For example, running my house requires the support of a bulging two-drawer filing cabinet. My father ran his, plus the accounts of two other organisations, using just three small drawers of his bureau.

And have you bought a new car recently? My ten-year-old model was written off by a large lorry, and I’m now trying to master all the new car’s functions. Many of these existed in the old jalopy in a more “primitive” form, such as handle-shaped window winders, all of which are now, of course, electrical. The wing mirrors are also adjustable electrically, up and down, left and right. Seats are totally adjustable, up and down, forward and back, slope of seat. These are only the minor and more obvious improvements. There is a steeper learning curve for indicators, various warning bleeps and all the other switches (not always obvious because some have a time delay before responding).

The car’s manual is 128 pages long, perhaps not really surprising for such a very complex (and expensive) piece of machinery. Who remembers the simple joys of the early VW Beetles, which didn’t even have a petrol gauge, but instead supplied a reserve gallon of petrol at the kick of a lever? BMW claims that one of its more expensive cars now has more onboard computing facility than was used for the early lunar rockets. Why? Benetton claims even more for the computing power of its Formula 1 car, “logging and sorting the 17 megabits of data that stream out of the car every second”.

My new car radio/tape player is a marvel of compactness and complexity, with 25 buttons on the detachable control fascia, several with a dual function. It also has its own clock in addition to the car clock; I can now quote “Mean Car Time”. It takes several hours to read carefully through the instruction book, much too much to remember while driving.

How many complex and expensive functions are never used by the driver because he or she is unaware that they exist, cannot remember how they work, or just cannot be bothered? Someone I know sold a car after years of use without realising that the windscreen wipers had a fast mode for use in very heavy rain.

Even the supposedly simple items have a built-in complexity of operation and instruction. The other day one of the smoke alarms in out house bleeped in the small hours, so next morning I tested it. The 14-page leaflet has ten figures as well as five text illustrations for “check room doors”, “if smoke is heavy, crawl out”, “get out as fast as you can”, “call the fire brigade” and “never re-enter a burning house”. These urgent, but obvious, instructions are on page 13. Even a fast reader would be in danger of dying before page 10, presupposing the leaflet were immediately to hand when the alarm went off.

Because equipment and gadgets are so complex, the instruction manuals are also large and complex, so it takes considerable time and effort to find the answer to a simple question. Heavens, how do I stop the new printer? In our push-button society, the first approach is to press something, anything, if only to see what happens, then press something else, eventually pressing two at a time or in different orders, before achieving success or giving up altogether, and complaining about “user unfriendliness”. Eventually, when all else fails, read the instructions – if you can find the bookiet and where it deals with your particular problem.

Designers and builders of cars, computers and similarly complex machinery and gadgets seem completely unable to write comprehensible instructions. Once you have tracked down the solution to your difficulty you are told “to do this, simply follow the instruction on page 96”, which turns out to be obscure, wordy and full of undefined terms. If, as so often happens, the instructions have been translated from German or Japanese, these origins will show in subtle ways – so you can’t quite follow it, even if it has the superficial appearance of being logical and grammatically correct.

The result of such complexity is that hardly anyone seems to read the instructions. Even if they are read when the equipment is new, they are forgotten or lost by the time they are needed – smoke-alarm batteries last at least a year, easily long enough to forget where the leaflet was filed. So we are developing into an instruction-illiterate society; people have a deep suspicion of notices, and tend to ignore them.

Where will it end? Every gizmo is evolving towards increasing complexity. The accompanying instruction books inevitably increase in size and complexity. The average person’s comprehension of how-it-works and how-to-work-it is poor and doesn’t respond to the increasing complexity, averaging GCSE grade D/E, and falling with age. How can we expect people to cope with modern digital boiler control systems, telephone answering machines, video recorders, intruder alarm systems and the like unless they are made far simpler and more user-friendly, with brief, simple and clear instructions?

We traced it back to my mother, renowned for statements like “Mrs Whatshername told Miss Youknow that it was all Thingummy’s fault …”, and for being cross with the listener for not knowing exactly who she was talking about, this being her defence mechanism for her poor memory.

