Make understanding, not war
All credit to New 杏吧原创 for showing the range of responses to
the “In the line of fire” article
(1 September, p 4, and
15 September, p 50).
But how sad to see some of my countrymen writing in such a prehistoric and
insular manner.
Most of the quoted sources were American and it was clear that the Midwest is
just as much at risk as Europe. The depressingly thoughtless and unnecessarily
hostile diatribes sent in by several correspondents are symptomatic of the
reasons we Americans are mistrusted so much throughout the world and why some
nations cheer when we suffer a reverse.
I hope the events of 11 September have shown that worrying about ballistic
missiles is itself a mental relic of the cold war. As I sit writing this e-mail
at a friend’s apartment in London, I wait for transatlantic flights to restart
so I can return to my home city, which was recently attacked with civilian
American aircraft hijacked by men with knives.
No “Son of Star Wars” could have prevented that. “Value-for-money” terrorism
does not require the latest technology or big engineering.
Let’s instead invest our money and brainpower in more practical defensive
projects. Let’s be more proactive in understanding, rather than blasting or
ignoring, the mindsets of those outside the clearly inadequate walls of Fortress
America.
Letter
The hypothesis of some kind of molecular coding for long-term memory storage
is not that new. In fact, you have mentioned it yourselves in the past.
In 1969 (May or June, I seem to recall) a note in New 杏吧原创
suggested much the same, except that the then-favoured molecule was not DNA but
RNA. This was, I believe, partly based on the idea that the rate at which RNA is
synthesised in neurons corresponds with the maximum rate of firing of
neurons.
There was also, before that, a reported experiment in which flatworms, I
believe, were trained to navigate a T-shaped maze. The experimenters ground up
their neural tissue and fed it to other flatworms. They claimed that this second
group learned the maze more quickly than the first group. The result could not
be replicated, and the consensus became that the improved performance of the
second group was due to improvements in the experimenter’s ability to train
flatworms.
You, of course, can check the accuracy of at least part of my neural
encoding.
We looked at the news and features headlines for 1969 and didn’t see anything
about memory in RNA. The claim about flatworm RNA was published by James
McConnell in 1962鈥擡d.
Can't remember
In the feature “You must remember this”, Bryant Furlow argues that Wilder
Penfield’s results are “a dramatic testimony to the longevity of memory”
(15 September, p 24).
This is, at best, highly contentious. At worst, it’s simply an
incorrect summary of his research.
First, the proportion of Penfield’s subjects who actually claimed to recall
such “memories” (rather than just music or voices) was in fact very
small鈥攁round 3 per cent. Secondly, and more importantly, Penfield was in
no position to judge the veracity of the claims that these few subjects were
making.
Were these “memories” accurate reflections of past events, distorted versions
of the past, or were they outright fabrications? Were they even memories at all?
There is just no way he could have known.
Countless research studies have demonstrated that memory can, under certain
circumstances, be highly malleable and subject to distortion. It is therefore
perhaps not surprising that Penfield’s research is so commonly misrepresented
and misremembered.
Mythical handouts
The claim by Gordon Haines that the courts of England and Wales hand out
compensation regardless of blame is a myth
(15 September, p 52).
The common law of negligence applies to the vast majority of claims. Its application
to accidents has remained relatively unchanged for the past 65 years. What has
given this myth such vitality?
First, the media primarily report negligence cases that succeed, not those
that fail. For example, I represented a company on allegations that one of its
products had caused a serious blood disorder in a child. On the last day, the
gallery was packed with reporters. The child’s claim was rejected. The reporters
drifted away and the verdict received no publicity. Those newspapers that most
vehemently condemn the compensation culture help to sustain it by reporting only
those cases in which damages are paid out.
Secondly, legal aid for personal injury cases has been abolished in virtually
all cases in England and Wales. They are now funded by “no win, no fee”
agreements. Commercial breaks on TV are full of earnest-looking besuited
executives encouraging all and sundry to make claims.
Thirdly, there are many, many wholly deserving claimants who are thoroughly
entitled to compensation鈥攂ut even the most well-founded claim can be made
to look speculative and unmeritorious by a well-spun article.
Any court that referred to insurance as a factor relevant to its decision on
liability would be wrong, and appealably wrong. The requirement to establish
blame as a prerequisite to accident liability is alive and well.
Alive, alive-oh
If radio waves of up to 300 hertz can stress, and even kill, freshwater mussels
(8 September, p 14),
should I be worried about the 50-hertz radio waves
emitted by the power cables behind my house? And what about the waves emitted by
all the transformers inside my house?
