For each and every economic theory, there is another that is equal and
opposite; and none of them seem to work. Marxism has been ‘discredited’,
Keynesian theories similarly. Alan Walters was a genius, then he was a fool,
now he will be a genius again. Where are the Michael Faradays, the Robert
Boyles and the Albert Einsteins of economic thought? Perhaps economics is
unavoidably the science of a Werner Heisenberg? Uncertainty prevails. Should
we devalue again, return to the Exchange Rate Mechanism, push up the interest
rates or try to stem inflation? If one factor can be controlled, do the
others have to do their own thing? Who knows?

Who knows indeed? The politicians and government’s advisers do not,
even though they do not choose to admit this in public. How often does the
government proclaim its ‘careful management of the economy’ and the opposition
parties accuse it in turn of ‘gross mismanagement’?

Capitalism has always been thus. Although it is hard to remember the
days when the Conservatives were not in government, the claims and counterclaims
about ‘(mis)management of the economy’ have been going on for years.

The question is, can it be managed? I don’t trust the economic experts.

Personally, I am tired of the chief economist of a bank that sounds
more like a make of hi-fi, coming on television to tell us why the Chancellor
of the Exchequer should follow a certain policy, only for the chief economist
from a bank that sounds more like a firm of solicitors, to come on the next
day and tell us precisely why the Chancellor should do something different.

Then they both go off to the trading floor and try to exploit the market
while the rest of us pay for the consequences.

It is surely time to enshrine some fundamental laws of economics. Laws
are what makes scientific research practicable, sensible, and progressive.
They mean that science can be done.

For some months I have been working on the problem of the ‘laws of economics’
with a large team of postgraduate research fellows. Recent events have forced
me to publish early. My researchers have come from wide ranging scientific
backgrounds: physics, chemistry and mathematics. They have been able to
devote so much time to constructing a ‘unified financial theory’ because
they have not been able to find any proper jobs elsewhere.

Although the ‘unified financial theory’ is still beyond our reach, we
are nevertheless able to publish Coulam’s three laws of fiscaldynamics.

The first law is the Law of Conservation of Treasury, describing the
principle that in a closed system of trading, which the world is, absolute
wealth can neither be created nor destroyed. Thus it explains why not everyone,
nor every business, nor certainly every country can have a positive balance
of trade account.

The principle works on both a microeconomic and a macroeconomic scale.
If someone is to become richer, someone else then has to become poorer.
If one country has a positive balance of trade, then another must have a
trade deficit

This fact may not be reflected in absolute monetary terms, thus it may
be possible to create the appearance of ever increasing wealth for everyone.
But since it is a conservation law, it must be remembered that a gain in
money depends on a loss in some other way. This is illustrated by a special
case of this general conservation law: ‘Time is money.’ A wise old saying
indeed.

The second law is the Law of Fiscal Entropy. This law states that wealth
cannot be transferred by any continuous, self-sustaining process from a
poorer to a richer system. This law explains why banks have had to make
so much provision for Third World debt, and why so many businesses and individuals
have gone bust recently. It forewarns of dangers inherent in borrowing,
of the criminal negligence of company directors taking more out from the
business than they have going in, and of the folly of creative accountancy
practices which shore up profits in the short term but weaken the business
in the long term.

Stated in terms of entropy, this law offers a dire warning to us all
about the prospects for sustained economic growth. Basically, this law demonstrates
that growth is not achievable at all times, in all places. The overall trend
is towards recession and decline, although it is impossible to predict when
the inevitable will occur.

The third law states that absolute zero can never be attained. Thus
it has consequences for those who seek to apply the Wally Nerd’s theorem.
This theorem basically holds that the second law of fiscal dynamics can
only be overruled at zero inflation However, by definition of the third
law of fiscaldynamics, zero inflation is unattainable. Thus the second law
cannot be overruled, nor its consequences reversed. This perhaps exposes
the folly of running an economic policy on the premise that inflation can
be brought down to zero.

Work on the ‘unified financial theory’ is progressing steadily. The
purpose of the theory is to attempt to describe, by one equation, all the
forces affecting an economy; interest rates, exchange rates, international
tax bands, stock markets, embezzlement, frauds, black economy and so on.
The unifying force has not yet been defined, but a potential unifier is
Greed.

This will no doubt prove to be an unpopular solution for many theoreticians,
but courting popularity is not the purpose of this research. We aim to put
economics up there with all the other great sciences. Its ultimate purpose
is to enable economists and the money-men to contribute something positive
to society, in the same way that other scientists have. It will subsequently
accord them the same prestige, esteem and worldwide respect enjoyed by their
fellow scientists.

