Sound judgment
The “very junior civil servant” that David McKirdy met at his local Jobcentre
was indeed correct in assuming that a research scientist might be something to do with the media
(Letters, 19 September, p 55). “Research” is how the various
advertising media determine how many people are viewing their magazine,
billboard or website. This guides the advertisers in their choice of where to
spend their money.
Some of the scientists working in my particular area of media research also
have 18 years’ postdoctoral experience, if not more.
Before and after
So Thomas M眉nte concludes that subjects find it harder to understand
sentences that present information out of chronological order
(This Week, 5 September, p 11).
This is a prime example of the perils of using the methodology
of one field to elucidate data drawn from another鈥攊n this case applying
techniques from medicine to linguistics.
Clearly, the sentence: “Before the psychologist submitted the paper, the
journal changed its policy” is harder to make sense of than “After the
psychologist submitted the paper, the journal changed its policy”. But there is
no reason to conclude that this is solely or mainly due to the fact that the
first example presents information out of chronological order. The difficulty in
interpreting the first sentence has far more to do with the oddness of the
context than the clause order. The reader has to build up an unlikely imaginary
scenario, step by step.
In real, spontaneously created discourse, out-of-order time clauses in
English are often marked by using the past perfect tense instead of the simple
past. For example: “Before I drove off on that cold morning, I had wisely
checked the radiator”, which, I would suggest, might well produce less
excitement of the frontal cortex. Similarly, sentences with an imperative in the
main clause, like “Before you go to bed, remember to lock the door”, spoken with
the right intonation, might well be just as easy to process as “Remember to lock
the door before you go to bed”.
A more valid test for M眉nte and his team might have been not to compare
“before” and “after” sentences, but to compare the “after” sentence he quotes
with its reversal: “The journal changed its policy after the psychologist
submitted the paper”.
Letter
You state that improving energy efficiency increases energy demand and that
this “undermines a philosophy that has become an article of faith among
environmentalists”. So what should environmentalists be saying? That we should
be profligate with energy? Turning your argument on its head, presumably by
using energy-inefficient devices we will help counteract global warming, and
also ensure future energy supplies?
I would have thought it self-evident that an unregulated free market has
little concern for the environment. There is little evidence that such a market
has helped species and habitat conservation, for example.
It is the role of government to regulate the free market in a way that
reflects society’s values. Low energy prices obviously encourage profligacy so,
as you yourself argue, energy taxes are inevitable. These could be on a sliding
scale so that each household can use a given amount of energy at a low tax rate,
with rates rising steeply for heavier usage.
More means less
You cast doubt on the value of energy efficiency, following a recent report which
suggests that improving energy efficiency actually increases the demand for energy
(Editorial, 5 September, p 3).
That’s the theory. Experience actually shows something rather different. In
March 1996 the Department of the Environment published a set of indicators for
sustainable development in Britain. Included was a graph showing domestic energy
consumption from 1970 to 1993. During that period personal disposable incomes
increased, the number of appliances per household increased, and the video and
the PC were invented and invaded the home. Yet energy use per household hardly
changed at all.
There may be something in this efficiency business after all.
Cat scan
In her otherwise comprehensive and fascinating article, Nell Boyce repeats
two popular misconceptions about the Beast of Bodmin Moor
(“Bowels of the beasts”, 22 August, p 36).
First, the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food has not “dismissed the
whole thing as rubbish” after reviewing evidence of wild big cats on Bodmin
Moor. Far from it: the brief and limited ministry inquiry in 1995, which I
initiated, simply recorded that the information was inconclusive.
Since then, as a result of continued sightings, attacks on livestock and
other evidence, the countryside minister has agreed that his specialist team
should examine further data. The work of the teams from Leicester University and
Newquay Zoo will form part of that new investigation.
And second? Strictly speaking, Cornwall is not part of England.
Letter
The British nuclear industry supports energy conservation and an increased
role for renewables. It does not argue that nuclear energy is a “zero carbon”
alternative to fossil fuel, only that compared with either gas or coal
generation, its emissions of CO2 are very low. The simple fact is that
nuclear generators supply some 30 per cent of the UK’s electricity while
producing only negligible amounts of CO2. In other words, a substantial
contribution to meeting the nation’s environmental responsibilities is already
being made by nuclear energy.
