Gonzalo de Polavieja, 56, is exasperated by the ease with which many people opine on topics without knowing anything about them. A neuroscientist trained at Oxford and Cambridge, with a PhD in quantum physics and a postdoctoral degree in mathematical neurobiology, he is currently on leave from Spain's CSIC research center and directs the Laboratory of Mathematics of Behavior and Intelligence at the Champalimaud Foundation in Lisbon, where he studies how groups of animals including humans organize themselves.