Letters: Pulling the punters
As a member of the British Association for the Advancement of Science
who has attended and enjoyed the last three annual science festivals, I
was disturbed to read your Comment (11 September) on this event. While I
agree that it would be nice to see higher attendances, I can’t accept that
lecture audiences are mainly composed of other speakers; I have been to
several fascinating talks where even the standing room has been fully occupied.
As for the comment that a real ‘punter’ is more more likely to be ‘an
inquisitive local than someone who travelled there on purpose’ – good! If
the BA is to achieve its aim of increasing public interest in science, then
it’s just these people who need to be shown how exciting the subject can
be.
Your editorial goes on to propose ways in which the festival could be
made more ‘journalist-friendly’, including a press room with video links
to all the sessions and making sure there is some breaking news at the meetings.
The first of these ideas conjures up images of journalists channel-hopping
from cosmology to psychology and on to chemistry in search of the most newsworthy
item, picking up part-truths along the way and taking conclusions out of
context.
But it is the second suggestion which I find most surprising. Research
is not an activity which can be scheduled to give a major breakthrough
at a certain time and, in the current climate of cutbacks, I can’t imagine
any research group postponing publication of important results simply to
make it easier for the press to carry the story.
A week-long ‘newsfest’ of sound bites, press releases and synchronised
breakthroughs would trivialise science into another of the performing arts.
Adrian Bull Worsley, Manchester
Letters: Pulling the punters
I attended the BA meeting this year for the first time and took my 9-year-old
son. Was I at the same meeting as your correspondents? All the sessions
I attended were packed by ‘genuine members of the public’ and some lectures
were so full that I was unable to get in. Enormous queues of ‘punters’ lined
up to put their names down for hands-on sessions, all of which were oversubscribed.
Where were your delegates? They weren’t in the DIY radio lab. They weren’t
in the excellent ‘Sticky Things’ lab. They weren’t in the planetarium and
we didn’t see them making plaster casts of fossils. In fact, they weren’t
in any of the places where the public were meeting science.
There was of course a restaurant set aside for the press and VIPs. No,
surely not – your delegates can’t have spent the whole week in the bar.
Can they?
Jackie Hooley Rugeley, Staffordshire
Letters: Pulling the punters
Your Comment was spot on. One simple act that the BA could institute
which would at least have a chance of getting the real public to attend
and participate would be to change the venue.
Instead of leafy (or not so leafy) university sites, move into town
and city centre conference complexes. At least then the public might feel
as if attending was not gate-crashing a private party. The British Psychological
Society moved its annual conference off campus four years ago; now we’ve
been to Bournemouth, Scarborough, Blackpool and next year Brighton. Although
our conference is aimed at psychologists, it has been notable that moving
our venue to where the public is has resulted in an increase in the number
of locals dropping in to see what it’s all about.
I’m sure that an extra spin-off for the BA would be a greater involvement
of local business, commerce aud industry in sponsoring and organising events.
Stephen White The British Psychological Society Leicester
Letters: No vacancies
I read with interest your news report (4 September) about four-year
conversion courses to enable students with arts A levels to take degrees
in the sciences. The article attributes to the professional bodies, the
Institute of Physics et al, the opinion that there is a shortage of scientists
which will be cured by these courses.
What nonsense! The government’s own official statistics on the employment
of personnel in industrial R&D, just released, show that the number
of people employed in this category has fallen from 195 000 in 1981 to 150
000 in 1991, a fall of nearly 25 per cent. It is particularly difficult
for physics graduates to find jobs, because such people have to compete
with older and more experienced professionals recently made redundant from
the defence industries.
In the circumstances, I consider it unethical for academics to inveigle
young people into the extra expense of a four-year course.
A. J. Cottingham Reading, Berkshire
Letters: Concorde campaign
I was astonished to see the statement that ‘when Concorde was built,
questions about its environmental impact were never raised’ (‘Green designs
on supersonic flight’, 14 August). They were raised endlessly by the highly
successful Anti-Concorde Project run by Richard Wiggs and supported by many
scientists, including Sir Nevill Mott, Nobel laureate in physics. The whole
range of Concorde’s likely environmental impact was widely publicised in
the press. I myself took part in two television debates, and had letters
published on Concorde’s fuel inefficiency. Many other members were more
active than me.