Numerous studies of radio frequency radiation on humans and laboratory
animals have failed to show a conclusive link to cancer or other harmful effects
on health. While more research needs to be done, a study in zebra mussels does
not constitute evidence that the radio waves are harmful to humans鈥擡d
Finger of innocence
I normally have a fair amount of time for Tam Dalyell, but he took a very
firm grasp of the wrong end of the stick on fingerprinting
(Westminster Diary, 1 September, p 53).
Yes, fingerprints are “reliable” as he said鈥�80 per cent
of the time. He acknowledges that this is a 20 per cent failure rate, but then
looks only at one side of the problem.
Fingerprints cannot be used to prove that someone is innocent. A fingerprint,
if it’s a good one, may prove that I, you or Tam Dalyell was at the scene of a
crime. Fingerprints can’t prove when we were there, and they certainly can’t
prove that we were not there, or that we were somewhere else. A smudged print,
on the other hand, if it’s among the 20 per cent of wrongly identified prints,
could be used to convict an innocent party.
Protection in Poland
In “Plutonium for sale” you give a one-sided view of international
arrangements for the physical protection of nuclear materials
(26 May, p 10).
In fact, the Sandia National Laboratories in the US, together with Britain’s
Directorate of Civil Nuclear Security, worked with the Polish authorities to
design, erect and finance a physical protection system around the most sensitive
facility in Poland. The project was described at the International Atomic Energy
Agency conference in Stockholm reported in the piece. Similar projects have been
undertaken in Hungary, Romania and Ukraine.
Poland, one of the 11 countries described as not having “any radiation
monitoring equipment covering its unfenced borders”, has spent considerable
funds installing 131 radiation portal monitors at road, rail, airport and sea
crossing points. As a result, 73,296,629 units of transportation鈥攑assenger
cars, buses, trains, planes and sea vessels鈥攚ere checked in the year 2000.
In all, 7519 alarms were dealt with. These cases included 4200 transports of
natural isotopes and 120 patients who had undergone isotope therapy. In 22 of
them, entry into Poland was denied.
Choosing anthrax
So the Japanese doomsday sect Aum Shinrikyo used a Sterne-like strain of
anthrax, which lacks the capacity to protect itself from destruction by white
blood cells
(1 September, p 6).
This may have prevented people in the vicinity
from experiencing symptoms of inhaling anthrax, but it did not preclude
infection. Subclinical infection or mild symptoms may have appeared but it’s
possible nobody thought this worthy of note at the time.
In fact, the sect’s choice of anthrax as an agent of biological warfare was a
logical one, because anthrax produces resistant spores which remain alive for
many years, so the problem with “dead cultures” is not relevant in this
instance. Efficient dissemination using a spray nozzle, which produces particles
of a size that can be breathed in, is also relatively easy.
It is true that anthrax bacteria can be isolated from animal carcasses, but
this would be difficult in Britain without expert knowledge and access to
affected animals. In this country, the number of animals contracting anthrax is
extremely small, and once they’ve been diagnosed they are disposed of
immediately.
Although most terrorists may at present “prefer explosives or arson”, this is
likely to be due to the knowledge and materials currently available to them. It
is likely that terrorists will acquire the materials and expertise to produce
and disseminate a biological weapon agent within the foreseeable future.
Letter
It would be extremely hard to persuade pharmaceuticals companies to add a
marker to their products, as they would have to invest a lot of money in this
scheme on the off chance that an athlete may use it to aid them in a race. They
would also lose business, as their customers would be unwilling to take
something with an unnecessary ingredient in it.
The drugs problem in sport will never be truly vanquished. The authorities
will have to rely on the honesty of the athletes鈥攈owever unwise this
course may be.
Don't dope my jab
Jim Davies suggests that chemicals be added to all artificial insulin to
allow it to be traced if used improperly by athletes to boost performance
(15 September, p 52).
Well, I’m sorry, but I have enough problem adding the
chemicals that make up artificial insulin to my body without having more,
frankly unnecessary, chemicals added just to satisfy the sporting world.
Don’t just think about the athletes who are or are not using this drug. Think
about the diabetics who have to.
Science by committee
You report that a committee of bureaucrats (my words, you used the more
generous “panel of top scientists”) was charged with reducing the cost of
administrating astronomy by merging the activities of two agencies into one
(15 September, p 15).
Instead of doing this, they decided to leave the
responsibilities with the two agencies and create a third to coordinate
them.
Anyone who has ever been involved in this sort of thing knows that your
subeditors missed the obvious headline: “Extra! Extra! Dog bites man!”
Letter
Richard Wilson is, of course, right to say that we should not
anthropomorphise computers.
