Letter: Porn research
Many of the experiments described in Mike Baxter’s article (‘Flesh and
Blood’, 5 May) on research into the links between pornography and sexual
violence involved deliberately exposing subjects (mostly young, male, college
students) to massive doses of pornography. The results seem to show exactly
the strengthening of attitudes we might expect – an increased callousness
towards women and a correspondingly increased leniency towards rapists.
How does one justify this type of experiment when its very use involves
the apparent dehumanisation of numbers of young men? Such experiments must
also vastly underestimate the links, given the notoriously difficult problems
of getting men to be honest about misogynistic attitudes and trying to predict
in a laboratory situation possible future sexual behaviours in the ‘real
world’. Combine this with the fact that many male subjects – and sometimes
male researchers too – have a personal interest in maintaining the pornographic
status quo and you can easily have ‘dirty books, dirty films and dirty data’.
Why does not research concentrate instead on the evidence given by women
and children who have experienced actual sexual abuse and coercion as a
direct result of men’s use of pornographic magazines and videos? These survivors
of sexual violence are painfully aware of pornographic links and yet their
testimony seems to carry very little weight in the scientific search for
‘constructive evidence’.
It is interesting that Mike Baxter’s round-up of research mentions only
one such survey, under the heading of ‘anecdotal evidence’. Is this another
case of the direct evidence of women being treated as ‘non-data’? If so
then I think we have to re-evaluate our research methods. It is no exaggeration
to say that the lives of women and children may be at stake.
Maggie Sinclair Edinburgh
Letter: Porn research
Mike Baxter’s article on pornography was only marginally better than
those that often appear in the Sunday supplements, but was still bad. It
lacked objective rigour (it spoke of ‘worrying trends’), struggled in vain
to sidestep inconsistencies (‘different portrayals of sexual violence have
. . . different effects’), and was patronising (‘(it) increases men’s acceptance
of rape myths’).
Furthermore, his entire thesis (apparently), that pornography leads
to rape, was unwittingly sabotaged by the caption writer (‘In Japan, porn
is plentiful yet rape is apparently rare’). Of more academic interest to
me is why this kind of article could only have been written by a Briton
and be published in Britain, the single remaining Western country (apart
from Iceland and Ireland) to have strict anti-pornography laws (note the
disingenuous photograph of a man emerging from a ‘sex shop’). Surely it
cannot be in New 杏吧原创’s interests to perpetuate the unpalatable myth
that we Brits are a hypocritical and illiberal lot, unhealthily preoccupied,
like the Sunday tabloids, with ‘vice’?
Antony Milne, London
Letter: Martian canals
In reacting to Geoff Kirby’s warning about ‘pathological science’ in
amateur astronomy by holding out hope for finding canals on Mars, GJ Harris
(Letters, 31 March) commits the Balls Pond Road fallacy. This is the fallacy
that holds that everyone is entitled to their own opinion (Letters, 7 July,
1983). Harris seems to be oblivious to the overwhelming evidence against
the canals.
Mariner 9’s negative results in 1972, cited by Harris, were not a fluke,
as he seems to think. They were confirmed in 1976 by the high-resolution
pictures from the Viking Orbiters which were fully reported by New 杏吧原创
at the time. There is no need for Harris to ‘reserve judgment until 1992,
when the Observer spacecraft will be sent to’ Mars.
Having an open mind is a most worthy condition in the face of a valid
controversy; but that condition is not meant to be permanent. As G. K. Chesterton
observed, ‘. . . The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth,
is to shut it again on something solid.’ The pictures from Mars are solid
enough evidence to foreclose the possibility of features corresponding to
what Percival Lowell claimed to see in 1900 and also to justify Geoff Kirby’s
citing the canals as ‘pathological astronomy’.
C. Leroy Ellenberger St Louis, Missouri, US
Letter: Sane scientists
I would have thought that you would not publish such a misleading letter
as Paul Gill’s diatribe against science fiction (Letters, 7 April). Mad
scientists aiming to rule the world died out many years ago: the average
mad scientist spends his or her time trying to save the world while all
the sane politicians, industrialists, and so on, ignore him or her. Indeed,
the mad scientists I remember were actually excellent role-models to seek
to emulate: I’d rather be Professor Branestaum or an early Dr Who than many
of the successful types that we are encouraged to emulate these days – you
know, entrepreneurial types who have made this country what it is today
. . .
‘If scientists wrote stories then they would certainly ensure the villains
were no longer scientists . . .’ wrote Gill. If I look around my science
fiction collection, I find plenty of books by authors with a science or
engineering background. If Gill actually read some of these books – Gregory
Benford’s Timescope, Bob Shaw’s The Peace Machine, or Robert Forward’s Dragon’s
Egg and Starquake – then he might find what he has been looking for.
Robert Day Coventry
Letter: Tiger hunt
‘Computers help to hunt the Tasmanian tiger’ (This Week, 10 March) comes
close to confirming the existence of the animal. Because a computer has
matched the location of many tiger sightings with the location of the animal’s
preferred ecosystem, then surely it must still exist.
Of course, this assumes the reliability of eyewitness accounts, for
there is simply no other evidence. But there is ample evidence that we have
almost unlimited powers of subconscious imagination – a wonderful gift as
long as we don’t kid ourselves that it is an adequate substitute for scientific
methodology.
We cannot prove that the Tasmanian tiger eyewitnesses were mistaken,
but a total lack of any supporting evidence over 50 years should lead us
to the conclusion that it is extinct.
Howard Whelan Australian Geographic Terrey Hills, Australia
Letter: Class bias . . .
John Galloway’s ‘Working-class honours: the not-so glittering prizes’
(28 April) makes sad but hardly surprising reading.
