Scientifically...

n 1969, Canadian educationist Lawrence J. Peter developed an unorthodox concept that became known as The Peter Principle: “In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence". Hi...

15 Feb 202114min

If a newspaper headline ends in a question mark, is the answer always no? And if so, are journalists who use them being lazy and cynical?Ian Betteridge described what is now known as Betteridge's Law ...

15 Feb 202114min

Cyril Northcote Parkinson may have trained as a naval historian, but it was his succinct humorous essay for the Economist magazine in 1955 that was to overshadow much of his career. In it, he laid out...

15 Feb 202114min

“If anything can go wrong, it will go wrong.” Murphy’s Law is now a part of our culture, used to describe wrong outcomes of every sort, from how buttered toast falls to the way catastrophes strike.Peo...

15 Feb 202114min

After becoming ill with covid six months ago, Inside Science presenter Adam Rutherford is only now getting back to normal. He didn’t go to hospital and, like many, thought he’d be back on his feet wit...

30 Sep 202028min

Having a fast and easy way to cut out and replace genes could revolutionise areas of biology as diverse as medicine and agriculture. And the discovery of the gene editing tool using CRISPR-cas9 makes ...

27 Aug 202014min

Before the eruption of Krakatoa in 1883, nobody knew about the invisible streams of air in the middle atmosphere that are important for air travel and meteorology. Adam Hart explores the archives of t...

19 Aug 202014min

The coelacanth is a fish that, until 1938, was only known from the fossil record until a young South African curator named Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer found one - only just deceased - on the deck of a ...

12 Aug 202014min