monkeys ???
I think a quick edit might be needed
Boffins drill into human language by terrifying chimps with vipers
Chimps don't just blurt out whatever is on their mind - they consider who's listening, says an article published in Current Biology that could reveal an important stage in the development of language. In a test with 33 chimpanzees and plastic models of vipers, the research team, led by Catherine Crockford from the School of …
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Friday 30th December 2011 14:31 GMT Hollerith 1
The more we learn about chimps and great apes the moe we realise that they have sophisticated and developed senses of identity, community, and fairness. There really has to come a point where we no longer use them as experimental subjects. It is getting to be, shall we say, unpalatable, to use these animals in labs.
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Friday 30th December 2011 17:42 GMT Aaron Em
Really
Both male and female chimpanzees have frequently been observed to commit infanticide and then cannibalize the resulting remains; I gather the current state of the anthropological science regards this not as a perversion of healthy chimpanzee 'society', but rather simply part of our fellow apes' natural behavioral repertoire.
Which of those three qualities -- identity, community, or fairness -- would you say such behavior exemplifies?
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Friday 30th December 2011 22:22 GMT Anonymous Coward
...
@Aaron Em.
I'm confused. Are you arguing that chimps don't pass muster or that humans should be struck off the register.
Perhaps a visit to your local prison might help clarify things for you?
Oh wait, the humans that like to experiment on chimps have decided that in our case we have lots of aberrations and in chimps its normal to be nasty. Lol.
A nods as good as a wink to a blind bat.
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Saturday 31st December 2011 11:12 GMT Aaron Em
I don't doubt you're confused
In fact I'm sure you find it a comfortingly familiar state of mind. I didn't go into this in my earlier comment because I expected that anyone reading it would be sensible enough not to need such an obvious and well-known fact explained -- which is another way of saying that I frequently allow optimism to tempt me into foolishness. Here, let me spell it out for you:
I referred to chimps as 'our fellow apes' because they are quite like us, and vice versa, in many ways. A tendency to infanticide, in particular, is common behavior in both species, and it's really only in modernity that anyone's had any silly ideas about every life being sacred and similar soppy nonsense -- in fact, infanticide out of necessity is a longstanding human tradition, widely if quietly storied throughout what we know of our history, which carries on, under names like 'SIDS' and 'abortion', even today.
(Anyone now firing up his flaming gear over that last sentence should first note that inasmuch as I have political opinions -- a disgusting habit, in the nature of an addiction, and which I am trying hard to jettison -- I'm in favor of abortion being freely available, on the theory that a dissipated age should offer at least some balms for its evils.)
Of course, whatever the genetic similarities, on the gross scale we're much more different from chimpanzees than we are like them. Domesticability, in particular, is a trait where the two species differ quite markedly; where even the most thoroughly domesticated chimpanzee can't entirely be trusted not to rip someone's face off, humans domesticate so well that later generations mostly don't notice they're domesticated at all -- we also call it 'civilization', and easily forget it's not the natural state of feral humans. Hollerith 1 seems so thoroughly to have forgotten that he's ready to impute similar qualities to feral chimpanzees, which strikes me as a particularly risible example of Rousseauvian "noble savage" nonsense and as such worthy of comment.
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Friday 30th December 2011 17:46 GMT CellDoc
What's with the use of "Boffins"?
As a research scientist myself, I hate the Register's recurring use of the word 'boffins' to refer to scientists. It sounds pejorative, making researchers out to be ‘eggheads’ or otherwise somehow strange. It's weak writing that reaches for such worn out stereotypes. Maybe the Reg can also bring back the delightful use of "wogs" when referring to non-whites?
This wouldn’t matter if it weren’t part of a trend – whether intended by the Register or not – to delegitimize science and scientists, which is part of a larger anti-intellectual push by political conservatives. You don’t like the bad news of shrinking ice caps and global climate change, massive species die-offs, etc, etc?? Well, just don’t believe any of it! “It’s just the work of a bunch of boffins anyway!” As if facts and opinions were of equal weight - total intellectual slight-of-hand.
Maybe the Register is just trying to sound folksy, but I’m sure the staff would bristle if academics started routinely referring to journalists as hacks and the darker ones as wogs. WORDS MATTER.
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Friday 30th December 2011 18:39 GMT Figgus
"This wouldn’t matter if it weren’t part of a trend – whether intended by the Register or not – to delegitimize science and scientists, which is part of a larger anti-intellectual push by political conservatives. You don’t like the bad news of shrinking ice caps and global climate change, massive species die-offs, etc, etc?? Well, just don’t believe any of it! “It’s just the work of a bunch of boffins anyway!” As if facts and opinions were of equal weight - total intellectual slight-of-hand."
Part of science is doubt and review, and getting mad at anyone for doubting the output of agenda financed and focused scientific groups without some solid peer review seems a tad silly, coming from a smart boffin like yourself.
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Friday 30th December 2011 22:25 GMT CellDoc
vast majority of climate change research is peer-reviewed
Figgus my friend, yes "doubt and review" is absolutely part of science. However your direct implication that most climate change literature is not objective nor peer reviewed is simply completely false.
It is actually the great majority of climate change-denial literature is not really peer reviewed, but primarily put out by industrial groups masquerading as 'policy think tanks' or some other such falsehood. It's the same ruse as was used with cigarettes - pathetic if not so shameful.
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Saturday 31st December 2011 13:53 GMT John Angelico
Oi! You're off yer bike!
