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Unexpected Elements

Factual: Science & Nature

Factual: Science & Nature: Science & Technology

The news you know, the science you don’t.

The news you know, the science you don’t. Unexpected Elements looks beyond everyday narratives to discover a goldmine of scientific stories and connections from around the globe. From Afronauts, to why we argue, to a deep dive on animal lifespans: see the world in a new way.

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Unexpected Elements: Corrupted thinking and cancerous co-option

Discussion & Talk

17/08/2023 GMT

Corrupted thinking and cancerous co-option

BBC World Service - Unexpected Elements, Corrupted thinking and cancerous co-option

Can scientific thinking detect political and corporate corruption?

Can scientific thinking detect political and corporate corruption? Also geopolitical human palaeontology in Asia and cancerous collaborators in all of us.

The conversation this week starts off on corruption. There are allegations of political or corporate malfeasance in the news regularly throughout the world. But can science bring anything to the investigators? We look at some efforts to bring empirical rigour to the fight. 
 
But corruption of sorts is also a big thing in our online lives. Algorithms can deliver duff results, maybe because they are poorly conceived, or perhaps because they are fed corrupt data.
 
So when our cellular biological algorithms are corrupted, our health is affected. Can cancerous tumours be considered corrupt organs, co-opting healthy cells to assist in their nefarious ends? Dr Ilaria Malanchi of the Crick Institute in London muses on the commonalities.
 
Also, a look at the politicisation of pre-human palaeontology and how our stories of human origins have been, and in some ways still are, connected with nationalist geographical identities that mainstream science doesn't recognize.
 
Presenter: Caroline Steel, with Yangyang Chen and Meral Jamal
Producer: Alex Mansfield, with Margaret Sessa Hawkins, Ben Motley, and Sophie Ormiston

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Unexpected Elements

Corrupted thinking and cancerous co-option

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