Letters: Looking forward
There are respects in which Robert Chote’s account of the Treasury’s
practice of macroeconomic modelling might mislead (‘Why the Chancellor is
always wrong’, 31 October). Econometrics is at least as much forward looking
as dynamics in any other field. Econometric models are just simultaneous
differential or difference equations: they relate present values or rates
of change of variables to values or rates of change of other variables.
The calculation of a first or higher order difference or derivative necessarily
involves past values. Equations may be based on theory, but they are often
fitted to observations. Observations in all systems are necessarily observations
of past behaviour. Neither the use of differences nor of observations make
econometrics ‘backward looking’ any more than other empirically based dynamic
systems are backward looking. Indeed many economic models now include as
endogenous variables, expectations of their future values, and game theory
treatments of goal seeking.
In research, the most interesting approach, which is now computationally
possible, is to handle the economy as a distributed system of independently
acting, goal-seeking individual agents: the micro-to-macro approach.
To facilitate this, there need to be developments in the company reporting
and government statistical systems, which were designed up to the limits
of the computational methods available 50 years ago. Attempts merely at
better measurement of rather vague concepts like national income will not
get us far.
My original amendment to the 1975 Industry Act required the Treasury
to publish forecasts, error estimates, the Treasury model and policy priorities.
The aim was to stimulate improved methods. Such improvements have been happening,
but too slowly.
Jeremy Bray MP House of Commons London
Letters: Looking forward
You are remarkably tolerant of economics as a scientific discipline
in your editorial (Comment, 31 October), asserting that it is ‘typical of
a young science’ when it gets the abstract mathematics correct and the real
world forecasts wrong. There are many sciences far more recent than economics
and I doubt they feel that they are subject to the animal life cycle of
birth and youth, age and death. Neither would the likes of solid-state physics
or biochemistry relish the notion that unsuccessful theories should be tolerated
on grounds of youth.
I hear influential economists, City men, ex-Treasury, claiming economics
is not about forecasts at all. It is about understanding the economy. That
makes it a kind of history, not a science. These people want the mantle
of the prophet without the risks of prophecy.
It is, at present, impossible to discuss the economy without resort
to the jargon and theory of economics. Politicians cannot be taken seriously
unless they go along with whatever the current orthodoxy might be. And there
is, as you say, a growing belief in the world that it is all nonsense. Economists
are the failed priests of a pseudo-scientific religion.
No one is saying that we should stop trying to figure out how the economy
works, how wealth is generated. But we must reject the claims of economics
to be taken seriously as a science. Above all, magazines like New 杏吧原创
must examine these claims.
No science has the power, prestige and influence of economics; not physics,
not biology, not chemistry. Huge numbers of people study the subject at
every level in all countries. Economists appear daily on the media to roll
forth their opinions unto the grateful people. Enormous salaries are commanded
by successful members of the profession. Their decisions move hundreds of
billions of dollars around the globe.
Yet the study is subject to all the diseases of a cult religion. We
have had the likes of the monetarist schismatics rising, being adopted by
right-wing politicians for the purposes of authoritarian social control,
and making devastation where there was once prosperity. These are the zealots
who have decamped to missionarise amongst the heathen of the former USSR
and satellites. This winter we will be able to appreciate the results of
their labours.
You end your editorial by asking that ‘the economists do their work
unhindered’. I suggest that you are being disrespectful to your readers
in not maintaining the prestige of science by excluding a cult religion
from ‘the broad scientific church’.
Sean McHugh Liverpool
Letters: Save the saiga
Your report about UN steps to save rhinos again identifies the failure
of past efforts to conserve these species (This Week, 3 October). Undoubtedly,
the plight of the rhino is an international tragedy, but do sustainable
alternatives to rhino-horn actually exist? The suggested Siberian saiga
antelope is also under threat.
