Letter: Political science
The reason for the demise of the SDP is now clear: its failure to understand
basic science. To quote its president, John Cartwright: ‘We often said we
were a catalyst for change, and of course the fate of a catalyst is to burn
up in the process.’ If only the SDP had been a catalyst for change, it would
be here today.
Stephen Pople Bristol
Letter: Brave new world
Mike Price is mistaken to assume that the difficulty with science’s
relationship with society is that only mediocre scientists leave the fold
to work in ‘administration’, where they forever bear the weight of huge
chips on their shoulders against their clever colleagues (‘Failed scientist
makes good’, Forum, 2 June). Instead, the conveyor-belt school-university-PhD
system means that too few good scientists appreciate the rewards outside
– preferring low-grade research jobs where they can wear the coveted white
coats, but which are boring dead ends. They then write letters and articles
bewailing the fate of British science in general and their own specialism
in particular.
Come on you lot! The world awaits; there is more to life than washing
glassware – you have nothing to lose but your prejudice. Good scientists
in business and government help link science to the rest of the world, as
well as curtailing the wilder excesses of either group. Would the US fund
so many wildly expensive projects if the costs and likely benefits had been
properly understood by those responsible for the money?
Peter Bedson London
Letter: Supercollider funds
I refer to your story ‘Supercollider will drain research funds, warn
physicists’ (This Week, 12 May). The article, while one might argue over
certain points and emphases, communicated the general sense of the presentation
to HEPAP (high-energy physics advisory panel) of the report by the subpanel
which I chaired. However, the headline was neither correct nor was it justified
by the following text.
The charge provided to the subpanel by the Department of Energy assumed
the construction of the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC), which would
produce scientific results around the year 2000, and requested a study for
a programme, given certain budget scenarios independent of the SSC budget,
to optimise scientific productivity for this decade as well as to ensure
a community well-placed to take advantage of the SSC when it exists. Neither
HEPAP nor the subpanel expressed concern that the SSC would ‘drain funds’.
Conversely, the subpanel report clearly stated, and I repeated this at the
HEPAP meeting, that construction of the SSC was the highest priority of
the US high-energy physics community.
As our panel reported, the number of US scientists in high-energy physics,
including graduate students and young postdocs, has been increasing at about
2 per cent per year over the past 15 years. This has occurred even though
the US research budget for this activity has remained constant in real dollars.
This growth of scientists reflects, I believe, the fundamental discoveries
that have been taking place, and the great challenges to creativity and
inventiveness that confront future high-energy particle research.
The important task for the subpanel was to propose a plan to maintain
the attraction of this science in the 10-year period of SSC construction.
Our conclusion was that some early investment in construction at an existing
facility was important to maintain viability through the decade.
Frank Sciulli Chairman, HEPAP Subpanel Columbia University New York,
US
Letter: Flowery retort
How correct Graeme Coulam is concerning the domestic value of laboratory
equipment (‘Out of the fume cupboard, into the home’, Forum, 9 June). My
wife and I have made use of assorted glass bottles, flasks and tanks for
ornamental or functional purposes around our house. A reagent bottle bearing
the sand-blasted label ‘Conc. Nitric Acid’, makes an attractive spirit decanter
(after a thorough chromic and detergent wash!). Glass tanks of all sizes
may accommodate flower arrangements from posies to long-stemmed displays.
But perhaps our piece de resistance was my old Kipps Apparatus, often
used as a bottle garden. This supported a virulent mixture of ivy plants
for some years, which emanated from all orifices of the equipment. It never
lost wholly that faint sulphurous odour, but perhaps trace elements played
a part in the exuberant plant growth. We never did find a use for that old
bench centrifuge, though.
John Crocker Birmingham
Letter: Clan gathering
I was interested to read about the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh’s research
carried out during the last three World Cups (incidentally, Scotland have
qualified for the last four, and this is the fifth in a row), with respect
to the tournament’s effect on psychiatric disorders (‘How to score goals
and influence people’, 2 June).
However, you mentioned that the World Cup ‘provides one of the most
powerful of very few outlets for a wide and acceptable expression of Scottish
nationhood’. I was surprised that this was illustrated by Republic of Ireland
supporters, who have far more such outlets, due to their successful split
from Westminster jurisdiction. Could you really not find a suitable picture
of the tartan army? Also, how could those Irish supporters be from the last
World Cup, as that country has only qualified for the finals for the first
time this year?
Jane Ann Liston Fife, Scotland
Letter: Antarctic research
I was heartened to read in D. J. Drewry’s letter (9 June) that the ‘British
Antarctic Survey endorses fully the concerns of many organisations to care
for and conserve the environment of Antarctica’. However, I dispute his
insinuation that such organisations intend to serve an eviction notice to
scientists working in the Antarctic.
Greenpeace and most other environmental organisations interested in
Antarctic issues (approximately 200 worldwide) belong to the Antarctic and
Southern Ocean Coalition (ASOC). ASOC fully supports the use of the Antarctic
as a natural observatory. We recognise the importance of the region in studying
phenomena of global importance. Indeed, we maintain an Antarctic scientific
station of our own. We simply do not believe that the Antarctic environment
must be degraded to do so. I am not aware of any organisation which proposes
that the Antarctic be encircled by a brick wall to keep humans out.
Drewry need not fear that scientists will be prevented from carrying
out research into ozone depletion, climate change and anthropogenic pollution.
However, he might well fear that our campaign will prevent BAS and other
Antarctic operators from blatantly ‘apprais(ing) the offshore hydrocarbon
and onshore mineral prospectivity’
as stated in the Natural Environment Research Council’s ‘Antarctica
2000′ research plans.