Then at least, we can hope never to see them on television again, never
to hear their opinions and we can pay them the sorts of salaries that they
had previously only dreamed of in their worst nightmares about Black Monday.

If we can achieve all this, if we can silence the woman from the hi-fi
bank and the man from the solicitors, then maybe, just maybe, we can restore
some sanity to world economies, a little stability, and my research team
will find that funds are available once more to allow them to get back to
doing what they trained for.

Graeme Coulam is a freelance public relations consultant in scientific
instrumentation

Nevertheless, it serves to illustrate the fact that there is life outside
the laboratory, and that there may be life for laboratory equipment outside
it too. Perhaps it didn’t require a vast leap of ingenuity to see that the
flasks could act as vases, but someone had to do it. And given the slightly
depressed state of the British laboratory industry at present, perhaps there
are other markets it should be aiming at.

Now, I’m not suggesting that every home in the country needs a scanning
electron microscope, or an NMR machine. For a start they’re expensive, of
limited use when it comes to the housework and take up too much space in
the kitchen But the kitchen might be a good place to start looking at markets
for laboratory equipment. I know, for example, of a leading laboratory designer
and furniture supplier whose kitchen is fitted with laboratory cupboards.
Not the scrappy, wooden, school-style benches with ‘I hate Chemistry’ engraved
on their surface, but bright, cheerful, functional units of far better quality
than those Pounds sterling 10 000 kitchens that are advertised in the colour
supplements.

The extent of his kitchen furnishings don’t stretch quite as far as
an extraction fume cupboard, but fume extraction is a feature that kitchens
do require. Angle-poise fume extraction arms that can be brought over a
flask on the lab bench could also be used over a saucepan on the cooker.
And elsewhere in the house, they could prove invaluable over a slightly
larger bowl, in a slightly smaller room. I think you’ll catch my drift.

When it comes to actual cookery, laboratory glassware may have one or
two uses. In the health conscious, fat-fearing 1990s, the separating funnel
must surely overtake the gravy boat as the best way of removing the grease
from the gravy. For custard, too, it will come into its own. No longer need
we face the agony of deciding who gets the skin. It is, of course, recommended
that good laboratory practice is observed, and the separating funnel be
washed between courses. There is also the practical difficulty that separating
funnels won’t stand up properly, and are liable to spill their contents
all over the table. But this could be overcome.

Pipettes, too, will be a boon to the kitchen practitioner by doing away
with the problem of the over-filled milk bottle. By using the pipette, instead
of carefully having to pour the top of the milk out of the bottle, down
the side of one’s arm and onto the carpet, you will be able to remove the
first bit of milk without any mess, until the bottle’s more manageable.
This will be doubly advantageous to those families where there is dispute
over what sort of milk to get. The cream lovers will be able to extract
their portion off the top without making life unbearable for others who
want their milk so skimmed that they might as well buy water.

Pipettes will also make it possible to dispense into a cup precisely
the amount of milk that Aunt Agatha will take in her tea. In fact, it will
make it possible to insist that she quantify the volume of the ‘smidgeon’
she can stomach, and will do away with the awful, ‘A touch more, a touch
more . . . Oh no, that’s too much!’ routine. It will have to be ‘Four point
three millilitres,’ or she can jolly well do without. Families will stay
together for longer.

Magnetic stirrer beads with the appropriate heater should also come
in handy in the kitchen: they’d be ideal for sauces and soups that would
otherwise need stirring, thus relieving the dinner party host of this time-consuming
chore when the potatoes still need peeling. Fit the flask with a condenser
and you’d also rule out the chance of the thing boiling dry.

Meanwhile, you can take a sip of tea from one of your matching set of
glass beakers. Although they don’t often have handles, they do have the
benefit of being able to withstand the temperatures necessary to reheat
a drink that’s gone cold. Compare this with the performance of some of the
glasses you get free with your petrol, which shatter on the first contact
with water that’s warmer than tepid.

Moving into the bathroom, test-tube racks could double as toothbrush
holders; stoppered flasks as perfume bottles; tissue typing trays, with
a small amount of eyeshadow in each well, could form the basis of an emergency
make-up kit.

