Slip-sliding away
Tom Smith proposes a method of integrating the speedometer output to calculate the position of trains (Letters, 6 January). It is already established practice to count “wheel pulses”, as they are known, which amounts to the same thing. But there are two reasons why global positioning system (GPS) receivers are superior.
First, wheel slip and slide occur: a notorious problem when there are leaves on the line, but many trains accelerate and brake hard enough for this to create difficulties even on dry rails. Second, wheel wear significantly affects the accuracy of this method. The system can calibrate itself by counting wheel pulses over a known distance, but slip and slide can cause trouble here, too, since economics dictate that recalibration is done when trains are in normal service and drivers cannot be instructed to take it gently.
GPS receivers suffer from neither of these problems. Unfortunately, though, they do not work in tunnels. For some reason aeroplane position measurements are rarely affected by this drawback.
Write to: Letters to the Editor, New 杏吧原创, King’s Reach Tower, Stamford Street, London SE1 9LS, or fax to 0171 261 6464. Please include a daytime telephone number: and cite the date of the articles mentioned. We reserve the right to edit longer letters. Your letters may also be published in New 杏吧原创 newsletters or on Planet Science, the New 杏吧原创 web site at .
Beginning again
My contention that the big bang was the origin of time (Letters, 23 September) seems to have provoked fury and bemusement, although it has been the standard scientific picture for many years. Indeed, the idea that time began with the physical Universe dates back at least to Augustine in the 5th century. I have often puzzled why this straightforward, if counter-intuitive, notion excites so much negative emotion, especially among atheists.
In their desperation to rubbish the notion, some curious arguments are deployed by its detractors. Thus John Enderby (Letters, 6 January) asserts that the time symmetry of the laws of gravity rule out an origin of time. He surely confuses the equations of gravitation with their solutions. Alexander Friedmann’s 1922 solutions of Einstein’s gravitational equations contain both symmetric and asymmetric solutions describing universes expanding from singular temporal origins.
Enderby dislikes the notion of a temporal origin because it offends common sense. But why should the deep processes of the Universe obligingly conform to human common sense? Much of modern science turns common sense on its head. Common sense suggests that the Sun goes around the Earth.
E. Paull objects to my use of the term “logically prior” (Letters, 6 January). In geometry, Pythagoras’s theorem is proved from Euclid’s axioms, not the other way around. The axioms are logically prior to, and more fundamental than, the theorem. Similarly, the laws of physics are logically prior to, and more fundamental than, the complicated Universe they describe. This is accepted by all scientists.
Maybe the big bang was not the origin of time, but the claim must be disproved on scientific grounds. Indignation, accusations of verbal trickery and appeals to common sense are not going to get the textbooks rewritten.
Alien landing
R.V. Harrowell’s explanation for the 1980 Rendlesham Forest UFO report (Letters, 20 January) is ingenious, but unlikely to be true. There is a simpler explanation (see my book The UFO Mystery Solved).
The incident was prompted by a very bright fireball (meteor) on the morning of 26 December. USAF guards at RAF Woodbridge thought (as many do) that it was an aircraft crashing in flames in the forest. During their search, they reported a strange object with pulsing red and blue lights.
During the next day, more searches found strange ground marks (subsequently identified as having a simple and natural explanation). However the base commander mounted a larger expedition that night, videoing his progress. From the tape it is possible to identify the source of the pulsing light, which he also saw. It was from the Shipwash lightship 29 kilometres away. Other aerial lights he reported were planets.
Convinced that aliens were watching their base, the US team interpreted innocent stimuli as evidence of some sinister visitation. Lights were spacecraft. Marks on trees and the ground were thought to be not only radioactive but evidence of a landing.
The incident has its funny side, but it is disturbing that US personnel not only believe in aliens, but could not separate fact from fiction.
Weapon judgment
Tam Dalyell (Thistle Diary, 13 January) comments on the pale response of the British government to the Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons, but does not mention recent developments concerning the legal status of these weapons in international law.