They hate it when we do that.
From what to who
Richard Wilson says it’s misleading to title an article on artificial
intelligence “Look who’s talking”
(8 September, p 53).
But surely the point of fostering an AI is to turn a what (computer program)
into a who (sentience or consciousness).
And, why is it anthropomorphic to do this? The term “who” may currently refer
to a human person due to humanity’s isolation, but when or if we have other
sentient beings around us鈥攚hether they be artificially created or visiting
from another planet鈥攖he term “who” will have to be applied to distinguish
one sentient being from another.
The title of the article therefore is an inclusive one, even if the program
cannot yet pass the Turing test for AI.
Murphic resonance
In “What could go wrong?”, Ian Stewart is right鈥擬urphy’s
law does exist in maths
(15 September, p 36).
The person who marked my A-level exam paper will have seen it in action . . .
The Delilah effect
I am still six months behind with New 杏吧原创, so have just come
across a letter about Samson, presumably after his night with Delilah
(17 February, p 19).
I sometimes think the story makes sense when rephrased: some
time after Samson slept with Delilah, his hair fell out and he became weak. In
biblical times they might have interpreted this in a pre-scientific way.
Silly sums
If there is one thing that really gets my back up, it is muddying the water
in a perfectly serious argument by doing stupid sums
(8 September, p 45).
It is very reasonable to debate the extent that nuclear power may or may not reduce
carbon dioxide releases. But if you want to contribute, there is no substitute
for doing the real, difficult calculations.
Making the random assumption of a “hereditary caste of security-priests”
which would survive 250,000 years and burn carbon the entire time,
and then integrate the releases is not just lazy, it’s downright silly.
Add the rest of the silly assumptions鈥� waste stored at each reactor site
for this entire period鈥攁nd you produce the final nonsensical
conclusion.
This is like discussions about how communities who might experience releases
from a leaking nuclear waste repository might be compensated. Assuming that the
earliest possible releases occur in 100,000 years (a very pessimistic number),
all you need to do is invest 1 penny (cent, yen, whatever) at 1 per cent net
annual compound interest. Already, after 20,000 years, your investment (in
whatever units) is around 1080鈥攖he same order of magnitude
as the number of atoms in the Universe.
At 100,000 years the number is very much larger鈥攚ell over
10400. No problem in paying the carbon tax for the guardian priesthood
there, then.
Correction
Our interview with Warren Sanderson of the International
Institute for Applied Systems Analysis contained two errors. The statement “the
UN predicts a peak [in global population] of 9.3 billion in 2050″ is wrong.
While the UN does predict 9.3 billion in 2050, it does not mark that figure as a
peak. Further down, we stated that population growth in the world’s poorest
countries may end by 2001. This should have read 2100. These mistakes were the
fault of New 杏吧原创 and not of Warren Sanderson.
Crowded out
Is Warren Anderson concerned about the imminent 50 per cent increase in
global population
(8 September, p 42),
or not? If he is not sure, perhaps he
could read the book review six pages later about the birds of Ecuador, which
concluded: “…given Ecuador’s rapidly disappearing forests, much of the
motivation for the book’s use will be to see the country’s birds before they
disappear for ever.”
Loss of habitat for other species is a major consequence of overpopulation.
The rate of species decline has increased to a point where biological diversity
is in the midst of its sixth great crisis. According to the eminent biologist
Edward O. Wilson, this one is precipitated entirely by humans. Whether we go to
9.3 or 8.9 billion before declining is almost irrelevant. We have a major
tragedy here already with the current 6.1 billion.
Siphons and Sarez
Alisdair Sutherland suggests siphoning off the lake that is building up on
Mount Pinatubo
(25 August, p 55).
I suggested doing this in 1999 in a similar situation, namely the devastating
threat posed by Sarez lake in Tajikistan. As I wrote to you then, “If I remember
my physics correctly, the siphon would stop working once the lake height is
lower than about nine metres below the top of the siphon tube, at which point a
vacuum would develop there.”
And鈥攃ould we have an update on what happened at Sarez?
Not so sweet
In days gone by fructose was promoted for diabetics as an alternative to
sucrose鈥攐r to the glucose bit of it
(1 September, p 26).
The grounds for this claim were that it does not raise blood sugar levels adversely
in the same way that glucose does.
There is, however, no place for recommending fructose over sucrose in current
dietary guidelines for people with diabetes鈥攑recisely because of the
potential hazardous effects on blood lipids that is exacerbated in this
condition.
Unfortunately, fructose is still sold with an implied benefit to those with
diabetes, cashing in on its lack of glycaemic effect.