Is an elephant heavier than a mouse?
Wow. It's been a while since I have written a blog post. Much of this is because of work and travels, and book writing (more news on that in the near future). But I'd like to get into blog writing, so here's a little science musing. Is an elephant heavier than a mouse? Now, you are probably saying "well, of course". Surely event the heaviest mouse weighs less than the newest born baby elephant, so why am I asking such a stupid question. Well, because science can never really prove that an elephant is heavier than a mouse. I know, I've gone and put that word in, and I've written about how proof has no place in science. But let's examine this in a little more detail. I've stressed many times before that while measurements are important in science, without an uncertainty such measurements are useless. And while professional scientists pour over papers focused on the error bars in figures, errors and uncertainties are typically waived ov