The exploitation of the Antarctic’s energy and mineral resources would
most certainly have a negative impact on flora, fauna and the pristine nature
of the Antarctic environment.
Kelly Rigg Antarctica Project Director Greenpeace International Amsterdam
Letter: Falsifying Darwin
I wish to point out that Karl Popper’s exclusion of Darwinism as a true
scientific theory is now obsolete. It is generally accepted that this exclusion
was a result of Popper’s refusal to admit Marxism as a true falsifiable
theory, and he did not see how he could differentiate it from Darwinism.
Marxism has now been shown to be a true falsifiable theory – indeed,
Havel and Walesa have both received doctorates for their part in disproving
it. Since Popper found himself obliged to place Marxism and Darwinism in
the same class, there should now be no further controversy over the latter.
Darwinism should forthwith be upgraded from ‘metaphysical research programme’
to ‘falsifiable scientific theory’.
Robin Oakley-Hill Sevenoaks, Kent
Letter: Engineer supply
The crisis in the supply of graduate engineers is already with us. What
is to be done? Bill O’Neill’s excellently researched article, ‘Who wants
to be an engineer?’ (5 May) identifies the Engineering Council’s Integrated
Engineering Degree Programme (IEDP) as a step in the right direction to
persuade young people that engineering is not the boring, highly convergent
discipline which they think it is.
We agree. However, there are eight such courses planned and not six
as mentioned in the article. We are obliged to declare an interest: the
IEDP course at Strathclyde is one of only two already running in Britain,
despite the fact that the Department of Trade and Industry start-up funding
did not extend in our direction (which might explain why O’Neill was not
told about it). Thirty students started last October, nine of them female,
and the encouraging proportion of applications from females has been maintained
this year.
Perhaps publicity has been inadequate, but we have not as yet been embarrassed
by massive offers of support from industry for the new course. We would
like our students to be persuaded that employers out there are really looking
for graduate engineers who are ‘unconverged’ and keen to pick up new challenges
in Europe. At present, we have only a handful of firms ‘on board’ for the
new course.
At the moment, companies seem to be looking for any graduating engineers
they can get. However, only a few employers see some possible benefit in
giving financial support to courses, or in offering vacation opportunities
to students in their earlier years. This is not really surprising in view
of the disingenuous attitude of the government (Thistle Diary, 19 May).
In other countries, industrial support for education (in cash or kind) is
often relieved of the burden of taxation and indeed industry may be offered
a tax incentive to assist. Our problems start much further up the tree and
probably have much to do with the cultural background of our policy makers
and their advisers. We hope, with Tam Dalyell, that readers who are employers
will react.
T. G. F. Gray, J. D. W. Hossack University of Strathclyde Glasgow
Letter: Sarawak forestry
Fred Pearce has written of attacks by rainforest campaigners on the
findings of the ITTO Mission to Sarawak (This Week, 2 June). I hope that
the mission’s report, which was released by ITTO immediately after my presentation
in Jakarta on 16 May, will in due course be more fully reviewed.
The mission was set two tasks: to assess the sustainability of forestry
in Sarawak, and to make recommendations. The second major recommendation
is that ‘the annual rate of harvesting must be phased down to a figure that
corresponds to the prospective sustainable yield’. It is predicted that,
if one million hectares are allocated to biodiversity reserve and four million
hectares to permanent forest estate, and a slope limit of less than 60 degrees
is set on all logging operations, and silvicultural treatment is routinely
applied after logging, then (and only under these conditions) a sustainable
yield of about 9.2 million cubic metres per annum will be achievable. I
feel that critics who challenge this figure must take the trouble to investigate
its derivation and compare it with others derived from alternative strategies
(which yield predictions in the range 4.1 to 11 million cubic metres per
annum).
According to Pearce, the World Wide Fund for Nature also claims that
the mission failed to investigate impacts on non-timber products ‘such as
oils, rattan, fruits and meat’. Of these, oils were not mentioned on any
occasion by anyone in Sarawak. Anxiety over stocks of rattan was frequently
expressed: ITTO mission members visited a rattan factory (Tak Hin Rattan
Industries) and, in Kuching, I met a small manufacturer/retailer; neither
found difficulty in procuring rattan of local origin.
The mission did not neglect these topics, but found them elusive and
unquantifiable; it was difficult to isolate effects of logging from a background
of over-exploitation, illicit poaching and the use of methods of mass destruction.
The assessment of sustainability in terms of non-wood products and services
admits that ‘the evidence is conflicting and indefinite’ but nonetheless
accepts ‘as highly likely that policies as they are presently implemented
are reducing the capacity of the forest resource to sustain the rural economies
based on these products, unless protective measures are put in place’.
Further enquiry, no doubt, could provide a firmer basis for judgment,
but I believe it will be difficult to obtain economic data and more time
will be needed than was available to the ITTO mission.
Earl of Cranbrook Saxmundham Suffolk
Letter: Glow-worms
Would readers like to help in a survey of glow-worms in Britain this
summer? I am particularly concerned with discovering whether they are affected
by the spread of streetlights, though it may be hard to disentangle this
from other changes to their habitat. Glow-worms are best seen during June
and July, just after dusk, in open areas with moderately long grass or in
hedgerows. They appear as greenish lights. Only the females glow brightly,
clinging to foliage, displaying the luminescent segments on their tails.
The glow attracts the flying male beetles.
Reports should specify the location (map reference if possible), the
numbers, date, weather conditions and visibility of artificial lighting
from the site. Please write to me at 1 Milverton Drive, Ickenham, Uxbridge,
Middlesex UB10 8PP.
Robin Scagell Uxbridge, Middlesex