Letter
It is a shame that the word “irrational” has attracted such connotations of
idiocy and ignorance, as well as the intolerant contempt of those who believe
themselves to be possessors of a great rational “truth”. Although a devout
atheist, I nonetheless believe that Prince Charles has touched on a valid point:
that without holding anything “sacred” on an emotional and “irrational” level,
any limits we impose on biotechnology鈥攁nd science as a whole鈥攖hrough
committees and regulation will be quickly eroded.
Repeated exposure to previously unthinkable ideas through an insatiable media
inevitably numbs public objections. Long gone is the past stability of a
monolithic set of social values that the prince surely hankers after. We live in
an era where anything goes鈥攐r at least if it doesn’t today, it surely will
tomorrow.
Society needs to decide what sort of world we want future generations to live
in: whether we want to use science as a tool, or be controlled by it through an
obsession with statistically verifiable “truths”. Prince Charles may speak in
terms of God, but irrationality and a lack of control is what makes most of life
worth living.
From the multiverse
Whilst distant from each other, these two statements in the 20 May New
杏吧原创 are clearly not an “entangled pair”.
On p 38:
” . . . at one of the Lagrangian points鈥攕table points where the
gravitational tug from the Sun and the Earth cancel each other out”., and
on p 51:
” . . . at the point where the gravitational forces of the Sun and Earth
balance out. Unfortunately, this is an unstable orbital position.” Or is this a
“quantum super-imposition” of statements that “can be both vertically and
horizontally polarised at the same time”
(p 27)?
Stephen Battersby writes: The second article is right: this
Lagrangian point is indeed an unstable position. If an object is slightly
off-centre, it will accelerate slowly away, like a ball left near the top of a
hill. Incidentally, the net gravitational effect is not zero, but an attraction
towards the Sun strong enough to keep an object orbiting with a one-year
period.
Correction
In “Ordinary miracles”
(6 May, p 26) we neglected to
mention Sorin Solomon’s co-authors on the paper to appear in the Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences. They are Nadav M. Shnerb of the Judea
and Samaria College, Ariel, and Yoram Louzoun and Eldad Bettelheim of the Hebrew
University of Jerusalem.
Powerful allies
Visually challenged people who want websites to be simpler so that they will
work with “speaking screen readers”
(6 May, p 43)
should ally themselves with users of wireless PDAs (personal digital assistants)
and Web-enabled cellphones. These people face the same challenges, but carry a lot
more clout with the website owners because they are the fastest growing part of
the market.
Wave rider
Justin Mullins describes how “Alice” can use quantum entanglement to send two
bits of information to “Bob” using one photon
(20 May, page 26).
According to Mullins’s description, Bob has to receive one photon from an entangled pair and
then receive the other from Alice. So Bob still has to receive two photons in
order to receive two bits of information.
I may have missed something here, but the process Mullins describes does not
appear to offer any advantages over using two photons to send two bits in a
conventional way. Also, since Bob has to physically receive both photons, there
is no way for Alice to send the information faster than light.
Justin Mullins writes: The point is that the entangled pair can be
created in advance and should be thought of as part of the communications
infrastructure rather than as part of the message.
This is what makes entanglement a resource鈥攁 bit like petrol. You could
argue that it’s pointless to send petrol tankers around the country to fill up
petrol stations when people simply use the petrol to make journeys of their own
past other petrol stations that the tanker must have visited. Why not convert
the tanker into a bus and use that to transport people from station to station?
You’ll save all those extra journeys, not to mention the petrol. But we’re so
used to thinking of petrol as a resource that this idea seems silly. One day the
same will be true of entanglement.
Move on, Duesberg
The direction of science is guided by data, not by majority vote. An
ever-evolving process, science involves formulating hypotheses, designing
experiments to prove or disprove the hypotheses, and finally, collecting and
analysing data. The original hypotheses only stand as long as new data fits
within their framework; if not, scientists need to generate new hypotheses
rather than ignore data.
The hypothesis that AIDS, rather than being an infectious disease, is caused
by drug use or lifestyle choices was put forth early in the epidemic. Since then
there has been ample data disproving this hypothesis, and AIDS researchers have
moved on. Only a few individuals cling to the concept that AIDS is not an
infectious disease, among them biochemist and oncogene expert Peter Duesberg
(Letters, 3 June, p 53).