The Kazakh Hunting Inspectorate for the Turguy was, last year, bemoaning
the fate of the saiga at the hands of poachers. The inspectorate did not
have the resources to mount an effective anti-poaching campaign. It is very
doubtful that this situation has improved.
If the saiga is to be an alternative to rhino-horn, are adequate steps
being taken to ensure that this species does not go the same way as the
rhino? How can the poaching and current decline of the saiga be stopped
if demand for it is actively promoted? The present problems in the Turguy
and the past lack of success in saving the rhino do not auger well for the
saiga.
Max Finlayson Jabiru, NT Australia
Letters: Rock rationale
In his letter (24 October) discussing the proposed NIREX rock laboratory
(now to be called an Experimental Characterisation Facility), Peter Curd
himself fails to do justice to the accepted rationale behind such facilities.
The OECD, to which he refers, actually said, in 1988, that the purpose
of a rock laboratory is to demonstrate the feasibility of repository construction
and to ‘prepare a convincing evaluation of the disposal system’s performance
and long-term safety on the basis of predictive analyses confirmed by a
body of technical data derived from laboratory and in-situ experimentation’
– in other words, not to evaluate a specific site.
What NIREX is actually proposing appears to be merely a limited shaft
sinking and drivage operation, which, given the published timetable, allows,
at most, only a matter of months to accomplish tasks which have elsewhere
taken many years. In Sweden, for example, the Stripa Project was in progress
for over 10 years, and there were four years of dedicated site characterisation
at the planned facility at Aspo before any tunnelling even began.
Why do NIREX not propose, for example, a programme of demonstration
disposal, as in Sweden, where it would be possible to assess the effectiveness
of the famous ‘soft grout’, which will supposedly make retrievability possible?
As for the list of facilities given by Curd, I am sure the people in
France (no repository development to be permitted for at least 15 years),
Belgium (no decision on final siting yet taken) and Spain (assurances made
that no repository will ever be built on the site), would be surprised to
learn that their sites are actually planned as repository locations.
NIREX frequently makes claims regarding an international consensus in
support of its proposals. In reality, the consensus is that uncertainties
still exist regarding the application of even basic site-specific data to
the generic models currently being used in safety assessment. It is not
the generic research that is of little value, but the limited in-situ experimentation
propose by NIREX, in lieu of the extensive long-term site validation and
characterisation which is undertaken in other countries, and where, even
now, no final deep repository has been brought into operation.
Philip Richardson Ashby de la Zouch Leicestershire
Letters: No protection
The article by Andy Coghlan ‘Could copyright safeguard the secrets of
the genome?’ (This Week, 10 October) suggests that copyright, on its own,
can prove an adequate form of protection against commercial exploitation
of DNA sequences by others. The casual reader should not be left with this
impression. Copyright is not an adequate means of protection in most cases.
Copyright will exist in any materials, tables, diagrams, information
on disc for use on computer and so on produced by researchers, but it is
unlikely to be of much practical value in itself in protecting a biotechnology
invention. This is because copyright only protects a particular physical
expression of the discovery in question (such as the notation for the DNA
sequence) and not the sequence itself. One cannot invoke copyright if, for
instance, a scientist has read the published notation for a particular DNA
sequence coding and then produces a cell-line containing that sequence in
the laboratory. Copyright vests in the published notation, not in the cell-line
it represents.
There have been recent suggestions that DNA sequences may be protected
by unregistered design right (a branch of copyright). This has never been
tested and it would therefore be dangerous for any researcher to place reliance
upon this right.
The most effective means of protection of DNA sequence is the patent
system, which is why debate over the patentability of DNA sequences is
so important. Copyright is not, unfortunately, a ‘quick fix’ to solve the
issues raised by the debate.
Mark Turner London
Letters: The J-word
I have only just read David Callahan’s article on the new US Air Force
Advanced Tactical Fighter, the F-22 (‘Flying in the face of reason?’, 17
October).
Surely the possible adversary, but it wouldn’t do to say so, is Japan?