The UK will find it very difficult to achieve its targets for reducing
greenhouse gas emissions unless the contribution of nuclear energy is
maintained, as the House of Commons Select Committee on Trade and Industry
acknowledged in its recent report on energy policy.
Mounting an effective response to the threat of global climate change may
require some people to rethink certain deep-seated prejudices against nuclear
energy.
Mushrooming costs
Rob Edwards’s revelations of the flaws in the nuclear lobby’s arguments
(Forum, 12 September, p 50)
become more convincing when strengthened by
historical observation and by common electrical engineering practice.
First, opponents of Britain’s first nuclear plants pointed out that even when
completed on schedule and to budget, the energy cost of building such a plant
takes eight to ten years or more to be repaid. When you take into account
the energy consumed by industries producing its parts, the fuel consumed by
lorries driven in its construction and so on, the true cost of a nuclear plant
becomes staggering.
Consequently, the claim that a nuclear plant cuts carbon
emissions ignores the carbon emission cost of building it.
Secondly, electric power transmission is notoriously inefficient.
Transporting coal by rail is more energy efficient than transmitting energy by
wire for distances of more than 40 kilometres. The conclusion is
straightforward: if you have millions of pounds to spend on upgrading energy
supply to meet future demands, spend it on improving electric power
transmission, not on generating more electric power. If more power is generated,
more will be lost in inefficient transmission. And that’s no way to go
green.
Mistaken identity
Your editorial about the Novartis Foundation’s debate “Genetically modified
food: yes or no?” could be read as implying that Greenpeace takes part in
debates only to disrupt them
(Editorial and
This Week, 19 September, p 3 and p 6).
It is true that the Novartis debate ended in disarray. But this was in no
small part due to the number of people in the audience who felt that the views
of the “no” camp had not received an adequate airing. It is not true that
Greenpeace set out to disrupt the debate. None of my colleagues can recall a
debate in which Greenpeace participated ending in such a melee.
Studies of public attitudes suggest that, post-BSE, official assurances of
safety have been seriously damaged by the realisation that science cannot tell
us everything. The public seems to be aware of the uncertainties that technical
assessments of new technologies often omit. These provide a legitimate reason
for opposition to genetically modified (GM) food.
I was therefore disappointed to find that the charitable Novartis Foundation,
highly regarded for its work in promoting scientific excellence, appeared to
make a mistake in promoting the title of this debate, as a “for” or “against” GM
food. In my opinion, the title provided the audience with an expectation that a
debate as to the merits of GM food would take place.
But no such debate took place and those who spoke out against GM food, such
as myself, appeared seriously under-represented on the platform.
To those that have
Rod Buck’s market forces theory, that low salaries of British academics
result from an oversupply of candidates, is an interesting one
(Letters, 19 September, p 54).
By the same token, however, we must conclude that the immense remuneration
received by industry “fat cats” is due to a great shortage of individuals
willing to fill such roles.
Model sanity
Like Rob Eason, I have frequently complained about unnecessarily long product numbers
(Feedback, 5 September).
However, longer numbers do bring some benefits.
They permit the use of a hierarchy or tree structure that aids identification,
particularly when letters are included, and increase reliability through
redundancy. Seen in this light, the number of possible combinations of
characters is irrelevant.
Any repair engineer would recognise “KX” as a Panasonic identifier, as
opposed to a product from another manufacturer, and “T” to indicate a phone
rather than, say, a printer, which would use a “P”. It is also customary to keep
the first few digits to indicate the series of similar models, and suffix
letters to indicate either year of manufacture or version number.
In contrast, the military use of random numbers to prevent any such
information being inferred. This is very irritating, makes a look-up table
essential, and brings with it the risk that if a digit is misread a nuclear
submarine may be supplied with headlamp bulbs instead of missiles.
Bad medicine
I am pleased to hear that researchers in Italy have finally noticed that when
a drug is prescribed to both men and women, testing it only on males is not good science
(This Week, 12 September, p 14).
However, do you think they might perform a follow-up study to examine why
two-thirds of the drugs prescribed for depression and anxiety are given to
women? It couldn’t possibly be because women’s concerns and awareness of their
own state of health are often dismissed by doctors, could it?