The condition is known in the medical profession as onomastic aphasia, if I remember rightly. Sufferers are embarrassed: they cannot remember names – of people, places, book and film titles, brand names – even if they know them well and have done so for some time. Sufferers dread introducing people because at the critical moment, the names will have gone. Half an hour later they return, but that’s too late. This can lead to grossly rude behaviour: it is easier not to attempt an introduction at all than to risk the mind going blank at the critical moment.

Sufferers use various ploys to get out of this. “You two know each other, of course?” followed by silence, usually forces people to introduce themselves. If the person being introduced is not well known, try: “What is your name?” “Ponsonby.” “Yes, I knew that, of course [liar], I’d just forgotten your first name.” If he answers “John” you are sunk, unless you introduce him as John. But if you do know John well, he is astonished at your behaviour.

When driving, I am tempted to go back to the place we’ve just been through because I’ve instantly forgotten its name. Where roundabouts are frequent, circuitous driving and family acrimony result. “How can you be so stupid …?” [easily].

The condition is also associated with failure to remember numbers, but this has no separate name (arithmetic aphasia sounds like an inability to remember one’s multiplication tables). Life is so much easier if you have memorised telephone, car and post code numbers, but accurate recall is essential. Credit card, bank card, and security numbers are all difficult to retain, especially as there are so many of them. It is easier to devise (rude) mnemonics for names than for numbers, but beware of calling someone by this rather than their real name, like “Mr Smelly” for “Mr Smiley”. My problem is that I forget the mnemonic as easily as the name I want to recall.

While advancing years do not help memory, I well recall having difficulties even as a child (when our Welsh village was invaded by London evacuees with strange names) and when the geography master threw at us the names of South American countries, with their capitals. The rest of the class picked up the names effortlessly: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile … each with its capital, Buenos Aires, La Paz, Rio de Janeiro (then), Santiago … but there was no way I could do it straight off. And he took delight in humiliating me, repeatedly, in front of the class.

Curiously, I still remember my identity card number, the number of the family pre-war car, and the names of all my classmates in primary school. What I have only just learned (I think) is the number of the car I have now owned for ten years, and I have to think hard (and sometimes unsuccessfully) to recall my home telephone number. In contrast, my wife effortlessly remembers dozens of telephone numbers and postcodes. While I do remember my own and my wife’s name when signing hotel registers, the car number usually defeats me. I usually guess at it to avoid fuss.

The most odd aspect of the condition is that it is instantly contagious. Mention it to someone, and he or she claims to be a sufferer, too, with anecdotes to prove it. Even those clearly adept with names – introducing a dozen people without a falter, let alone error – when told of aphasia, claim to have a rotten memory and find names particularly difficult to remember. If only they knew what a real sufferer went through. I’ve never met anyone who claims to have a good memory, but those who can remember, the sequence of cards in two shuffled packs after only a minute or so of scrutiny really have something to boast about. I might remember the first three, for a couple of minutes, if I concentrated hard.

Aphasia can, of course, profoundly affect career prospects, should one unwisely choose a profession involving names or numbers. Children in classrooms must get fed up being referred to as “you” by their teacher. No sooner have the names begun to sink in than the class moves up, to be replaced by another lot of names. Imagine the horror of working in a public records office, and forgetting the name before you have turned up the appropriate file, or in a herbarium with thousands of pressed plants, each with a different name.

Memory is such a curious subject that I was encouraged to investigate further, only to find that for all the research that is done into it and related topics – learning, thought and reasoning – our understanding of the physiology and biochemistry of memory remains fairly rudimentary. I discovered the concept of a short-term memory where a limited amount of information (5 to 9 items) can be held for a few seconds before it is either coded into a separate long-term memory or is lost. I visualise the hippocampus of my brain being unable to transmit the short-term memory to something more long-term, or my mind being unable to (having forgotten how to?) access the neural memory trace, or “engram”, from my long-term memory bank, wherever that might be. It’s not that I forget things, I just never remember them.