There is after all the Japanese stockpiling of plutonium, that neither we
nor the United States administration seem willing to object to, as well
as a very high technological base and a lot of money. And after all, we
pay the military to look at all threats in terms of whenever-capability
– and this one is not unimaginable – not of current intention.
Is this good enough reason?
No: it would be better to persuade the Japanese government to stop the
plutonium reprocessing business and to cut back on its defence expenditures.
Otherwise the F-22 won’t long be alone in the skies.
Elizabeth Young London
Letters: Quantum question
Does ‘decoherence’ stand any chance of overcoming the basic difficulty
with quantum mechanics, that ‘existence’ is dependent on ‘observing’?
According to Thanu Padmanabhan (‘Bridge over the quantum universe’,
10 October), the existence of a multitude of ‘unobserved degrees of freedom
. . . makes the Universe behave classically’. So existence would now be
determined by non-observation!
Forgive my sceptical mind, but may I ask if they are seeking a super-quantum
theory that reconciles such opposites by invoking the ever-mysterious ‘duality’
concept?
Max Wallis University of Wales Cardiff
* * *
Thanu Padmanabhan replies: The main virtue of an approach based on decoherence
is that it explains in a mathematical way how the macroscopic nature of
the system is linked with the apparent classical behaviour. This approach
is not intended to ‘overcome any basic difficulty with quantum mechanics’
(there are none) or to provide a new understanding of the so-called ‘philosophical
issues’ of quantum mechanics; these philosophical issues have never prevented
physicists from obtaining correct numerical answers to well-posed questions
and hence are – by and large – not of direct relevance to physics.
Letters: Benign in the bin
‘Radium in the bin’ (3 October) and the subsequent letter from Robert
Ormiston-Chant ‘Dangerous detectors’ (24 October) both ask whether smoke
detectors containing americium-241 could prove to be a radiation hazard
when disposed of with normal household waste.
The National Radiological Protection Board (NRPB) has had many years’
experience in the testing and assessment of these devices, and has recently
published radiological protection standards for them. The standards were
published in anticipation of forthcoming legislation that will require goods
containing radioactive substance, to be approved by NRPB prior to supply
to the public. Up to now, NRPB has, on a voluntary basis, provided suppliers
of such goods with advice directed at avoiding unjustifiable radiation exposure
of the public. NRPB accepts that the exposure from uncontrolled disposal
should be part of its assessment.
The maximum radiation exposure of a member of the public from uncontrolled
disposal has been calculated to be less than 1 microsievert each year. This
should be compared with the average annual background radiation dose in
Britain, which is 2500 microsieverts.
NRPB considers that the radiation hazard from disposing of these smoke
detectors via the rubbish bin is insignificant compared with the substantial
benefit promised by their use.
Joanne Shaw National Radiological Protection Board Leeds
Letters: Safe houses
We are writing about a number of damaging inaccuracies in your article
‘Sitting on a toxic time bomb’ (15 August).
The first sentence of the article states that, ‘Many residents of a
housing estate in Chivalry Road, Wandsworth Common . . . may be surprised
to discover in a few months, time that their homes are built on land officially
registered as contaminated.’ The proposed registers to be set up under section
143 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 specify eight kinds of contaminative
use which will lead to a property being listed.
Only two of these have any bearing on the Commonside Development, which
takes in the west side of Chivalry Road and the adjoining Arundel Close.
Accounts of the extent of the site from people who have known the area since
the Second World War conflict and cannot be relied upon. However, it is
our view that these contaminative uses occurred on three relatively small
sites which are occupied by five homes out of a total of 86.
Equally it is incorrect to say that, ‘Much of the land on the west side
of Chivalry Road was, until a few years ago, a scrap metal yard.’ The only
registered yard was a site of 876 square feet in Arundel Close.
Your article was published during a public consultation exercise. The
Department of the Environment has received critical submissions from numerous
sources and the final form of the proposed register is by no means certain.