Check this and follow the links:
http://catallaxyfiles.com/2011/12/30/laframboise-ipcc-audit-4-the-mcintyre-case/
And look for Donna Laframboise "The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World's Top Climate Expert"
Kindle Edition here: http://www.amazon.com/Delinquent-Teenager-Mistaken-Climate-ebook/dp/B005UEVB8Q/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top&tag=wattsupwithth-20
or
Amazon UK here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Delinquent-Teenager-Mistaken-Climate-ebook/dp/B005UEVB8Q/ref=sr_1_sc_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1318550553&sr=8-1-spell
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Friday 30th December 2011 18:47 GMT diodesign
Re: What's with the use of "Boffins"?
I was following you up until you suddenly dropped the w-bomb. What the hell? Anyway, the fact of the matter is this: boffin is an endearing term, it's great for headlines, but I'll try my best to steer towards other great words.
Every time someone complains about 'boffin', we get an email or comment from a clever cloggs who took the word in good jest. And you can call us hacks, it doesn't bother us. We hold proper scientists in high regard.
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Friday 30th December 2011 22:25 GMT CellDoc
Boffin a term of respect?? More like damning with faint praise!
A term of endearment and respect... really? I would've been surprised to not get a wad of responses calling me a stiff boffin... You toughs really know how to hurt a guy, huh?- ) sniff...
Here's part of the definition given in World Wide Words, which covers "International English from a British Perspective" - because I admit I'm a Yank, and wondered if I was missing a Brit-speak application. It seems the author there for the most part agrees with me - or would believe the writer/editor to be of an older generation:
"The headline in the Sydney Morning Herald last week caught my eye: “Bin Boffin, Says Scientists”, and not only because of the knee-jerk sub-editorial alliterations and the grammatical error.
"American readers may be flummoxed by it, since they hardly know the verb to bin in the sense of throwing something away (as into a rubbish bin), let alone boffin, which dictionaries gloss as meaning a person engaged in scientific or technical research. They do know the word boff, however, from an old word meaning to strike a blow, as a slang reference to an act of sex, which makes the headline peculiar, not to say risible.
"The article quoted Professor Chris Fell, who is President of the Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies, a body that represents 60,000 scientists and technologists in that country. His argument was that boffin is in common usage a jaded word that borders on the offensive; the word “conjures up images of weird old men in flapping lab coats, pouring strange chemicals into test tubes”, an image that — understandably — his Federation is not keen to see perpetuated.
"When it first appeared, in Britain during World War Two, boffin was a common colloquial reference to the technical experts, the backroom boys, who were helping to win the war. It was an affectionate term, though tinged with the practical fighting man’s scorn for the academic brain worker. It is claimed that the term arose among researchers who were developing radar, but there’s anecdotal evidence that it was around in the Royal Air Force just before the War as a general term for experts on aviation. However, we also know that — confusingly — it is first recorded, in the Royal Navy, for an “elderly” naval officer (one in his thirties or forties).
"I’d argue that — in Britain at least — boffin has never quite taken on the highly negative associations that Professor Fell ascribes to it, though it is now more the preserve of older writers and headline writers than a word in common use. But for many young people in Britain, it is indeed derogatory, but for a different reason. When it came into fashion among them some 20 years ago, it took on much the same sense that my generation gave to swot, as a disparaging description of someone good at school work — a person acknowledged to be brainy, but inoffensive and definitely not respected."
Mr. Quinion goes on to remind the good professor Fell that "language goes where it will", and this is certainly true - but that doesn't mean it cannot be commented on and even - woe to the thin-skinned! - be criticized. I'll say it again: Words matter... They carry not only meaning but attitude.
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Saturday 31st December 2011 00:29 GMT jake
Well, CellDoc, I'm a Yank and don't mind the term ...
I see nowt wrong with Boffin, especially in this context.
My job title at Bigger Blue was "Boffin at Large"; it was even on my business cards (only because they wouldn't let me use my preferred "Chief Cook & Bottle Washer"). My actual position? Floating Senior Member of the Technical Staff. I wandered from department to department, putting out fires.
Carry on, ElReg ... not that you need anybody's permission :-)
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Saturday 31st December 2011 16:29 GMT John H Woods
To boff ...
... doesn't this mean 'to hump' ?
Seriously though, a lot of these 'pejoratives' are nothing of the sort.
Many scientists are happy to call themselves boffins, many technical people are happy to be called 'geeks'. And quite a few black rappers refer to themselves as ... well you know.
Consider 'techie'. There's a huge difference between my boss saying 'hmm, we are going to need a techie for this' and the sort of people higher up who say 'well, let's not worry about the techies' concerns - we need to get the contractuals sorted'.
Sensitivity to context - the most underrated foundation component of critical thinking.
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Monday 2nd January 2012 10:57 GMT Knochen Brittle
To Boff, or not to Boff, that is the question?
Behind all this tiresome whining about the word 'Boffin', I smell a septic advertising executive plotting to expurgate all 'prior art' then trademark the word for his underperforming washing-powder account:
"Need ancient lab-coats sparkling bright? ~ New Boffin-White! ~ With Enzymes, and a free test-tube in every pack!"
or, in a viral, self-singing strapline:
It's not the Boff
that gets the stains off
it's the Boffin
that'll get 'em off in
[a jiffy]
In other words, CellDoc, boff off back to the lab and stop boffin us around with futile attempts to dictate the use of living language to suit your whims. Unless, of course, you are a highly qualified ape-linguist, in which case may I be the first to bow before our new language Overlord?
The pristine one, with double-length sleeves.
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Wednesday 4th January 2012 00:01 GMT Local Group
HMS INSECTIVORE
"he himself has said it,
and it's greatly to his credit,
that he is an englishboffin!
that he is an englishboffin!
.
in the teeth of this recession
he is true to his profession
he is an englishboffin!
he is an englishboffin!
.
but in spite of all temptations
to boff for other nations,
he remains an englishboffin!
he remains an englishboffin!"
This topic is closed for new posts.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