Psychologists have investigated some persons with exceptional memories – said to exhibit “hypermnesia”. The most famous of these was a Russian, code-named “S”, who could recall long random series of numbers or words without error, many years later (The Mind of a Mnemonist, by A. R. Luria, Harvard UP, 1968). His mnemonic abilities appeared to depend on an outstandingly clear, detailed and persistent eidetic (“photographic”) memory, possibly aided by sensations elsewhere in his body (synaesthesia). In general, the anatomical and physiological basis of hypermnesia, and indeed much of the physical system that sustains memory, is poorly understood.

Onomastic aphasia is, sad to say, incurable. Presumably, as one ages, its effects will become more acceptable: “He always was a bit vague; never could remember people’s names.” And it is inherited, not only through the maternal line, much to my offspring’s annoyance, so it will be around for some time yet. Must send this off now. What was the editor’s name?

According to students, attitudes to the writing of theses appear to
be ossified in graduate thinking, passed on from generation to generation
without reference to supervisors or any university regulations. Research
students have more contact with their fellows than with supervisors, and
tend to follow blindly what has gone on before. The pattern then becomes:
how did Old Dave deal with this? (Old Dave being well into his mid-twenties,
and the candidate who got his PhD last year – his thesis being the latest
in the row in the departmental library.)

In reality, what is asked for is that a PhD thesis forms a distinct
contribution to our knowledge of the chosen subject, with evidence of originality
based on new facts or the exercise of independent critical power. It requires
a satisfactory literary presentation and should be suitable for publication
either as submitted or in abridged form.

First, consider the examiner. He/she has been ‘invited’ to act as an
external examiner and given an approximate date for the completion of the
thesis. This date is wildly optimistic by several months. Agreement about
the approximate date leads to trouble with fixing the eventual date because
of other engagements, overseas visits, holidays, bad weather and so on.
When the final date is being arranged there is pressure on the examiner
to accept it at short notice because by then the candidate has other urgent
plans such as a new job, or, with overseas students, the need to avoid
Ramadan or Christmas, or to return to their home country to be married,
or simply because funds have run out . . . and the flight has been booked
for Wednesday of next week.

Examiners often accept the job only to help out friends and colleagues,
and not for the financial reward, so candidates face reluctant and sometimes
resentful examiners. The fee for examining a PhD falls short of full economic
costing by a factor of at least 10. Candidates probably do not appreciate
this: and why should they? It is not in their part of the regulations. Fees
vary, but can be as low as ÂŁ60, for which the examiner has to read
the thesis and judge its content, originality and value against his/her
knowledge of the subject, draw up a list of questions and points for discussion,
travel to the examination and spend several hours in an oral examination
of the student and in discussion with other examiners before preparing a
report.

Some protest. The Times once published a letter from a Cambridge academic
who had spent a whole day in London examining. When he arrived home he was
greeted with the news that the drains had become blocked and had taken 20
minutes to clear, the resulting bill was greater than the examination fee.
Others delay reading the thesis until the journey to the examination, in
an attempt to make the time fit the fee.

Who promulgates the myth that university regulations require a large
tome, or even two or three volumes? Old Dave again? The effect of the arrival
of such a thesis on the external examiner can well be imagined. More seriously,
the examiner is put off by thoughts of wading through such a large volume,
jeopardising the relationship between examiner and candidate before they
have even met.

The candidate goes to extreme lengths to make the thesis look even larger
than Dave’s successful effort: large print, few lines per page, double spacing,
using only one side of the paper, extended list of those thanked, an enormous
list of references, a long appendix on methods used and details of statistical
analyses, and a large review of the literature, usually rambling and noncritical.
Contrast this with a scientific paper for a journal where space is at a
premium, and authors are exhorted to produce concise accounts, limiting
the introduction closely to the topic in hand, a crisp presentation of methods
and results, with a discussion stressing the importance of the findings
to science and any industrial/commercial implications, all in about ten
printed pages. And it is an exceptional thesis that will provide three good
papers acceptable to an international journal.

