Face the mistake
Did Tom Nash and Jeremy Henty (18 November) take the time to read what Einstein said in the passage I referred to in my letter (21 October) before rushing to defend him on special relativity? Quoted in full, it reads:
“If one of two synchronous clocks at A is moved in a closed curve with constant velocity until it returns to A, the journey lasting t seconds, then by the clock which has remained at rest the travelled clock on its arrival at A will by 1/2tv2/c2 seconds slow. Thence we conclude that a balance-clock at the equator must go more slowly, by a very small amount, than a precisely similar clock situated at one of the poles under otherwise identical conditions” (Ann d. Phys. vol 17, p 891), English translation in The Principle of Relativity by Einstein and others (Methuen, 1923).
Einstein clearly only considered the differences in velocity between the two clocks, so Nash’s discussion of the effects on time caused by acceleration and real or apparent gravity hardly seems relevant.
On the other hand Henty is correct to point out that it is an error to apply special relativity to the clock on the equator on the assumption that its motion is uniform, but 鈥� as is clear from the above quotation 鈥� it was not Dingle but Einstein who introduced this error. Dingle simply quoted Einstein’s argument and drew attention to the logical consequences which would follow from it.
So Einstein did get it wrong. Why not accept that he made a mistake, rather than trying to defend what is clearly an indefensible position?
Cleaner by train?
The authors of your article on Brussels “blocking” Britain’s clean air plan (This Week, 18 November) omitted what appears to be a significant source of the PM10 emissions 鈥� that of railway locomotives. I have frequently stood in a cloud of evil-smelling exhaust gases on station platforms after Intercity 125 trains have departed. I also live between two rail tracks which carry both freight and passenger trains and the fumes from these frequently drive me indoors if I happen to be in the garden.
When you consider the number of trains that run daily into and out of a city, then they must surely produce a significant amount of diesel pollution?
We took trains off the graph because they produce so little PMIO in London 鈥� none at all in central London, and only 0.2 per cent in Greater London -Ed.
No gag
I find it difficult to accept the proposition that environmental scientists are being gagged (This Week, 18 November), at least in New South Wales. I belong to the Lachlan River Catchment Management Committee, one of about 40 CMCs in the state which coordinate government money allocated to land care and environmental research in the catchment area, and which have a say in similar activities statewide.
The Lachlan CMC includes a majority of non-government members who are land users and two very “green” environmental members. The government members are regional directors of state departments such as agriculture and parks and wildlife. Researchers often present their reports directly to the committee.
The funding process is open and transparent. The scientists’ reports are often controversial.
Of course the scientists tend to reflect the interests of their departments. Mining engineers emphasise the benefits of mining, while parks and wildlife officers tend to see the dangers to native animals. This is natural and normal and hardly evidence of “gagging”. The CMC system allows interested members of the public to discuss these views.
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Your account of the travails faced by government scientists in Australia resonates with this Canadian. The people trying to put Canadian fisheries policy on something resembling a scientific footing recognise the censorship and abuse of science you describe. As chronicled in Debora MacKenzie’s “The cod that disappeared” (16 September), the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) is responsible for destroying one of the world’s great fisheries. It has shown no inclination to learn from its mistakes or to behave in an open and accountable fashion.
There is a sorry history within the DFO of bureaucratic suppression of scientific results that do not tally with the prevailing political agenda. Rumours persist that federal biologists who displeased the present minister by publicly voicing their results and conclusions have been reprimanded. Requests by us for data relating to research described in abstracts of public proceedings have been deflected, apparently by the minister himself.
The Canadian federal government appears to be appeasing Newfoundland, the main loser when the cod fishery was closed, by revitalising a seal hunt. Closure of the commercial harp seal whitecoat hunt during the 1980s was a controversial measure adopted when the European Union banned whitecoat pelt imports, and it is still an issue in that province. An increased hunt will be good politics, regardless of its utility.
Because the hunt is not economically viable without subsidies, the government can conveniently justify its involvement by arguing that the seals need controlling. To make that case, the DFO and the minister have pushed a couple of deeply flawed studies to the fore and blocked discussion of more credible results that contradict their preconceptions.
Given the troubled history of the Canadian DFO, this is a sad comment on the prospects for change in Australia, with or without outside scrutiny. If even so high-profile a disaster as the cod debacle cannot shake the bureaucrats free of their desire to stifle debate and hide inconvenient truths, it is hard to imagine what will.
Killer covers
Is New 杏吧原创 getting a bit short of readers? I refer to the recent bout of sensationally eye-catching front covers.