The project can take credit not only for contributing to the small number
of Concordes eventually built, but for helping to bring environmental issues
into greater prominence generally.
A. W. F. Edwards University of Cambridge
Letters: Romantic rocks
It is unfair of Philip Kyle to say that cold, old rocks are ‘as boring
as shit’ (‘Danger! 杏吧原创s at work’, 11 September). Standing on the east
coast of the island of Arran, with 300-million-year-old lava flows beneath
my feet, huge granite intrusions all around, and fossilised lightning strikes
depicting ancient storms, a little imagination revealed a most spectacular
scene, as lively as any modern volcano. The fact that today the island is
colder than a science minister’s smile on budget day makes this all the
more fascinating.
James Ockenden Keresley, West Midlands
Letters: Equatorial Salford
An animated, lunchtime discussion of the Coriolis force in a northern
grammar school staff room in the late 1950s led to hypothesis testing (Comment,
14 August and Letters, 7 August, 11 and 25 September).
With identical (size, configuration, volume) wash basins in the rooms
on either side of the staff room, two colleagues were deputed to insert
the plug and fill one basin in each room with cold water, which was allowed
to stand for several minutes to damp down any vortex set up while filling
the basin.
Watches were synchronised and the two operatives sent back to pull the
plugs – in a gentle fashion, to reduce the chance that this would set up
a vortex.
Vortices were observed. Their form led to the conclusion that: the equator
ran through Salford – in a direction roughly north to south.
D. A. Lewis Norwich
Letters: Equatorial Salford
While realising that the Coriolis force is too weak to overcome effects
such as currents in a draining bath, I have often wondered what effect it
has on more complex systems such as the human body. More specifically, does
the room spin in the opposite direction in the southern hemisphere after
drinking too much beer?
If someone would provide the funding, I am prepared to make the sacrifice
and drink lots of alcohol in various exotic places in the quest for knowledge.
Andy Burrows Universite Louis Pasteur, Strasbourg, France
Letters: Equatorial Salford
It is ironic that in discussing ‘the great myth’ about water going down
Australian plugholes, you yourselves perpetuate the even greater myth that
Galileo dropped weights from the Tower of Pisa. This was actually carried
out not by Galileo but by his opponent Giorgio Coressio, and not in refutation,
but in confirmation of the Aristotelian view that larger bodies must fall
quicker than smaller ones.
Mike Longworth Camberley, Surrey
Letters: Lab-coat equality
Call me a naive, sweet-almost-sixteen-year-old, but I really did not
expect to come up against the phenomenon of sexism quite so early in my
science career, especially as I go to an all-girls’ school. This is my tale.
In the first chemistry lesson of my A-level course, I was instructed
to purchase a white lab coat. Fine. So I trekked out to the school uniform
shop. Out came the plastic bags with the nice new lab coats in them. I try
one on (a coat not a plastic bag), and what d’you know? It’s a boy’s lab
coat.
How can I tell? The sleeves are too long, the shoulders are too wide,
the hem’s too long, and of course the chest is too tight! The wretched thing’s
not only uncomfortable but a fire hazard – the cuffs dangle tantalisingly
into Bunsen burner flames. This item of protective clothing has been designed
assuming that all 16-year-old scientists are male.
OK, perhaps this is petty, but if I’m having problems because I’m a
woman now, what can I expect in ten years’ time when I’m not being spoon-fed
most of what I need?
Yours, hoping for an equally lab-coated future.
Rebecca Wiseman Finchley, London
Letters: Sick smell
The answer to Tina Fry (Letters, 11 September) is that the smell of
vomit is due to butyric acid, which is volatile, and addition of sodium
bicarbonate forms the sodium salt, which is not.
H. A. Mayes Steyning, West Sussex