He misinterprets or ignores important and pertinent
data, including epidemiological studies, maternal HIV transmission and the death
of perinatally infected children from AIDS in the absence of maternal drug abuse
or antiviral therapy, as well as primate studies involving controlled
experimental inoculation of HIV itself or closely related lentiviruses. Such
studies have disproved Duesberg’s hypotheses, rendering his views outdated.
In some fields, failure to update scientific hypotheses in accordance with
data may not have harmful consequences. Denying the infectious nature of
HIV/AIDS, however, is a serious matter. It can have serious consequences, such
as undermining public health AIDS prevention efforts aimed at modifying risk
behaviour or at making anti-HIV treatment available to interrupt maternal HIV
transmission.
As to why “HIV [has] never been isolated by electron microscopy or gradient
ultracentrifugation from co-culture cellular material from any African patient”,
newer, more accurate genetic tests now routinely demonstrate the presence of
HIV.
Irrational rights
I agree with much of your editorial condemning Prince Charles’s attack on science
(27 May, p 3).
But this doesn’t mean that science holds all the answers.
It is a fundamental human right to be able to object to things: whether the
objection is based on hard science or hard ethics is irrelevant.
Many people object to (or support) genetic engineering without any
understanding of the potential risks or benefits. This is their right.
Bio-technologists need to appreciate that presenting scientific and economic
arguments for the widespread use of their technology is not sufficient. They
must also morally justify their desire to fiddle with the tapestry upon which
life is woven.
Going nuclear
The potential link between the Clean Development Mechanism for cutting carbon
emissions and the revitalising of the nuclear power industry
(13 May, p 14)
is a serious concern, not least because nobody yet has the data for a complete
benefit-cost analysis. As you correctly point out in that issue’s Editorial (p 3),
the underwriting of nuclear power by military interests warped its
economics. Now this subsidy is no longer available, and the only way to fudge a
pro-nuclear outcome is to discount severely the as yet undetermined, but clearly
huge, costs of waste management.
It is disappointing that the Royal Society has lent its support to this
option, given the absence of any data on which to make the desired economic
comparisons. What costs will be included in any comparison with other energy
options? In this case “capital” costs (which may be subsidised by 40 per cent
using the CDM) must include decommissioning as well as construction costs.
Economic fundamentalism only works with full cost accounting.
Letter
Three Japanese nuclear workers received fatal doses of radiation last year.
The incident was headlined in our papers for some days. But there was no such
coverage when a 1997 World Health Organization report revealed that 2.7 to 3
million deaths result each year from exposure to the particulate air pollution
from fossil fuels and, more especially, from indoor burning of biomass and coal
for cooking and heating in developing countries.
So is one nuclear death worse than a million carboniferous deaths? Not quite,
I suppose. But even allowing for such factors as the relative use of the two
energy sources, the difference in emphasis remains stark.
In commenting on the future for nuclear energy, you depicted a balance: 1500
tonnes of radioactive waste on one side of the scales, 250 million tonnes of
carbon dioxide on the other, as if the release of this greenhouse gas were the
only negative in our use of coal, oil and gas. Even allowing for Chernobyl, the
nuclear generation of electricity has been safer than that using fossil
fuels.
Letter
I was disheartened by Rob Edwards’s article. Our present lifestyle is
certainly causing global warming. At best, this will cause a slow change in the
climate to which society will find it hard to adapt. At worst, the changes will
lead to armed conflicts and to a series of major climatic disasters.
Edwards describes a world debating “the best way of reducing carbon
emissions”. He quotes a view that increased energy efficiency and energy
conservation, supported by renewable sources such as water, wind and solar
power, are better than nuclear power. He writes as though the various options
were mutually exclusive.
I doubt if we can afford the luxury of choosing only the best options. The
renewable sources seem to offer only marginal contributions, except perhaps for
water. The public shows little interest in changing its habits, and there are
few signs of any replacement of carboniferous fuels for transport.
Whatever the problems of nuclear power, it is already up and running on a
substantial scale. It would be madness to let it run down, and foolish not to
expand it. I suggest we stop listening to economists and set about convincing
the public that global warming is not far in the future and that there are many
solutions that are feasible, if not ideal. We might just realise that we need to
use all the options.