Apart from a much condensed presentation, what else can the candidate
do to please the examiner? Use the time saved for checking references. The
examiner is not pleased if his own name is misspelt. Don’t forget that he
knows many of the authors cited in the references, and will see errors which
the candidate cannot spot without checking the original papers. The examiner
will automatically think ill of a candidate who cannot copy an author’s
name from a paper. Have the data collection, handling and statistical analysis
been equally slipshod?

Do not feel obliged to quote every item of raw data, or discuss complex
tables in the text item by item: ‘A was significantly larger than B and
C at P = 0.01, except at the highest temperature in 1992, where A and C
were not significantly different, and at the intermediate temperature and
high light in 1991 and 1993, where A was greater than B at P = 0.05, but
not 1992, where none of the treatment effects was significant even at P
= 0.l’ Big yawn. Far better to provide a clear table where significant differences
are readily seen, and to refer to the table with a comment such as ‘A was
generally larger than B and C, with some exceptions as shown in Table V’

Try to anticipate some oral examination questions. The examiner is charged
with establishing, and reporting back to the university authorities, that
the thesis is the candidate’s own work, how much assistance was received
with analytical methods, techniques, statistics and computing help. Make
this obvious in the body of the thesis, with acknowledgments, such as: ‘Dr
Jones is thanked for showing me this technique, for checking the calibrations
and for analysing the samples of the first experiment.’

And finally, it is a constant gripe of examiners and editors that the
quality of written English is abysmal. Despite the availability of several
excellent and readable books on scientific writing, standard howlers and
pleonasms abound. The following are from a recent effort by a native English
speaker: ‘at five different temperatures’, ‘better as compared to’, ‘observations
carried out showed that’, ‘this resulted in the death of the plants’, as
well as the common, but generally untrue, ‘It is interesting to note that’.
Curiously, overseas candidates often write better English than the natives,
or do they get help?

Theses can be brief, readable and interesting. Sadly, they rarely are.

Alun Rees is an author, editor, consultant and occasional examiner.

My quibble is not so much with obscurity as with the disparity between
the requirements for scientific jobs and those of the others. The scientific
ones demand experience, usually postgraduate and often specifying a PhD,
within a narrow field, so that a quick scan will indicate whether it’s worth
applying. It’s no use going for a job as a genetic engineer if your PhD
is on the physiology of bird flight, even though the vacancy is for a biologist.

Even more specialised requirements abound, to judge from a random sample
in New ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´. A marine nematologist: ‘You should have a proven ability
to identify British freeliving marine nematodes to species level.’ A biochemist:
‘should have a good knowledge of microbial physiology’. A polymer materials
technologist: ‘some experience of the formulation and evaluation of plastic
materials’. A lecturer in astrophysics: ‘experience in observational astronomy
in the radio region’.

Contrast the following from a recent issue of The Times for four nonscientific
jobs. A method and quality manager: ‘Essential attributes are good influencing
and leadership abilities combined with a proven record of delivering results.’
A marketing director: ‘The ideal candidate will be a graduate .. with proven
ability in the management of economic development or urban regeneration,
preferably within the private sector.’ Account managers: ‘(need to recruit)
two more people with proven multi-client management skills’. A sales manager:
‘you should possess considerable commercial acumen and the professional
credibility to excel in this high profile position’.

Although the sample size is small, there is no overlap between the salary
scales of the two groups, and there is no prize for guessing which is the
lower. The scientist range is from 12,900 Pounds to 20,500 Pounds (top of
the scale), and for the others 28,000 Pounds to 36,000 Pounds. It is tempting
to formulate a law: ‘Salaries paid are in inverse relation to the specialisation
of the job’ (dare one add ‘and formal qualifications’?). An MBA appears
to be a ticket to lifelong wealth and luxury – unlike an MSc (leave alone
a PhD).

