Stacked choices
Feedback mentions the multiple choices offered in a questionnaire about
hotels by a tour group
(24 June).
I had a similar experience at the start of my second year at university, when
the mathematics department handed out an assessment form covering the previous
year.
The first question was “How do you rate your lecturer from last year?” and
the choices were鈥攁s in the tour questionnaire鈥�”Outstanding”,
“Excellent”, “Very Good”, and “Good”.
The next question was: “How do you rate your own performance last year?” For
this question, the choices were “Good” (High Distinction), “Fair” (Distinction),
“Poor” (Credit), and “Unsatisfactory” (Pass).
Second-year students rapidly turned into cynics after this.
Hands together
Alison Motluk describes the work of John Manning that links the configuration
of human hands to the gender of the owner
(24 June, p 32).
But she does not mention the association between extension of the fingers and gender.
If you place your hands together, palms facing each other, and separate your
fingers as much as possible, there is usually a gap between the tips of the
fingers.
I have observed that women can usually separate their fingers further than
men. I have never seen this reported elsewhere鈥攊s it an original
observation or have I just not read enough to know?
Correction
The graphic on p 38 of our special report on creationism
(22 April)
stated that students in the state of Queensland, Australia, are taught
creation science. We learn that in fact this is not the case, although an
education minister in the 1980s tried to make it so.
Zoonophobia
It was heart-warming to read that next year, mice will be incubating women’s eggs
(1 July, p 7).
The benefits to the few are worth the risk to the rest of
our species. They must be, since the concerns of those of us who harp on about
zoonoses鈥攄iseases spread from animals to humans, which scientists still
don’t understand and certainly can’t deal with when they break out鈥攁re
just chalked up to “people being worried”.
Although we have the means to do these things and are doing them, we don’t
have the knowledge to understand or the means to sort out the inevitable
consequences.
When will the full-scale frenzy of using other species as our accessory banks
get questioned? Or is zoonosis just an unsexy word?
The way we are
I don’t want to make excuses for simplistic explanations for human behaviour
made in the name of evolutionary psychology, but I do object to some of the
simplifications Hilary Rose and Steven Rose bring to the debate
(24 June, p 40).
First, evidence of the relatively speedy changes in sparrow legs and finch
beaks is no evidence against the survival of human attributes from the dim
evolutionary past. Superficial structures must cope with the relatively speedy
changes in the physical and competitive environment, while the attributes of
interest to psychology (and philosophy) concern more fundamental aspects of
social behaviour, survival and cognition. In spite of their beak shape, all
finches build nests, sing songs, mark out territory and compete for mates.
Secondly, the Roses set the explanatory bar against evolutionary psychology
extraordinarily high when they apparently demand that its theories account for
all behaviour, since evolution is about the behaviour of populations, not
individuals. In fact, individual variation in behaviour is required by any
theory appealing to evolutionary principles.
Letter
While it is clear that a lot of evolutionary psychology needs debunking, I
thought it rather shameful that the Roses resorted to attacking neo-Darwinism in
general and Richard Dawkins in particular.
Dawkins’s work shows no evidence that he supports the wholesale use of
Pleistocene “just so” stories to account for modern social behaviour. Precisely
the opposite. He points out that our genes have created intelligence and
surrendered their sovereignty to it, unlike the spiders, bee orchids, and fig
wasps.
Accusing Dawkins of invoking free will as a “sky-hook” to rescue evolutionary
psychology is pure invention. Asserting that “Darwin knew better” and denied
free will for humans is equally false, and were it true would completely
undermine the Roses’ own case.
Letter
Somehow we simply must address the vast array of human behaviours鈥攆rom
the most obvious, such as pair bonding, to the most subtle tendencies behind the
workings of our societies and lives鈥攚hich run in deep and consistent
currents across all human societies across all time.
The Roses snarl at the word “determinism”, so let us speak of
“tendencies”鈥攚hat they are and from where they arise.
Dig it in
Your correspondent Bernard Mulholland put forward the proposition that we
should be burying organic material at the bottom of the sea to produce fossil
fuel deposits for future generations
(1 July, p 48).
A growing percentage of British soil is unstable due to lack of organic
matter. Many Australian soils have organic levels of less than 1 per cent.
Minerals and trace elements in all soils are depleted through cropping and the
microbial activity in soils is destroyed by chemical farming practices.
All of the organic material we burn or bury contains minerals and trace elements
essential to plants.
If we are to pursue any measure of sustainable agriculture, it is insane to
pretend that we can safely put this material anywhere except back into the soils
it came from.
Tired of taunts
I sympathise with Hayley Klinger’s despair at those who dismiss sufferers
from chronic fatigue syndrome as hypochondriacs or somehow lacking in strength of mind
(1 July, p 48).
Unfortunately, her insistence on a “real” physical cause
reinforces the attitudes that cause so much offence.
While CFS and clinical depression are clearly separate illnesses, they do
share a number of features. Both involve changes in the physical state,
including the neurological system and hormonal changes, and both produce changes
in energy levels, sleep, appetite, mood and behaviour. While neither appears to
have a single cause, both are associated in some sufferers with a physical
trigger such as a viral illness or hormonal changes, and in some sufferers with
mental or behavioural triggers.
Significantly, both appear to benefit, in varying amounts depending on the
individual, from physical and behavioural treatments or a combination of the
two.
To try to push CFS firmly and exclusively into the physical category is to do
a disservice to both CFS victims, who may not receive the best treatment, and
depression sufferers, who are told once again that their illness is morally
inferior, unimportant or unreal鈥攄espite the fact that it is a major killer
in this country. Whether your illness was triggered by a virus or a divorce has
no impact on your ability to avoid it, its seriousness or your need for treatment.
Achilles' heel
With regard to Ian Sample’s article about the electromagnetic bomb
(1 July, p 20),
it is terrifying to think that our civilisation depends on trillions
of 25-micron sized transistors running at 3.3 volts.
It is interesting to compare it to the situation in 1900. Then, transport
depended on steam trains with mechanical signals and cars and trucks with
magneto ignition or driven by batteries with resistive controllers. Telephones
depended on carbon-granule transmitters, and wired broadcasting and relay-type
or manual exchanges used similar equipment. Wireless communication was by spark
transmitters and cohere-type receivers, while electricity was generated by local
steam plants with battery back-up. All this technology would have been highly
resistant to electromagnetic pulses.
Luminous aphids
As someone who despairs each year when my garden plants are ravaged by hordes
of aphids, I saw a ray of hope in the article this week about luminous nits
(24 June, p 6).
As I do not like to use insecticides, I rely on a combination of help from
ladybirds and squashing the aphids between my fingers鈥攏either of which
seems to keep them at bay for long. However, if Sydney Spiesel’s idea of a
shampoo that makes the eggs of hair lice luminous could be adapted for use as a
garden spray, the offending aphids could be hunted out wherever on the plant
they were hiding and dealt with accordingly.
Such a treatment should, as in the case of nits, allow 100 per cent
clearance, and so avoid the usual reinfestation of the plant by well-hidden
survivors.