If I sound bitter, it is because almost twenty years of migraine, stomach
trouble, depression and frequent weight loss鈥攑reviously dismissed as
psychosomatic鈥攖urned out to be the result of coeliac disease. If the
(male) doctors had been a little less eager to prescribe, and more interested in
taking my comments鈥攑articularly about the weight loss鈥攕eriously,
this might have been cleared up years ago.
Cellular worlds
I enjoyed Ian Stewart’s article on applications of cellular automata
(“Rules of engagement”, 29 August, p 36).
I can attest to the fact that these models can
become quite addictive, so that after a while it becomes tempting to see
everything through cellular glasses.
I have been involved in applying cellular automata to the relationships
between plant populations, wildfires and fire management strategies. Cellular
models have proved ideal for this work, since they can bridge the gap between
the fine scale of field studies, where data are collected for individual plants
or survey plots, and the landscape scale at which practical fire management
decisions apply鈥攆or example, a large conservation reserve.
Some of the results of this work are at odds with long-held ideas about
conservation management鈥攆or example, that patchy burning is always good
for conservation. We reported in 1996 (Conservation Biology, vol 10, p
776) how our models show that as fires become patchier, the risk of local
extinction actually increases.
Correction:
Dan Takata, who is quoted in the story “Your computer in their power”
(This Week, 22 August, p 24)
is based at the San Jose, California, office of DataFellows,
which has its headquarters in Espoo, Finland.
Letter
Leo Szilard’s 1948 short story, “Report on `Grand Central Terminal'”, deals
with the findings of the alien Xram and his colleagues, who land on Earth some
years after observing explosions on two of the major landmasses. Life is
extinct, apparently as a result of the explosions.
Xram has a theory that the destruction of life came about as the result of a
war. He bases his theory on his investigation of a large building called Grand
Central Terminal. There are two small halls within the building, labelled “Men”
and “Women”, with cubicles to shelter the Earth-dwellers while they deposited
their excrement. The cubicles are locked by a device which opened only when a
small disc was inserted.
Xram believes that these discs were given to the Earth-dwellers as rewards
for services, and the fact that they could not deposit their excrement without
them made the Earth-dwellers eager to acquire the discs.
His analysis shows that a system of production and distribution based on
rewards of discs is inherently unstable, and is necessarily subject to great
fluctuations resembling the manic-depressive cycles of the insane. Indeed, his
calculations show that in the depressive-like parts of the cycles, war becomes
psychologically possible even within the same species.
Before Xram can publish his theory, more excrement cubicles are found in the
lodging houses of the city, and none of these has the locking device requiring
the discs. It therefore becomes obvious that the disc-sacrificing procedure in
Grand Central Terminal is merely ceremonial, associated with the depositing of
excrement in public places.
Letter
The idea that lavatory bowls might survive the test of time was explored in
the science fiction story “No Connections” by Randall Garrett, which appeared in
1958 in Astounding Science Fiction and again in Garrett’s 1979
collection Takeoff!
The story is a pastiche of Isaac Asimov’s “Foundation” series. In the far
future, when humans have spread throughout the Galaxy, a team of archaeologists
returns to Earth to see if it is the legendary birthplace of humanity. All they
discover is 12 495 ceramic bowls. And they have no idea what they were used
for.
Toilet tales
In answer to John Hinde’s query about what future generations might make of
the hundreds of millions of toilet bowls we leave behind us
(Letters, 5 September p 57),
I can do no better than recommend David MacAulay’s humorous
Motel of the Mysteries.
The story concerns a latter-day Howard Carter who unearths a 20th-century
motel room and theorises on the purpose of the “sacred urn”. Indeed, he suggests
a musical purpose, but not for the bowl, rather the “music box” above it. This
is played by turning the handle to release water.
The picture of his wife modelling the “sacred collar” supposedly worn by the
priests is hilarious.
Letter
I suspect that Panasonic makes not ten but hundreds of different types of
telephone when differences such as language, national standards and design
revisions are taken into account.
If you are truly worried about redundancy I suggest that you should have
thought about replacing “September” at the bottom of your page (nine alphabetic
characters, 5 脳 1012 possibilities) with 09 (only 100). Unless of course you
agree that a little redundancy is in fact useful and user friendly.