During the first two weeks of December, the International Court of Justice held public sessions in The Hague to hear oral submissions from 23 countries on whether the use of nuclear weapons, or even the threat of them, is legal under international law. The Court is expected to advise on these questions within the next two to three months.
Although these court judgments are termed “advisory”, they will be the authoritative statement on the position of these weapons in international law. Thus the judgments will affect the legal position of individuals (scientific or military) who are involved in any way with these weapons or who are protesting about their continued existence on legal grounds. However, as the British media have maintained almost total silence on the recent proceedings at the International Court of Justice, nuclear scientists and military personnel (and MPs!) are largely unaware of this imminent judgment which will affect their legal position.
A short booklet on the International Court of Justice and extracts from the December oral proceedings are available from me (please send three 25p stamps).
Laboured reading
Having campaigned for years for clearer instructions, mostly in the consumer product labelling area, I wholeheartedly support Alun Rees’s gripes about manuals (Forum, 13 January). I could add some of my own, such as print which is too small to read (indicating a lack of respect for customers), design taking precedence over comprehensibility (lack of common sense), and the ever-increasing use of what I can only call environmental blackmail (lack of intelligence). The others would fill a book.
If only the people who write the manuals, guides and labels would take notice of articles like Rees’s, companies would see the costs of customer services dwindling and the loyalty of customers rising, meaning an (at least this might make ears prick up) increase in their profits. Unfortunately, companies tend to delegate the most important job 鈥� communicating with the customer 鈥� to their least experienced employee, or to someone who happens to have the time, but not necessarily the education. But perhaps Pat Hayes’s quip that “The ability to produce paragraphs of well-written English is plainly now considered an inhuman ability” was not meant to be a quip at all (“If only they could think”, same issue).
Males only
The report entitled “Jumping gene threatens medflies” (Science, January 6) is interesting. The medfly problem provides challenges to the scientists, and possible solutions for controlling medfly outbreaks give hope to fruit farmers in many countries.
However, it should be pointed out that there is a solution to the problem of releasing sterilised male medflies who waste their one opportunity for mating on a sterile female. For many years the joint FAO/IAEA Division of Nuclear Techniques in Food and Agriculture in Vienna has been able to rear male flies only. Male and female eggs can be separated by colour or through a centrifuge because of differences in the weight of eggs that produce male and female offspring. As a result, only male flies are reared and, after exposure to radiation, released.
AI doing fine
Your feature on the Turing test didn’t get our position quite right (“If only they could think”, 13 January). We are not “still in search of the intelligent machine”: that was precisely our central point.
The article also repeated several anti-artificial intelligence myths. For example, far from being a “near-mortal blow”, Searle’s Chinese room argument is correctly dismissed in AI as ridiculous. We tell our students to find the errors in it as a class exercise.
Contrary to the gloomy predictions that the article cites, AI 鈥� or, more generally, the computational view of thought 鈥� is not a remote, fading dream, but is remarkably successful.
In thirty years or so it has revolutionised psychology, linguistics and the philosophy of mind: produced technology which is now incorporated into such things as cameras, cars, televisions and telephones; improved many manufacturing processes; and plays vital roles in the financial and managerial worlds. It helped win major war and it has worried many philosophers and sociologists into writing books about it.
As we said at the Montreal conference, this is enough. AI is doing just fine, thank you, and doesn’t need to cling to this old dream of making an imitation human. In many ways we have already moved beyond it.
Even if one does accept the Turing test as an ultimate goal (as many in AI do) it is not “as far away as ever”. AI now has a much better understanding of what kinds of computation would be involved: how an artificial human could parse language, come to conclusions, see things, have goals and purposes, learn from its mistakes and so on. AI has already made machines which can do all of these, and many other tasks that used to require human thought, often bettering human performance.
In our view, the most useful technologies will come from surpassing particular human cognitive functions, just as hydraulic machines can push harder than any muscle. The fact that a mechanical digger can’t dance like Fred Astaire is not usually considered a reasonable criticism of it, but that’s the kind of attack regularly levelled at expert systems. So what if MYCIN can’t tell the time? It wasn’t meant to be a wristwatch.