Your report was damaging in two other respects. It followed its first
sentence with a quote from Michael Chambers of the Royal Institute of Chartered
Surveyors, which – because of its position – implied that many of the affected
houses in Chivalry Road ‘could become almost impossible to sell’. He has
told us that this was a general comment and that he did not intend to highlight
Chivalry Road. In fact, neither he nor anyone else at the RICS had heard
of the development.
The greatest damage was caused by juxtaposing a sensational headline
with the mention of Chivalry Road. To single out any particular development
before the register has even come into existence is a dangerous piece of
journalism unworthy of New 杏吧原创.
Michael and Helen Baws London
Letters: Cows on the line
I don’t telework but I do regularly use a computer at home to access
my company’s computer system (‘How to give up going to work’, 24 October).
Most of my work is at weekends and in the evening and the ability to work
in this way has been a real advantage to me many times.
However, my system is currently out of commission with no immediate
outlook of working again. The reason? Cows.
About three months ago a mysterious clicking noise appeared on both
the voice and data telephone lines that I have supplying my home. Computers
that use telephone lines actually communicate acoustically via a modem,
which converts digital code into low and high tones. Extraneous line noises
throw them as they try to make computer ‘sense’ of the noise.
Most modern modems offer various forms of communication error correction.
MNP5 is a common one and, whilst this can cope with the clicking, it slows
the communication down, as it continually asks for re transmission of the
data that it got confused over. During normal data access the performance
is aggravatingly slow. The transfer of files is now virtually impossible.
Naturally, I complained to BT who eventually identified a malfunctioning
electric cow fence some two miles away from my home, (I live in a rural
area, supposedly ideal for the teleworker). They have tried to urge the
owner to do something about the fence but they apparently have no real powers
to get it rectified nor, they tell me, do they have any responsibility to
me.
Having complained to BT, I have complained to Oftel, who tell me that
responsibility for the resolution of a problem such as this is not part
of their remit and that there is no minimum standard for line quality on
telephone lines. Perhaps there should be, if teleworking is to take off.
Robert Newton Stainburn North Yorkshire
Letters: Spooky spiders
Re the correspondence on spiders in the bath (Letters, 12 September
and 3 October). Baths in Australia are not equipped with overflows. This
is because no one is so silly as to leave the taps running that long and
we all use showers anyway. Spiders appear in the bath regardless.
To pinpoint the position of spider arrivals in our bath I conducted
an experiment. The bath’s internal surface was covered in double-sided sticky
tape. Spiders that crawled in would be stuck at the edge; those that dropped
in would stick towards the centre.
The experiment was terminated after seven weeks (due to the visit of
an English friend who wanted to conduct his weekly ablutions in the experimental
area). In that time not one spider was detected. Such a period of extended
spiderlessness is unprecedented (records for this bath go back to 1954)
and cannot be accounted for by mere chance. I have concluded that the act
of observing, or attempting to observe, spider-bath arrival events actually
prevents these events from occurring. From this it is clear that we are
observing the after-effects of quantum phenomena, probably a form of tunnelling
through worm-holes from another part of the space-time continuum, as suggested
by your correspondent Simon Ingate.
The question is: Are the spiders merely unwitting participants in the
process or do they control it? And if they do, why?
Intriguing problem – but this correspondence is now closed – Ed
Bernard Broom Panton Hill Victoria Australia
Letters: Boo to roo
Feedback’s discussion of Roo Guard and Shu Roo as gadgets to control
kangaroos was all well and good (10 October).
However, the idea of a sustainable harvest of kangaroos in pestilential
numbers has helped promote matching legislation across Australia’s states
and territories allowing sale and human consumption of roo meat.
Before we get Feedback’s solution of RooBarb fencing, we’re quite likely
to see more outdoor Bar-be-Roos.
Philip Eliason National Farmers’ Federation Australia