Insult is added to injury by another advert on the same page of The
Times for a senior manager who will be ‘a marketeer (sic) and a market researcher
capable of interpreting research as well as initiating it’ for a 40 PoundsK
package plus car – a job description not very far removed from the requirement
for a Higher Scientific Officer to ‘carry out competitive and independent
research’ on a starting salary of 10,678 Pounds.

Is it the image of the scientist that’s wrong? Business executives drive
around in expensive company cars whether they need the car for work or not,
lunch well and are smartly, suitably dressed. It follows that they need
a salary commensurate with this lifestyle. What of the scientist? A secondhand
car, a Happy Eater and cords with a hairy jacket, tie optional.

Sadly, some scientists contribute to this image, even now. I recall
an FRS who travelled halfway across the country (first class, of course)
to give a seminar, and stood before the lectern in jeans and an open-necked
shirt. Only the academically or media-successful can behave like this and
get away with it – the young and the struggling consequently suffer.

ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´s are cast as requiring relatively little financial remuneration.
But most aspiring young scientists are sufficiently bright to see this for
themselves, often before they are finally committed to a life of science.
If the system really is in equilibrium, it might one day operate to the
advantage of future scientists. Meanwhile, improve your image and discard
your jeans for a suit, if you can afford one. It might be your way of owning
a Porsche .. eventually.

Alun Rees is a freelance writer.

This begs the question, How long need an address be? Or, more relevantly,
how short can it be? After all, the sole purpose of the address is to tell
the sorter and postman where the letter should go.

At first sight, three lines should suffice for most situations: one
for the house name and/or number plus street; one for the village, suburb
or part of the town; and one for the town and/or county plus postcode. For
example, the address might be as follows:

45 High Street Nob End Bigtown BT45 1CC; or

Hillbarn, Farm Lane Littlehamlet Largeshire LS46 2CC.

This leaves two spare lines, one of which might be useful for rural
areas where the destination might require more accurate pinpointing, or
if names are long. The conclusion is that five lines are usually enough,
at least in the private situation, or as far as the postman is concerned.

With business addresses, ‘extra’ lines are often added to help the company
to sort the mail after the postman has delivered it. In this way, the correspondent
helps the firm with its internal delivery. A letter to, say, a Bill Smith
at Fords of Dagenham might be difficult to deliver without further information
about where he works in the plant, but would a Bill Smith get his mail at
work? It often seems that addressees simply want an ego boost by including
their job title and office address.

At times it looks as though the organisation rather than the individual
is seeking the ego boost. American headed notepaper, in particular, consists
of a veritable tangle of words that the correspondent must unravel to produce
an address. What is the use of quoting ‘University of California’ as the
first line of the address when there are nine campuses spread all over the
state? And ‘California’ is repeated in the last line, as if to emphasise
that the university is in the state of the same name. There must be thousands
of communications annually to such large organisations, using over-long
addresses and duplicated words. How much typing time has been expended in
providing this non essential information? Many years ago, when I’d left
home, I bet a friend that were he to send me a Christmas card bearing my
name and only one other line, it would get to me. I won my bet, but only
because the village I was living in was sufficiently large to have a name
that was nationally identifiable without further qualification, yet was
sufficiently small for me to be the only inhabitant with my name, and for
me to be known, personally, to the postman.

The experiment could still succeed with the very famous (Margaret Thatcher,
London; Ken Dodd, Knotty Ash), or with well known but very small places
like John o’Groats. But beware: my wife once sent a local letter to Wick
(near Littlehampton, West Sussex) which ended up at Wick, Caithness. The
Brighton sorter probably took his annual holidays in northern Scotland.
And you’d need more than five lines of address for Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch,
small place though it is! Similar absurdities of sesquipedalianism are now
occurring in the numbers used on credit cards, cheque cards and the like.
Frequently these have 16 digits, and some considerably more. With 16 digits,
the number of cards, assuming that all were printed, amounts to one fewer
than ten thousand million million.