No exceptions
Your leader in the 3 February issue bemoans the general ignorance of scientists about the supporting structure for UK science, and their alleged lack of involvement with the debate on science policy. Unfortunately, your leader, and Alison Motluk’s Focus “And then there was one” on which it was based, display some confusion over the government’s policies for the Science Budget. Worse, there were some quite inexcusable inaccuracies in Focus.
The article asks “Should the research councils simply exist to carry out government policy?” The correct answer is that only government is entitled to set the policy framework and be responsible for the distribution of taxpayers’ money. The research councils are not, and never have been, an exception. The Act of 1965 is explicit: The Secretary of State may, out of monies provided by Parliament, pay to any of the research councils such sums in respect of the expenses of the council as he may with the consent of the Treasury determine, and so far as relates to the use and expenditure sums so paid the council shall act in accordance with such directions as may from time to time be given to it by the Secretary of State.
Again, in the White Paper (1993) Realising our Potential which is the major policy statement, the government reiterates its support for the Haldane Principle (formulated nearly 80 years ago):
that day-to-day decisions on the scientific merits of different strategies and projects should be taken by the research councils without government involvement. There is, however, a preceding level of broad priority setting between general classes of activity where a range of criteria must be brought to bear: There is also a need in a system with six (now seven) research councils, for a mechanism to coordinate their activities and ensure that they apply common standards and user-friendly methods.
The White Paper goes on to say: The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, as Minister of Public Service and Science, is responsible for the strategy for the Science Budget. He will continue to make decisions on the grant-in-aid for each of the councils. In the light of the powers given him by the Science and Technology Act 1965 to direct the use and expenditure of that money by the councils, he will continue to be ready to issue broad guidelines to the councils, as necessary.
That means that the government decides, for example, whether to be in CERN, whether some broad areas of science or activities should be given priority, how much money should be given to a particular council. It also means that the government has no involvement in deciding which people or which particular research projects are to be funded. Within this sphere, the councils are free 鈥� and are expected 鈥� to set their own policies. That is the nub of Haldane.
Realising our Potential spells this out. That White Paper was produced after very extensive consultation and its conclusions, which included the abolition of the ABRC and the creation of the post of DGRC, and the launch of Technology Foresight, were well received (by your journal, too). Its main message was that the government “wishes to harness the intellectual resources of the science and engineering base to improve economic performance and quality of life. It intends in future that decisions on priorities for support should be much more clearly related to meeting the country’s needs and enhancing the wealth-creating capacity of the country.”
In saying this, the government did not signal a move to short-termism. The Forward Look for 1994 said clearly:
This is not to say that the science and engineering base should be converted into short-term problem solvers for industrial customers. Industry does not want that; and nor does the government intend to encourage or allow such a development. Rather: the government intends to promote an effective partnership to the mutual benefit of all parties. This means that, far from being diverted into short-term problem solving, the science and engineering base must concentrate on its proper role: the training of highly skilled men and women and the conduct of research at the frontiers of knowledge.
Everything that the government has done since the new system came into effect in January 1994, has been in accord with these policies. For example, in the allocations booklet published in January, it stressed that “鈥� the President wishes priority to be given to the maintenance of studentships and responsive mode funding”. It has asked for priority to be given to responsive mode funding in mainstream physics, chemistry, medical science, mathematics, equipment, research student support, research fellowships for our brightest youngsters and ROPAs, which allow researchers to carry out completely blue-sky research of their own choosing. With some inconsistency, ROPAs were referred to as support for “their own (the researchers) pet projects” in an article which implied that all research topics should be left for researchers to decide. The article also complains of other strategic priorities (pejoratively) labelled “Whitehall projects”) such as “wealth-creating products from plants” and “environmental diagnostics”. Yet these were the top two priorities identified by BBSRC and NERC respectively and both asked for even more money to be spent on them.