When I emigrated here from the US in 1971 the class structure was apparent
to me. I do not perceive it as having grown any less apparent since. The
general contempt our ruling classes exhibit for scientists and technologists,
like that they exhibit for teachers – I taught at comprehensive schools
for 16 years – is manifest, whatever their protestations to the contrary.
It is only natural that many of our best scientists are leaving to work
abroad. The only inexplicable thing is that some do not.
Unless Britain is to sink permanently into the sea of the second-rate,
like some fatuous Atlantis, willing its own destruction, the need for swift
and thorough overhaul of attitudes underlying and underpinning our stultifying
class system is vital. Out will go the automatically advantaged and in will
come some sort of meritocracy. But I don’t propose to hold my breath until
this happens.
Far more likely is that our natural inertia, apathy, lack of imagination,
want of foresight, and that terrible ‘poverty of ambition’ Aneurin Bevan
spoke of, will prevail.
Ralph Estling Ilminster, Somerset
Letter: Engineer status
What defines an ‘engineer’ is a perennial question and one referred
to again in Bill O’Neill’s article, ‘Who wants to be an engineer?’ (5 May).
This seems to sum things up rather well.
A friend’s gas boiler developed a small leak and although it had been
examined on separate occasions by two ‘engineers’ from British Gas, no action
had been taken. Getting fed up with waiting, he rang the company, who promised
to send someone to see it. When he said that the boiler had already been
examined by two of their engineers the woman replied that this time they
would send a technician. On being asked what was the difference between
an engineer and a technician, she replied that ‘a technician will have received
training’.
Jack Harris Dursley Glos
Letter: Cooler times
I would like to take issue with John Gribbin’s statement of the facts
on solar activity and temperature in his recent commentary on the report
of the Marshall Institute (‘Whatever happened to the mini ice age?’, Forum,
14 April).
Gribbin says the pattern of past changes suggests the 1980s should have
been a cold decade. But there is some confusion here. Solar activity has
been at a very high level in the 1980s and is currently close to the record
solar high of 1957. If solar activity is correlated with temperatures, the
1980s should have been unusually warm. The record shows that they were.
In the last millennium, solar activity has been low in the 13th, 15th,
17th and 19th centuries. The Marshall report points out that on the basis
of this record, the 21st century also should be a period of low solar activity.
If past correlations with climate persist, the 21st century will then also
be a period of natural cooling, apart from any man-made climate changes.
Gribbin is misinformed in suggesting that the Marshall report, which
was written by myself, William Nierenberg and Frederick Seitz, was not subject
to peer review. We solicited criticisms of the draft report from the scientists
who had briefed us during the course of the Marshall study and incorporated
their criticisms into the final version. The report’s conclusions were also
endorsed by three of the leading climate experts in the United States –
Richard Lindzen and Reginald Newell of MIT and Jerome Namias of the Scripps
Institution.
The peer review to which the Marshall report was subjected was considerably
more thorough than that given to statements by scientists appearing before
Congressional committees and asserting the imminent arrival of a catastrophic
global warming – which receive no peer review at all, but are picked up
and widely publicised by the press.
Robert Jastrow Dartmouth College New Hampshire, US
Letter: Science soap
Ian Mundell asks, how many episodes in modern science would make good
television? (‘As seen on television’, Forum, 28 April.) Why good television?
Why not an engineering research soap? A space telescope soap? I have had
experiences in analytical and research chemistry labs that were more interesting,
moving, dramatic and funnier than can be seen in the usual television output.
D. Shillam, London
Letter: . . . classroom view
I am an 18-year-old student in my final year at an independent school,
currently doing maths, physics and economics at A-level. I put myself in
the ‘better-off middle class’, and so was most interested in your theories
as to why independent school students are drawn towards the arts rather
than the sciences. You claim that ‘Parents in this class view their children’s
choice of science as they would a choice to go on the stage or become an
artist’. This, from my experience, is totally untrue. I agree that the majority
of students do tend towards the more artistically oriented subjects, but
most would say this is through their own choice, and not through any ambitions
of their parents.
So why are independent schools biased away from the sciences? The answer,
I believe, is peer group pressure, albeit a very subtle form. There is an
almost unconscious feeling among my contemporaries that people in the sciences
are slightly strange. The science student is pushed into a standard pigeonhole
of behaviour by his peers, and no matter how he behaves he is never quite
accepted. (I point out that as my school is all male, I cannot speak for
the women in the sciences.) Another form of pressure is more conscious.
There is a feeling that science, especially research, is a kind of low-paid
backwater that should be avoided at all costs. When I was discussing A-level
and future career choices with several friends, I mentioned that I might
move into research after I have taken my degree. There was a stunned silence.
‘What on earth makes you want to do that?’ one exclaimed. ‘You could never
get married or support a family on that kind of pay.’
T. E. H. Isaacson Sherborne, Dorset
Letter: Harsh thoughts
Gareth Husk’s thoughts on operating microcomputers in harsh environments
(‘Hands-off experience’, Forum, 31 March) contain some important points,
but there are also important omissions. He correctly points out that modern
lap-top machines offer a solution to some of the problems of computing in
developing countries. However, to gain the full benefits of this technology,
it is essential to have battery-powered machines (this removes the need
for uninterruptible power supplies) and hard disc storage.
It is floppy discs – both in 5.25 and 3.5 inch versions – which are
notoriously susceptible to environmental assault. In The Gambia we have
come to accept as normal the failure of up to a third of all floppy discs
during their first year of life, despite looking after them very carefully.
Even as a backup strategy, floppy discs are highly unsatisfactory; but we
have operated many sealed hard-disc drives uneventfully up to and beyond
their design lives.
Peter Byass The Gambia, West Africa