Right then chums, as well as a new series of Rutherford and @FryRsquared on Radio 4, we also have a new book out this week, crammed full of stories, about how humans invented science to bypass our natural physical and psychological limits. 🧵bit.ly/3oLa82Q
Here’s a quickie: we talk about confirmation bias – my own that I always look at the clock at 11.38, and @FryRsquared that she has a magic orchid that reflects her successes and failures, like in E.T. ‘There’s a sucker born every minute’ as PT Barnum once said. Hannah Fry, left.
@FryRsquared EXCEPT he never said it at all. In upstate New York farm, in 1869, the petrified body of a 10-foot-tall fossilised remains of an ancient Native American were discovered and soon became a huge scientific and tourist attraction.
@FryRsquared It was actually a rather rubbish statue buried there by the farm owner’s cousin, who sold the figure to a syndicate of businessmen led by David Hummum for the princely sum of $23,000. They took the giant on a touring show all around New York state.
@FryRsquared Enter P. T. Barnum! (NB: not as handsome as @RealHughJackman) Never one to miss out on a big scam, he offered Hummum $50,000 for the Cardiff Giant. Hummum said no.

So what did Barnum do? Not Hugh Jackman
He made one of his own. A Barnum lackey secretly took some measurements and carved a mini-model out of wax to make a full replica, which he then displayed in a museum in New York, raking in the cash from even more gullible punters who believed it was the real fake.
On hearing that his scam had been scammed, it was David Hummum who uttered the immortal line:

‘There’s a sucker born every minute.’
Anyway. One more thing. PT Barnum also made a wodge of cash displaying the legendary feejee mermaid. Not Ariel or a clam-bra beauty. Good god, no. A desiccated monkey sewn onto a fish. This by the brilliant @theAliceRoberts - she illustrated our book - is what it looked like.
That, and so much else is all in Rutherford and @FryRsquared's Complete Guide To Absolutely Everything (Abridged). Two things will happen if you don't buy it: 1) Hannah will be sad, and 2) You won't own this AMAZING BOOK.
amzn.to/3oJyvh3

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More from @AdamRutherford

23 Sep
It appears that I wrote this week’s editorial in @ScienceMagazine, on eugenics, and the centenary of the 2nd International Eugenics Congress.

science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…
It was a meeting of ghouls and scientists, Davenport, Laughlin and Madison Grant, alongside RA Fisher and Sewall Wright, and shows how close the emerging study of heredity was with the political ideology of eugenics science.org/doi/pdf/10.112…
And some more context, including the role of @ScienceMagazine in the promotion of eugenics at the time (which was fairly typical)

science.org/content/blog-p…
Read 4 tweets
8 Sep
This thing of utter beauty has arrived. And it has a reading ribbon! @FryRsquared
And pictures! By @theAliceRoberts
And I love reading the index. Where else do you get Luke Skywalker next to the Skraeling? Or Dwayne Johnson, Jesse (my whippet) and Jesus?
Read 4 tweets
31 Aug
Thanks to everyone flagging up Lionel Shriver’s piece in the Spectator. I have read it, and it is very unsophisticated Replacement Theory, and lands straightforward far-right conspiracy theory talking points which haven’t changed in more than a century.
These ideas, robustly present by racists such as Madison Grant and Lothrop Stoddart in the 1st decades of the 20th century formed the ideological basis for eugenics policies in the US, and later in Nazi Germany. Hitler cited Grant’s work as ‘his Bible’.
Shriver’s piece echoes these sentiments very specifically. She is biologically and historically illiterate on this matter. Her words are very specifically reminiscent of those of Tom Buchanan in Gatsby too:
Read 8 tweets
24 Aug
Because I believe bay leaves to be a fiction, and people who use them are bay shills, in the pocket of Big Bay, I am conducting a blinded Bolognese experiment. Results as and when they happen. #Science
For the new followers, this, plus film stuff, comics, lots of genetics, eugenics and race pseudoscience, dog pics and general snark on grifters, is fairly typical twitter.
Poll: Bay leaves are
Read 4 tweets
24 Aug
Crikey. I am extremely thrilled to be awarded the @royalsociety David Attenborough Prize. Like so many of us, he was my first inspiration in science, and triggered a lifelong love of evolution and genetics which continues to burn royalsociety.org/grants-schemes…
Such fine company too, with @sophiescott Jocelyn Bell Burnell, @genemodeller, @SerenaNikZainal and loads of others. Congratulations!
Thanks to all the people who gave me opportunities, in science and in talking about science. There are too many to name, but Georgina Henry at the Guardian, Deborah Cohen in the BBC Radio Science Unit, my editor @jennyjennylord, my supervisors Jane Sowden and Hazel Smith…
Read 5 tweets
7 Aug
Shtisel finale breaks the fourth wall. What are the greatest 4th wall breakages?
Superman
Henry Hill in Goodfellas lands it after 3 hours of voice over
Read 7 tweets

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