The problem of what to do with redundant glassware could be solved by
an artistic approach. During the 1960s, no home was complete without a hideous
ornament of some sort in which variously coloured fluids rose and fell while
light refracted through them. They were the perfect accompaniment to flowers,
flares and pot. So why not repeat the exploding aldehyde reaction in your
sitting room, and spend many a happy evening watching tiny droplets of ethaldehyde
and oxidising agent shooting up an old Liebig condenser? Perhaps entertainment
is really where it’s at. The leisure industry is growing, so that is the
market to aim for. Winchester flasks filled with varying volumes of water
make a rattling good xylophone when struck with a couple of spatulas. Test
tubes and boiling tubes could be moulded together as pan pipes. For the
more energetic, one could finish with a round on the golf course, using
plastic pipette tips as tees. It would rank as something of a status symbol
to have a tee that was fully autoclaveable.

By now you ought to be getting the idea, though I may be out on my own
with all this, perhaps ahead of my time. Even within the laboratory old
habits die hard, and there is often a reluctance to accept the new opportunities
that novel equipment provides. If it’s like that in the lab, it’s bound
to be harder outside.

Still, I live in hope. My friends have rallied round and come up with
other ideas. One in particular I’m fond of. Someone suggested that round
bottom flasks would make perfectly good light bulbs for homes with no electricity.

Graeme Coulam is a former chemist, now working in management.

Having said that, there are people around today who could yet achieve
fame in their own lifetime. Alec Jeffreys of Leicester University, for example,
receives regular attention in the media for his work on genetic fingerprinting.
And real superstar status has been accorded to Stephen Hawking at the University
of Cambridge. Following the success of his book A Brief History of Time,
he made the cover of Newsweek. In the US, that means you’ve made it.

Nevertheless, Hawking himself is doubtful of the virtues that fame can
offer. He more than most is painfully aware of the shortage of time in which
to do his work. Fame is borne of, and thrives on, the attention of the media;
and interviews, photo sessions and other such activities make great impositions
on one’s time.

For two-penny pop stars the media attention is part of their working.
For scientists it isn’t. If fame for the scientist meant hordes of screaming
teenyboppers lunging for your lab coat, it clearly wouldn’t be worth it.
Imagine setting up an experiment, and returning hours later to find some
crazed memorabilia hunter had run off with your cultures. And answering
all that fan mail could exhaust your research budget by blowing it all on
postage.

Nevertheless, if the whole world is what you’re after then, as a scientist,
you have an awesome task ahead of you. Frankly, I think it’s impossible.
Even if you won a Nobel prize for 17 years in succession, there would still
be some people who wouldn’t know you from Adam. If Dallas is still running,
JR will still be more famous.

Perhaps the best you can hope for is recognition by your colleagues.
There can be a glow of satisfaction for being noted in your field. But assuming
you still want more, and having warned you of the dangers, I offer some
advice on pain-free ways to bring your name to a wider audience.

A rather simple method will keep your name remembered by scientists
now and always. It need not require any skill, but demands a little effort
and rather a lot of money.

Every year the Royal Society and other institutions present awards.
The vast majority of these are given in memory of scientists, from money
left in their estates. Hence we have the Copley Medal, the Longstaff Medal
and the Seligmann Crystal to name but three. In conjunction with the Copley
Medal, a monetary award is given. It was done so first in 1957 and, standing
at Pounds sterling 1000, the ‘Mr and Mrs John Jaffe Prize’ is certainly
well worth winning. And if Mr and Mrs John Jaffe can do it, then why shouldn’t
you? Wider recognition demands a little more talent, but need not be impossible.
Chemists in particular are well placed to synthesise new molecules and give
them names. We already have hexane, squarene and cubane, so why not have
Johnsmithane and other such compounds? Apparatus, too, offer a wealth of
pos-sibilities. Liebig condensers and Buchner funnels abound. And every
schoolchild who has done a little science has encountered a Petri dish.
They may not know the inventor, but the name of Petri lives on.

It is medicine, however, that truly has the power to launch a thousand
superstars. If you want to become a household name, then all you have to
do is discover bits of the body, or identify diseases. Who in the civilised
world has never heard of Gabriello Fallopio’s discovery, the Fallopian tubes?
Half the people have got them.

To my mind, the idea of having a disease named after you is less than
appealing. Huntington’s chorea keeps the neurologist’s name well known,
but too many people reckon he caused the problem, rather than observing
it. That sort of fame I could do without. One would have to be certain that
something like Coulam’s chorea would not damage Coulam’s career.

On the other hand, as I’m not a doctor, I am unlikely to be in a position
where I could identify diseases anyway. The closest I’m liable to come is
Coulam’s syndrome. As yet unrecognised in medical circles, this disconcerting
condition describes the mental anguish of not receiving fan mail for articles
published in New ÐÓ°ÉÔ­´´.

Graeme Coulam, a former chemist, now works in management.