of this academic year, the way Science (or at least, Experimental Psychology, but I suspect it generalises to some extent) is done is more like this:

All data points collected by me, and my colleagues in this department, are imperfect copies of a Departmental-Aims Data Point, which proves what this department is currently trying to show. All data points collected by Them, and Their Colleagues in Their department, are imperfect copies of a Their-Departmental-Aims Data Point, which proves what Their department is trying to show, which is mutually exclusive to what this department wants to show.

Now, this is not to say that Science is totally failing here: all the scientists referred to above would still, if shown a set of results that prove their theory wrong whilst strongly corroborating the theory of the competing department, back down and accept that they are probably/definitely wrong. So Science still moves forwards as it should. However, in the meantime and while all results are just-a-little-hazy (as tends to be the case) the literature implicitly makes this marked distinction between the stuff from department A and the stuff from department B. Which jars a little with the supposed nature of Science.

This is something that philosophers of science are aware of, I know: my module last year on the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge covered similar ground, as well as other dichotomies along the same general lines. Still, it’s something that can’t hurt to mull over a bit more.

1. It’s pancake day – which meant Powertool Pancakes in the ADC Clubroom. Admittedly we didn’t actually use a powertool this time (it was really just a one-off thing) but most cordless drills are very effective, if somewhat messy, batter-mixing devices. My master creation was ham, cheese, lemon, sugar and toffee syrup. Think what you will, I liked it.
2. Just been to a nice talk in College on amnesia, presented by a Peterhouse research fellow. What with a lot of my final-year degree material being memory-related, it felt very much like a nice gentle review, which is definitely a good thing – made me feel more confident that I am taking lecture material in!

Life has, predictably, been very busy recently. Without trying to be remotely comprehensive, I’m making good headway on my research project (about half the data in, and it’s looking good!), and am also tackling a dissertation on Internal Speech (a.k.a the inner monologue, voice in your head, etc – in non-pathological people!). I’ve left that bit a bit more to the last minute, as I have to confirm my title in 8 days, and will only really be ready to a couple of days in advance – but I’ve still got plenty of time to actually read up on and write the thing. And I’m really interested by the papers I’ve found so far, which is promising.

I’ve also been job hunting. I’m off tomorrow evening to London, for dinner in a nice hotel courtesy of Marks and Sparks, who are then giving me some kind of 9-5 grilling the following day, for a place in their Graduate IT Training scheme. Among my “other plans” is an application to last.fm, which I submitted a while back and haven’t heard a peep about… so that might be down the chute. Ah well. The other applications are not far enough along that I want to mention them on a blog, but I’ve got high hopes for a couple.

Hmm, what else? Various social hi-jinx, e.g. Mr Linford’s birthday celebrations last week (c.f. facebook) and Laura’s birthday this weekend. Oh yes, and how can I forget Matt and Lotte heading back off to Oz? Lindy Hop, though in very capable hands, just isn’t going to be the same without them…:’( Having said which, my workload is beginning to seriously prevent me from much social life, so I probably won’t be making that much more Lindy this term. There’s been more, but I think I’ll have to leave it there. Need my beauty sleep pre-interviews!

So yeah, um, busy Christmas. I’ve not blogged for a while because I’ve actually been fairly productive over the vacation, doing a whole bunch of academic and non-academic Things That Needed Doing. I still have a long academic “really need to do” list, and I’m back in Cam as of today, aiming to get ahead on it before lectures start up. I’ve become even more cynical about Christmas as a general-purpose holiday – but that’s another post that may never get written. I’ve made a lot of headway on my Part II research project, including finalising experimental details, creating all the necessary input files and a solid spreadsheet for analysing the output (combined with my killer sed script). I now just need two more subjects, and to fix times with them, and I’ll be away. *Celebrates*

I spent most of the pre-Christmas period doing the above, plus other various work-y tasks, and some job-hunting, ergo not finding time to blog. Christmas was spent at home with some rellies, and New Year again at home, with different rellies, and Georgie. The benefits of not going out to Totnes for New Year became swiftly apparent in a) user-experience of New Year’s Day, and b) examination of bank balance; though of course I missed seeing a bunch of people who I now, basically, don’t see any other time of year. Dad’s punch just about made up for it.

Just after New Year, I saw St Trinians’ with Georgie and Greg – whilst containing nothing to switch the brain on, it was a really well-spent 90 minutes. Perhaps that was *why* it was well-spent, in fact! Lots of gags and subtle send-ups: Firth gets wet in a fountain, and a dog is called Darcy; reproduction of the Entrapment laser-dodging scene; various musical references, etc.

I also did some shopping, for much-needed trousers, and got a handful of cheap CDs while I was there – Frank Zappa, Madness, Beautiful South, and some more Santana for my collection. I also got two Floyd albums (Division Bell and WYWH) around Christmastime, so my music collection has swelled enough to put me in a very good mood whenever I open Winamp . As ever, you can check what I’ve listened to recently at last.fm, a widget for which is somewhere on the right on my front page…

Yup, I feel that’s quite an impressively long sed argument. It is probably possible to write something more succinct that will have the same effect, but it’d only be even more obfuscated stuart.out is the data collected from me running myself as a subject for my Part II Psychology project: it’s generated by a C program running on DOS 6.2 . I only need three numbers and a word per condition tested – but the program spews out huge amounts of supplementary text, and isn’t totally regular about where newlines get inserted (I had to forced-close the program a number of times). The greps eliminate incomplete session records, and wipe a handful of unnecessary lines from each blockl; the sed statement gets rid of words in between my precious numbers, and makes the textfile look like a csv.

I’m still working on the sed part of the pipe… it needs a final clause to strip certain, but not all, newlines. I need to match every first and second newline out of three, but not the third, in this file (effectively concatenating three lines together onto one line, and repeating for the next three lines). If anybody can lend any hints, please do – not only is my sed-fu weak, but my google-fu seems to be on the blink as well.

Why am I up late doing this? The gutsy upgrade stalled when my net connection broke inexplicably a few hours ago – and I only noticed recently. Only another hour of downloads to go, then the real fun will begin