I have been struggling recently to find ways to rehash my post on scientific authority without causing NPG any further distress. This evening, on the train journey home, I think I finally found a way because I read one of the most remarkable scientific papers I have ever come across. The paper, by Keating et al. , brings us directly back to the ongoing saga of the British Chiropractic Association’s libel suit against Simon Singh.

Simon Singh is a brave man. He has announced that he is going to apply to appeal in his case with the British Chiropractic Association. He writes about the background to the case here. Simultaneously, Sense About Science is launching its Keep the Libel Laws out of Science Campaign. It should be widely reported in the UK media today.

My most recent post, “Respect my Authority!”, which was an attempt to explore the origin of scientific authority, has been removed by Nature Network because their legal advice deemed it to contain some dubious assertions. The matter was handled with great care in phone conversations with Corie and an email from Timo. I am grateful to them for the consideration they have shown. I have no doubt this was a tortuous decision.

I have just come home from a gathering of Skeptics in the Pub in the Penderels Oak in Holborn and I am excited and dismayed. Simon Singh – bloodied but unbowed This was a special meeting to discuss developments in the court case being brought by the British Chiropractic Association (BCA) against the popular science author, Simon Singh.

The germ of this post started with a remark by Kristi, who was struck on a recent visit to the UK by the number of people reading on public transport. I was reading a piece from this week’s Nature as I rode the underground last Friday night on my way to a recording of the TV show QI, and the name Archibald Vivien Hill suddenly leapt off the page.

There was a very nice piece in yesterday’s Nature by Ananyo Bhattacharya (a former PhD student of mine who now works for the journal). Ananyo discusses the current structural ‘wish list’ with some of the world’s most ambitious protein crystallographers. Perhaps I’m a little biased but I think it’s beautifully written.

When I was a little boy I remember that my mother would sometimes extract a dull metal implement from the dark recess of a rarely used cupboard and clamp it to the kitchen table. Turning the handle she would feed the device with cubes of beef and it would spew mince onto a cold white plate. This is what my brain feels like. I have read fourteen grant applications in the past few days in preparation for an upcoming funding committee meeting.

I should have done this a long time ago but I was too proud. I think I need to review. In 2002 Dan Carter published a paper in BBRC describing the crystal structure of the protein, human serum albumin, complexed with hemin.

Today I finally made it to the Darwin Big Idea Exhibition at the Natural History Museum in London. I had been concerned that our almost legendary lack of familial organization was going to prevent us from seeing it (Matt caught it back in January). But late last week I summoned the wherewithal to log on and book tickets, just managing to sneak in a visit before the show closes.

As a crystallographer from County Antrim in Northern Ireland, it should come as no surprise that I am much taken by the Giants’ Causeway, an impressive basalt rock formation on the north coast that boasts some of the largest crystals in the world. Hexaogal crystals in Co. Antrim – each column is about 60 cm across.

Attending the spring meeting of the Society for General Microbiology in sunny Harrogate earlier this week I had the chance to hear Stanley Prusiner deliver the SGM Prize Lecture on “Prion biology and diseases”. Not bad as talks go, though he would never win prizes for the design of his slides. Prusiner won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine back in 1997 for his work to establish the prion hypothesis.