The current world population is five thousand million, give or take
a few, and assuming I haven’t been mesmerised by so many noughts, there
must be two million cards for each inhabitant of the world, from Moscow
to Melbourne, Manhattan to Manila. When do the banks intend to issue all
these cards? And if and when they send them out, won’t they appreciate,
purely on cost-saving grounds, the shortest possible addresses?

Alun Rees is a biologist and writer.

It all started quietly enough – an invitation out of the blue from the
editor-to-be on the headed notepaper of a prestigious firm of scientific
publishers. To be asked to write a review article on part of one’s subject
is flattering (even if close examination and a few discreet inquiries reveal
that it is a circular letter addressed to a dozen or so other specialists).
The editor was internationally known and respected, it was ego-boosting
that he had even heard of me and even more encouraging (if not quite British)
that he should have addressed me by my first name. The scope of the volume
was outlined and the title of my chapter spelt out, with its length, framework
and headings defined, as an attempt to keep all the chapters to the same
format and thereby lighten the editor’s load – all very laudable, efficient,
well planned and full of promise.

But there were warning signs even at this early stage. The deadline
was not very far away, the work-load was clearly going to be heavy and there
would inevitably be major clashes with other academic commitments entered
into earlier.

To my mind, there was a quiet element of blackmail, too, although this
was not referred to directly. If I turned down the invitation, it would
be offered to someone else – and I could guess who! And I knew he’d take
it, and revel in it, and I knew how his review would be slanted. So what
could I do but accept? First, I agreed in principle. Next, the details arrived,
together with a form to sign, to the effect that, without fail, the script
would be posted, double-spaced, on one side of the special paper, within
the blue lines, free of errors and at my expense, airmail to the US, by
the given date, with a penalty for being late (penalty, what did they mean?)
and signing away the copyright of my piece (in exchange for what?).

And the reward for all this? Well, a copy of the volume, of course,
and the fame, and the glory, and the prestige, and the . . . well, no, that’s
all, really.

But, of course, I accepted. What else could I do? In retrospect, however,
because this happened a few years back, I now wonder whether it would not
have been far better to have turned it down flat. The balance sheet looks
like this:

Expenditure

Time – At least 100 hours, spread over four months or so. In mitigation,
there were eventually three drafts, ending up as 50 printed pages, and all
the work was done at the ends of working days, at weekends, on trains or
during lunch times.

Damage to health – To my own unquantifiable, but that to the fat, unwalked
dog more obvious. And then there was the cowering cat.

Marriage – Decidedly bruised, with long silences, punctuated by grumbled
references to ‘that bloody review’.

Family – I felt ostracised and dog-housed for failing to take the chidren
out. What were my priorities? Wasn’t I going to have a break for some tea?
General ‘But Daddy!’ exasperation.

Garden – It must have suffered a bit, but you’d have to have looked
closely to detect the extra unkemptness.

Typing – It was typed at work, and there were grumbles from the secretary
and other staff, again about my priorities. And where was my consideration
of their needs?

Rewards

The chapter was eventually submitted, with a sigh of relief. About a
year later, a beautifully produced copy of the volume arrived, marked ‘Complimentary
copy. Lists: $169. To contributor.’

Both my marriage and my family survived, somewhat scarred, and the cat
and dog and the garden seem much the same, but there was no financial reward
to allow me to take my wife out for a celebration or compensatory dinner.

None of the colleagues, staff and students at the lab seemed any the
worse, but relations were strained for a while, and the word ‘review’ was
strictly taboo.

And the fame and the glory and the prestige? Well, there didn’t seem
to be a lot of that about, and there were no reprints to send out to impress.
About a year later I happened to be made redundant, so all that effort couldn’t
have made much impression on the powers that be.

I’m not writing this for sympathy, but I can’t help feeling that someone,
presumably the publishers, and perhaps the editor, must have made money
on the book at $169 a copy, on the backs of the scientists who did several
hundred pounds worth of work in valuable ‘spare’ time for the sake of a
personal copy of the book (which is in the library anyway) and the prospect
of enhancing their reputation. And that’s why I say that publishers take
advantage.

Alun Rees now works as a freelance writer.