We’ve had “Killer bees” then “Killer waves” immediately followed by “Killer plagues”. Don’t run a cover on how to kill a reader, will you?
No lizard
It was nice to see the tuatara featured in “Are we smart enough to save this bird?” (11 November), but I was dismayed to see it referred to as a “lizard”. The whole point about conservation of the tuatara is that it is not a lizard, but a member of the sole surviving genus of a totally different order of reptiles, known otherwise only by Triassic and Juirassic fossils.
According to the most up-to-date classification of all the fossil and living vertebrates both the tuatara and lizards belong in superorder Lepiclosauria, but the tuatara is placed in the order Sphenodontida 鈥� whereas lizards are placed in the order Squamata, along with snakes. In other words, snakes are more closely related to lizards than the tuatara is.
Dangerous dumps
The danger from munitions dumped at sea may be greater than “Danger from the deep” suggests (18 November). The article only deals with the problem of weapons dumped by the British Ministry of Defence; there is no mention of weapons dumped by the Belgian authorities who had the awesome task of disposing of munitions, including highly toxic chemical weapons, which failed to explode on impact during the First World War and lodged in the notoriously sticky mud of Flanders.
I had not appreciated the scale of this problem until I visited Belgium earlier this year and saw more than a dozen old shells left for collection at the roadside or piled up in wheelbarrows following excavation at a local quarry. After heavy rains, munitions may surface more than 75 years after the battles in which they were originally used. And the people of Flanders must still take care when they excavate new land.
Our Belgian guide told us it had been customary to dump all such munitions at sea until protests from Greenpeace called a halt to this practice. Knowing how deadly they were in battle it is horrifying to imagine the effect these gas-filled canisters could have if washed up intact on beaches. Moreover, if the Belgian experience is anything to go by, this is a problem that may continue to haunt us long after the seabed appears to have been cleared.
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Rob Edwards’s article about the munitions dumped off the Galloway coast said little about the purpose of the pipe laying operation that is disturbing them.
British Gas is laying a pipe 150 kilometres long, from a point near Dumfries to the coast of Antrim, to supply gas to Ballylumford power station. This station is so inefficient that less than 30 per cent of the energy in the gas will reach the consumers in Northern Ireland. The gas could be used in efficient central boilers, or in small combined heat and power plants, at an efficiency of 90 per cent. Burning it at Ballylumford is therefore equivalent to throwing two-thirds of the gas away.
Quite apart from the extra emission of carbon dioxide, this is a scandalous misuse of a valuable and non-renewable source of energy. There is only a limited quantity of gas under the North Sea and we cannot afford to throw it away.
Insecure future
The insecure nature of contract research work will continue to cause undue stress and deter many would-be scientists unless innovative initiatives are considered (“Stuck on the road to nowhere,” 14 October, and Letters 4 and 25 November). Such insecurity was highlighted in a survey by the university and college lecturers’ union, NATFHE, which found that fixed-term contracts affected the work of 83 per cent of the contract research staff and the personal lives of 90 per cent.
While the concordat on academic careers circulated by the research councils, the Royal Society and the Committee of Vice-chancellors and Principles does not recognise the validity of NATFHE’s argument for open-ended contracts, it also ignores a positive initiative outlined in the government’s White Paper, Realising our Potential, a document which otherwise largely shaped the concordat.
The White Paper states: “Councils should adopt arrangements for grant support within the dual support system which would help universities to increase career openings 鈥� through longer term grants, or by allowing a margin within grants which could be used by universities to build up contingency funds to meet the additional costs of employing a cadre of semipermanent research support staff who would be retained between contracts.”
NATFHE broadly welcomes the concordat but, in failing to address this key guidance from government, it has lost an opportunity to increase the security and appeal of a career in research.
Banana skins
E. Ram贸n Moliner tells us that he cannot imagine how a snake’s poison system could have evolved (Forum, 11 November). I suggest he read Richard Dawkins’s River out of Eden, especially the passage:
“Never say and never take seriously anybody who says, ‘I cannot believe that so-and-so could have evolved by gradual selection’. I have dubbed this kind of fallacy, ‘the Argument from Personal Incredulity’. Time and again, it has proved the prelude to an intellectual banana-skin experience.”
Kosher films
John Krochta’s research does sound like a boon to the food industry (“Don’t chuck it, eat it”, 18 November), except for the kosher food industry. The addition of dairy whey as an edible film to preserve food would be a horror to anyone who eats kosher food. The Jewish dietary laws prohibit mixing of dairy products with meat products, and the thought of a dairy carrot is too terrible to even think about. How would I make chicken soup without carrots and courgettes?
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