Letters: Safe not sorry
Duncan McKenzie questions ‘the wisdom of introducing devices which make
the driver feel safer’. Suggestions that safety precautions encourage recklessness
are old. In reply to a Board of Trade inquiry on railway safety devices
in 1873, Richard Moon, the chairman of the London and Northwestern Railway,
wrote that ‘all these mechanical appliances . . . are liable to create a
feeling of confidence in the men, who are therefore naturally inclined to
risk more than they would otherwise do’. Daniel Gooch of the Great Western
Railway added that ‘if the men are induced to believe that danger may be
entirely prevented by mechanical invention they may be lulled to sleep’.
With a century of hindsight it is clear that British Rail’s crews and
passengers are safer for having block signals and carriage brakes. Their
adoption did not produce a rash of accidents caused by foolhardy train drivers.
Perhaps a sufficient answer was given a century ago by WR Malcolm, assistant
secretary of the Board of Trade: ‘It is not easy to see how the use of defective
tyre-fastenings, or inferior couplings, could, by stimulating the care and
vigilance of railway servants, contribute to the safety of the travelling
public.’
Michael Lesk Morristown, New Jersey
Letters: Letters welcome
On 8 January 1991, the President of the Royal Society, Sir Michael Atiyah,
announced that he had launched a major inquiry into the state of British
science, with particular emphasis on future patterns of funding, the development
of essential infrastructure, the international (particularly the European)
dimension and the institutional and administrative organisation required
to ensure the long term health of the UK science base.
After our first couple of meetings, interesting converging (and diverging!)
points of view are beginning to emerge. One aspect on which we are all agreed
is that infrastructure, institutions, review committees and all the other
paraphernalia of the modern scientific endeavour are secondary to the most
important resource of all, people. And the inquiry will certainly wish to
make recommendations about ways in which the career structure and perception
of would-be entrants to the profession could be improved.
Some Fellows have been urging the steering committee to issue an immediate
statement condemning present funding levels and policies and demanding a
dramatic Ministerial intervention. However I do not feel that the inquiry
as set up should make instant statements or judgements. For the President
of the Royal Society simply to say ‘give us more money’ would surely invite
the Mandy Rice-Davies response: ‘Well he would say that, wouldn’t he?’
But I do hope that the inquiry will remind both ourselves as scientists,
and the society in which we work and live, that scientific endeavour is
a multi-dimensional activity with both short and long range interactions.
Attack a bit here, and unpredictable damage may occur elsewhere. Gazing
night after night at the globular cluster M13 and identifying red giants
which are ten billion years old is an activity which butters few, if any,
parsnips. But the beautiful photographs which appear in the press as a result
of this work and the excitement that comes from looking beyond earth to
the very origins of the Universe is, in my experience in talking to first
year students for more than 30 years, possibly the biggest single influence
in persuading them to engage in a scientific career.
Will the inquiry succeed? That will depend significantly on the input
it receives from the community at large. To this end, the President has
asked that scientists write directly to him expressing their views. I would
be very happy to pass on any letters these comments might evoke; even wholly
anecdotal evidence is helpful as this can often lead to new lines of enquiry.
I believe that the imaginative act of setting up the Inquiry presents
us with a unique opportunity and we owe it to the next generation of scientists
to seize it. If we fail to do so, I suspect that in later years, we might
feel rather ashamed of ourselves.
J. E. Enderby The Royal Society, London
Letters: Selling bad habits
I am writing to express my support relating to the article by Andy Coghlan
on ‘Britain’s Deadly Diet’ (11 May). The article correctly pointed out that
while nutritional information is available, it is often counteracted by
advertisements for the very foods we are supposed to reduce our intake of.
As a researcher looking into the influences of advertisements on young children’s
food preferences, I find this particularly worrying. These advertisements
are often not questioned by the young audience, who find it hard to abstract
from the ‘reality’ of the television screen.
With four fifths of foods advertised for children being high in sugar
or high in fat, I feel it is time for this kind of advertising to be monitored
and for the food industry to begin to reduce the amount of sugar added to
foods, for example breakfast cereals. As sugar is a learned preference,
surely we can protect our children from disease in the long term by not
encouraging the consumption of foodstuffs they do not even require.
It would also be beneficial, to aid informed consumer choice, if there
were clear labels stating if sugar had been added to the product which was
non intrinsic to the basic foodstuff or recipe.
Angela Donkin The Food Marketing Research Group University of Nottingham
Letters: Expert witnesses
Angela Gallop suggests that the Home Office and Police have a ‘virtual
monopoly’ on forensic science and there are only ‘a handful of independent
forensic scientists who defence lawyers can turn to’ (This Week, 25 May).
This is something of an overstatement. As editor of the UK Register of Expert
Witnesses I am concerned daily with locating, amongst others, forensic scientists
competent and willing to assist in defence cases. The register contains
details of over 50 such people.
The statement that ‘a legal aid clerk’ can refuse to authorise the fee
of a forensic scientist in a legally aided case is erroneous. The Criminal
and Care (General) Regulations of 1989 make it clear that determinations
are made by an area committee of practising solicitors/barristers. A clerk
may have delegated powers to authorise a payment but certainly cannot have
any power to refuse a payment.
If, as suggested, defence lawyers do not become aware of their expert’s
deficiencies until it is too late, they have only themselves to blame. No
competent solicitor ought to be instructing an expert unless satisfied both
as to that person’s competence in the relevant field of expertise and as
a witness per se.
