Letters: Radon survey
Further to your report on the efforts American health officials are
making to inform the public about the risks related to the radioactive gas,
radon (This Week, 2 March), your readers may be interested to know that
the Institute of Physics has sponsored several national surveys aimed at
researching the effect of radon in our homes and environment. The projects
form part of the IOP’s programme to further the public understanding of
science.
What distinguished these radon surveys is that all the measurements
are taken by members of the public-from primary school children upwards-and
that the IOP sponsorship brings the cost within the reach of both parents
and schools.
Susanna Lithiby Institute of Physics, London
Letters: Soldier blues
In his article ‘A war of nerves’ (9 March) David Cohen states that 386
British soldiers were executed for cowardice in the First World War and
only four in the Second World War. He is wrong on both counts.
The two most authoritative works on executions in the First World War,
Babbington’s For the Sake of Example, and Putkowski and Sykes’s Shot at
Dawn detailed 346 (September 1914 to March 1919) and 312 (September 1914
to November 1918). Only 17 of these executions were specifically related
to cowardice, although over 200 were for desertion. The rest were for quitting
one’s post, disobedience, murder (37), striking a superior officer, casting
away arms, mutiny and sleeping at post. In the Second World War, cowardice
was not an offence punishable by death and the four executions carried out
were either for mutiny or treason.
It has been calculated that there was an average of 400 British deaths
a day during the four years of the First World War and executions were therefore
a very tiny percentage of total deaths. To my knowledge, few of those sentenced
pleaded shell shock as a defence. In fairness to the military authorities,
3080 men were sentenced to death but only just over 10 per cent of those
sentences were carried out.
K. J. Cooper Cardiff South Glamorgan
Letters: Honest blunders
These days, we hear a lot about fraud and deceit in science. What we
collect, however, is the honest blunder. For example, when Einstein was
studying to be admitted to the Zurich technical university, he was doing
rather badly: he scored mainly 1s (on a scale from 1 to 6). But in the second
half of the year things suddenly went better, and Einstein’s marks went
up to 6s. According to a report of a Canadian historian, this was obviously
due to the fact that the school opened a brand new physics laboratory, in
which Einstein could do his own experiments.
Only after he had published this hypothesis, the historian was told
that, also in the same year, the school reversed its scale, so that it now
ran from 6 to 1. That is the kind of blunder we like.
We would appreciate hearing about (preferably your own) most embarrassing
moments in science. We want to expand our collection and, with your help,
perhaps blunder into publishing a book on the subject.
Hans van Maanen Het Parool, PO Box 433 1000 AK Amsterdam The Netherlands
Letters: Inflationary times
Ian Cruttwell asks for an update on the inflation data given in Peter
Wilsher’s book The Pound in your Pocket (Letters, 9 March).
I have produced a card which shows inflation up to the present. The
earlier data is from Peter Wilsher’s book, later data is from published
statistics and the most recent is from the annual retail price index.
It is shattering to see that inflation since 1909, at 49 times, is more
than inflation between 760 and 1909. There are people alive today who have
lived through more inflation than occurred in the previous millennium.
Eric Johnson Worcester
Letters: Museum piece
I was very pleased to see Mike Holderness extolling the virtues of old
fashioned museums (‘Down among the display cabinets’, Forum, 9 March). I
too enjoyed my visits to the Berlin museum and I hope Holderness didn’t
miss the display of inflated caterpillar skins.
I commend to him and others of like mind the Vienna museum of natural
history. This too is stuck in a beautiful, polished mahogany time-warp.
It features exquisite displays of mounted avian ear ossicles.
There is no need to travel far for the real museum experience – Britain
has many stimulating examples. For example, the Booth museum in Brighton
has the world’s first collection of bird dioramas, many of them exact recreations
of where the specimens were shot. It also has a picture of a tiger entirely
made from the wings of tortoiseshell butterflies, and a rabbit that had
its ears blown off in the war.
Potter’s museum of curiosities at the Jamaica Inn in Cornwall displays
a taxidermic tableau of the Death of Cock Robin (some of the attendant birds
having glass tears in their eyes), kittens at a garden party, a piece of
a Zeppelin and the autograph of General Gordon, no less. The charming museum
at Ilfracombe contains some stunningly bad taxidermy and a piece of the
Queen Mother’s wedding cake.
P. A. Morris Ascot, Berkshire
Letters: Tittle-title
Frank Ulrich laments that ‘titles of papers grow ever more bizarre’
(‘Titillation in the table of contents’, Forum, March 16). Among the titles
he has found in his ‘weekly chore. . . to scan the table of contents of
about 50 scientific journals’ is ‘Why is Mrs Thatcher interrupted so often?’,
by Geoffrey Beattie, Mark Pearson and myself. This is evidence that Ulrich’s
scan has now reached Nature of 1982.
Anne Cutler University of Cambridge
Letters: Computer fiction
In his review of the book Digital Dreams Fin Fahey is less than fair
to writers of fiction before the 1970s in suggesting that they completely
ignored the significance of the rise of digital computers (Review, 16 March).
After all, Kurt Vonnegut’s classic Player Piano was published as early
as 1952, and its chilling social comment is still relevant today. Michael
Frayn’s The Tin Men (1965) is not only still hilariously funny but, at a
time when very few lay people can have thought of computers as other than
fast calculating machines, it envisaged what we would now call ‘word processing’
and ‘artificial intelligence’ long before either of these terms were around.
Tom Corlett Pinner, Middlesex
Letters: Punctuation point
Ian Gordon’s instructions on how to punctuate are lucid and apposite,
but incomplete (‘How to stop without missing the point’, Forum, 2 March).