As to some plain errors of fact: OST did not hold back 拢28 million in the allocation. All the science base funds were allocated. Within this, the “OST Initiatives” line of 拢2.52m (ie. 0.2 per cent of the total) covers Public Understanding, SET weeks, support for the BA, Women in Science and a number of small items all inappropriate for individual research councils to deal with. The article goes on to combine this money with the allocations to the Royal Society, and the Royal Academy of Engineering as if these were all to be “kept back for OST to spend”. The article wrongly implies that the latter are only recent recipients of science base funding; the fact is that they have been supported for many years. This is all depicted in a highly misleading diagram which should not pass muster in any scientific journal.
Finally, I should comment on Sir John Cadogan’s position as a civil servant. His particular duties are described in the White Paper and are a matter of governmental policy. Contrary to the article, Lord Phillips was a civil servant under the same public service constraints as Sir John Cadogan. The article remarks “Cadogan does not speak to the press on the record”. As such, he should not be expected to comment, or indeed leak, emerging findings while he is developing his advice to ministers. However, OST has been careful to ensure that, for example, the outcome of Sir John’s review of the Science Budget portfolio, the details of successive allocations, the Research Councils’ response to Technology Foresight, and the initial report on ROPA have all been published. At these stages, Sir John has provided opportunities for open discussion with the press. Your complaint sits oddly with the highly selective and, indeed misleading, reporting of Sir John’s recent verbal evidence to the Select Committee which is, of course, on the record. When this is published, it will be clear to readers that the article neglected to report, among other things, his rebuttal of the criticism regarding some PPARC activities. These included the successful negotiations which led to a reduction of the costs of PPARC’s budget of the LHC project.
As I indicated above, I believe that it is important for there to be a healthy debate on the development of the science and engineering base, the role to be played by the research councils, and indeed S&T policy in general, but nothing can be gained by sterile discussion based on incorrect information. This was a highly inaccurate and biased article 鈥� not a word on the excellent budget settlement for science and engineering, or of the favourable reactions from the research councils, the Royal Society and the Royal Academy of Engineering. Your readers are entitled to better than that.
Morse is dead
Barry Fox gave an excellent pr茅cis of the Morse code controversy raging on the amateur airwaves (Technology, 20 January). Unfortunately, he gave the impression that 拢20 can buy an amateur licence to operate above 30MHz on VHF/UHF. This is wrong.
In the UK, both Class A (HF/VHF/UHF) and Class B (VHF/UHF) operators have to pass the same two Radio Amateur Examinations set by City and Guilds before they can go on air. Their basic levels of technical competence are therefore, in theory, identical. The only difference between the two classes of operator is that one has learnt a 150-year-old mode of communications at 12 words a minute 鈥� which has no relevance today.
Until the 1960s a Morse requirement was valuable because maritime wireless operators still used the code on HF. Distress calls could be read by amateurs and passed on to the authorities. Today, ships rely on voice and data transmissions on HF/VHF plus satellite communications. Commercially, Morse is dead.
To insist on Morse code as a qualification for amateur radio is akin to demanding Latin before entering university for a science degree.
Bodybuilding bashing
As a second-year medical student and former dilettante in natural (drug-free) body building/powerlifting, I was sorry to see the media’s tradition of bashing bodybuilders continued in Scott Veggeberg’s story on insulin-like growth factor (“Beyond steroids”, 13 January).
If this had been an article on anorexics, bulimics or anorexic-bulimic gymnasts, I am certain the journalistic tone would have been much less snide. The demographics are strikingly similar 鈥� the typical steroid user or anorexic is a white, upper-middle class, adolescent, each pursuing his/her image of the “perfect physique” or quest for athletic excellence.
Bodybuilding is often singled out for ridicule because it is an easy target. Yet all sports are tainted in some way and it is manifestly unfair to censure bodybuilding alone, simply because of its cult status and the old stereotype of “all brawn, no brains”. How many Olympic participants, apart from the divers and ice-skaters, are drug-free? And if a drug could make you more graceful, you can be certain that ice skaters and divers would be “juicing” just as hard as bodybuilders. Let us try and remember in our fits of journalistic ridicule to check ourselves for hypocrisy and prejudice.