Christopher Pamplin Chorley, Lancashire
Letters: Ize right
Ian Gordon manages to make the -ise/-ize problem seem thoroughly confusing
(Forum, 11 May). To a certain extent this has come from treating the dicta
of the Oxford University Press as though they were holy writ. Perhaps the
most sensible approach is that given to prospective authors in a guide published
by Ellis Horwood, the scientific and technical publishers.
Three systems are offered: (a) -ise for everything: (b) -ize for almost
everything: (c) -ize as a rule, but with certain exceptions. The Oxford
dictionaries favour (c), but their list of ‘certain exceptions’ contains
at least 53 common words, including several in -yse/-yze, which seems to
me rather too many for comfort. The guide suggests that the choice is of
little importance, provided that single convention is used consistently.
Convention (c) is preferred, but if others used (a) or (b) throughout, their
choice would not be questioned. For my money, system (a) wins hands down
for the British writer, as there is only one rule to remember.
John Tiffany Nuffield Laboratory of Ophthalmology University of Oxford
Letters: Too hot to date
Feedback has criticised me for chastising the judges of the Science
Book Prize for passing over Frank Close’s saga Too Hot to Handle, as one
of the best books published in 1990. The book, you write, was published
in 1991 and was therefore ineligible for the award. But my copy clearly
states: ‘First published in Great Britain in 1990’.
Perhaps I have a rogue copy, of course, although it would seem all the
judges were similarly deluded. Certainly they considered the book very carefully,
and only excluded it from the final short-list by a narrow vote because
of it’s ‘lack of drama’.
Robin McKie The Observer London
* * *
We were correct in stating that the book in question was not published
until 1991. However the publisher’s original intention had been to publish
in the autumn of 1990, leading to the decision – accepted by the judges
– to enter it for the Book Prize. Ed.
Letters: Greenhouse gardening
Kate Charlesworth’s spread on trees (‘Life, the Universe and almost
Everything,’ 18 May) prompts me to revive a question I put to the people
at Kew several years ago. They couldn’t give me an answer. Maybe by now
someone can.
In order to help keep up the oxygen level, which is it better to plant
– broad-leaved trees, or conifers?
I can see possibilities both ways. Broad-leaved trees have the greater
respiration area; however, they are mostly deciduous, which means that for
a long period each year they are dormant. Conifers are evergreen; however,
having only needles they presumably possess a smaller total respiration
area per unit of ground occupied.
To the layman, this and related questions are a real headache. Being
a lazy gardener, and assuming that the plants that grow the fastest are
fixing more carbon than the competition, I sometimes feel I ought to let
the weeds take over. On the other hand, I like currants and gooseberries
better than convolvulus and goosegrass . . .
John Brunner South Petherton, Somerset
Letters: Sterling service
I noted with interest Ariadne’s comments about the non-availability
of simple portable cassette radios with a timer (20 April). I possess just
such a device, made by Mrs Sugar’s favourite son in the early 1980s. My
Amstrad model 8090 has given sterling service for more than ten years. It
has been up and down the Atlantic more times than I can calculate, been
to three wars, survived extensive modifications and even being thrown across
a cabin by a particularly unpleasant wave.
If Ariadne discovers a machine with a similar combination of features,
cheapness and durability, I do hope that this information will be passed
on to your readers.
Stewart Lloyd RFA Olmeda, BFPO Ships Royal Fleet Auxiliary Service
Letters: Sterling service
I can recommend the Toshiba RT-8539: stereo, twin cassette, digital
tuning, 25 station presets – all this plus timer in 500 x 138 x 133 millimetres
and 2.6 kilograms.
Ivor Williams Okehampton, Devon.
Letters: Sterling service
One alternative would be a mains powered radio-casette unit, set to
record and powered through a quartz controlled appliance time.
At a pinch, a VCR can also serve as a Lo-Fi mono tape deck, by employing
its ‘line’ audio input and output sockets. (Most modern VCRs will record
audio without a video input). This allows up to four hours’ uninterrupted
recording, with timer facilities. The quality isn’t brilliant, but should
be adequate for non-musical programmes.
Keith Walters Lane Cove, NSW, Australia
Letters: Prang
Roger Worsley, in sounding off about Halifax engines, has shot himself
in the port outer, or something (Letters, 25 May).
Halibags had Merlins or Hercules engines: Pegasi were to be found on
Hampdens and Swordfish.
At least Barry Fox supplied us with a Halifax – I would have been less
surprised to see a Lancaster.
‘Whoops’ indeed! Same to you, Roger . . .
B. Derbyshire Stockport, Cheshire
Letters: Safe not sorry
I would like to set the record straight on the Transport and Road Research
Laboratory research mentioned in Mick Hamer’s recent article on road safety.
Your correspondent Duncan McKenzie (Letters, 18 May) implied that we spend
our time developing safety devices for hypothetical vehicles. I can assure
him that, once the general principles were established in preliminary experiments,
our development of airbag and leg protection for motorcycles has proceeded
using a variety of fully operational machines, in normal road-going trim,
with fully-instrumented anthropometric dummies sitting on the machines in
lifelike attitudes. Having witnessed some of them I can testify that Dr
Chinn’s full-scale impact tests are frighteningly realistic.
These safety devices have been tested very extensively over a very wide
range of conditions, and they really do work. The results of the airbag
tests with moving cars have not been published simply because they are very
recent, but as with all previous testing, they will be made public.
There is a minority of motorcyclists who, perhaps for reasons of machismo,
reject all safety improvements. They argue that since many motorcycle accidents
are someone else’s fault, the responsibility lies solely with other road
users to keep out of a motorcyclists’s way. This attitude can be of little
consolation to the 11,000 motorcyclists seriously injured, and the friends
and relatives of the 600 killed each year.
P. H. Bly, Transport and Road Research Laboratory, Berkshire.