The apostrophe seems to cause people more trouble than all the other punctuation
marks put together. Apostrophes tend to be scattered with gay abandon: inserted
in plurals, omitted from possessives.
Confusion seems to be caused by its two purposes: to indicate the possessive
case, and to indicate the omission of a letter, plus the complication of
where to put it with a plural possessive noun.
Would the language be much the poorer without the apostrophe for the
possessive? I doubt it. ‘A mans expression should be clear and not be a
dogs breakfast’ is quite understandable.
D. J. Linforth Hampton, Victoria Australia
Letters: Medium message
While fully sharing Wendy Grossman’s concern for balance in the media,
I would like to know whether her scepticism applies only to what one might
call the ‘media mediums’ or whether it extends to all alleged miracles,
religious experience, the currently fashionable ‘new age’ movement and so
on (‘May the force be with us’, Forum, 2 March).
I should also be interested to know on what philosophical grounds it
is based. Would contributors to The Skeptic, for example, define reality
as only that which can be known by the human senses-aided, where appropriate,
by the available scientific techniques? In the days of Copernicus, such
scepticism would surely have endorsed the Flat Earth view: would Grossman
not agree, by analogy, that spiritual ‘voyages of discovery’ may lead some
perfectly intelligent and informed people (even scientists) to an awareness
of realities which lie beyond the horizon of ‘normal’ experience?
David Monkcom Tervuren Belgium
Letters: Safety duties
John Emsley’s article ‘An accidental waste of time’ raises some interesting
points about the supervision of postgraduate researchers in higher education
(Forum, 9 March). As leader of the Health and Safety Executive’s National
Interest Group for Education perhaps I could explain HSE’s interpretation
of the law.
Sections 2 and 3 of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 place general
duties on all employers (and this includes universities) to ensure, so far
as is reasonably practicable, the health and safety at work of their employees,
and others such as students who may be affected by their work. The qualification
‘so far as is reasonably practicable’ is very important; while there is
no absolute duty, the act requires that appropriate precautions are taken
to safeguard the health and safety of, for example, researchers and others.
This requires due consideration of both the risks involved, and the costs
of precautions.
In the case of a postgraduate research student, the HSE expects the
university to require the supervisor to determine the degree of supervision
needed at various stages of the research when agreeing the research protocol.
There is no legal requirement for supervisors to sign forms showing their
daily presence or involvement, as months may pass where little or no risk
exists, but equally the supervisor, using his or her professional judgment,
should determine those stages of the work where their involvement is either
necessary or appropriate.
Emsley is right when he says that the holder of a BSc carries a degree
of responsibility for his or her own actions in a laboratory, but the institution
also has responsibilities under health and safety legislation. The academic
supervisor in higher education has a major role to play in discharging this
duty in practice, and the HSE expects this to be an integral part of their
work, just as it is for supervisors in commercial organisations employing
postgraduate researchers.
One final point: the Institute of University Safety Officers held a
symposium in 1989 entitled ‘Student supervision-meeting health and safety
needs’. The transcript will be helpful to those uncertain about their own
responsibilities and is available from the Safety Office, University of
Bristol, 1-9 Old Park Hill, Bristol (0272 303780), priced 拢5.
Elizabeth Gyngell Health & Safety Executive Barking, Essex
Letters: Safety duties
Having lately taken over as editor of the Handbook of Reactive Chemical
Hazards (now in its 16th year) I am delighted to discover that some academics
are aware of it. I only regret that I have never actually met one, nor anyone
who seems to read the digest circulated by the Institute of University Safety
Officers, which explained the Sussex incident in 1987. If supervisors are
unaware of safety literature, how will the student find it?
The explosion at the University of Sussex was the result of a foolish
procedure applied to a compound documented accessibly as a hazard; it belongs
to a group which are generally explosive. The majority of reported university
explosions indicate that this is not an isolated case.
P. G. Urben Kenilworth, Warwickshire
Letters: Musical minds
John Davies appears to dislike the idea that music might be a process
of communication between composer and listener (‘The musical mind’, 19 January).
This concept originated not from scientists’ ideas of ‘instinct’ as suggested,
but from the experiences of musicians. Many composers have described how,
in the act of composition, they have gone through a process perceived as
searching for musical forms that will effectively express the musical idea
that has formed itself in their minds.
One of the performer’s tasks could then be said to be to identify, on
the basis of the information provided by the composer’s score, what that
idea is, and then to perform the music in such a way as to make it as transparent
as possible to the listener. In more objective terms, this ‘musical idea’
concept is substantiated also by musical analysis, through the way the latter
discloses relevant relationships (often logical) in content and structure.
On the subject of musical preferences, many musicians would contend
that there is more to the holding of interest over time in music than its
mere complexity of form, and that good music may hold interest indefinitely
by virtue of the subtlety of its meanings.
We would like to note especially that the experiments on reaction times
and the like, quoted in support of the assertion that musical ideas have
no absolute, culture-independent status, could just as well be seen as illustrating
the fact that familiar tasks can be accomplished more rapidly and more reliably
than unfamiliar ones.
We believe that to reject the concept of musical idea (as well as others
in the fairly considerable philosophical literature that exists on significance
in the arts) is to lead the subject on to a wrong track: seeing music simply
in terms of ‘basic aspects of sound such as loudness and speed interacting
in ways that are less easy to predict’ is almost certainly as oversimplified
a view of the subject as is seeing mathematics as merely a game played with
symbols.
Brian Josephson, T. L. Carpenter University of Cambridge