The bottom line
The clich茅 quote heard on BBC Radio 4 that Feedback was wondering about (2 March) is as follows: “At the end of the day, in the morning there’s not much else a teacher can do if the child doesn’t turn up for school.” This quote appears in the “Colemanballs” section of the 22 February issue of Private Eye magazine.
The source of such a pearl of wisdom? None other than the British Education Minister, Estelle Morris.
Letter
Talking of clich茅s, I think a certain quote attributed to John Major is better: “When my back is to the wall, I shall turn round and fight.”
Entangled cat
Your article reports the success of an American group in cloning cc the kitten, who appears to be an imperfect Xerox of her tortoiseshell donor (23 February, p 6).
Although the article leads the reader to wonder exactly why pets should be cloned, and it does raise serious concerns about animal welfare, you have not asked the most interesting question of all: what exactly would happen if you were to clone Schr枚dinger’s cat?
Hope and glory
Feedback reports on four schoolboys named Huggett, Brushett, Pettit and Boylett (2 February).
During the war, the two opening batsmen for my school eleven in Newcastle-under-Lyme were Lander and Hope. I need hardly tell you what stirring song greeted them each time they strode out to open the batting for the school.
No compensation if you're nuked
You quote the British government’s leaked draft energy review as saying that “insurance is not available for full third-party liability in the event of [nuclear] accidents” (2 March, p 7). This is something of an understatement. No insurance of any sort is available for nuclear accidents. Check the exclusions for any domestic insurance policy and you will find that nuclear accidents are explicitly excluded.
The simple fact is that in the case of a nuclear accident devastating any part of this country, the people living in that area鈥攖ypically losing everything they possess鈥攚ill have to bear the cost themselves. Neither the insurance industry nor the government could afford to pay anything approaching the necessary compensation.
You claim that “insiders say it merely reflects the difficulty of quantifying the possible costs of accidents”. This is true in the sense of putting a number on it. However, there can be no doubt that it is too high. Specifically, if this cost were borne by the nuclear industry, there would be possibility whatever of that industry being viable. This is the truth that the “insiders” are desperate to hide.
Statistics in court
I look to New 杏吧原创 for full and balanced reporting, but your report of the woman convicted of the murder of her two sons was neither (23 February, p 12). As an introduction, “The case against Sally Clark relied heavily on statistics” was particularly inaccurate.
In fact, the case relied on the fact that the dead infants showed injuries including bruises, haemorrhages at the backs of the eyes, a torn and bruised frenulum in the mouth, an old rib fracture, spinal-cord damage and evidence of earlier bleeding into the lungs.
The shocking murder of 8-year-old Victoria Climbi茅 highlights how inadequately we protect children from abuse. Your account of the Clark case is likely to be quoted and circulated, so you have a responsibility to get it right.
Your mention of “expert witness Roy Meadow, a retired paediatrician”, was unnecessarily dismissive. Professor Sir Roy Meadow is a world-class paediatrician, widely admired for his experience, knowledge and judgement. I suggest readers look at his account of the trial in the British Medical Journal (vol 324, p 41) and make up their own minds.
The focus of our investigation was the potential for courts to misunderstand and misinterpret statistical evidence. The Clark case appeared to us, and the Royal Statistical Society, to provide the best case study to illustrate the traps people can fall into. Of course the other evidence was important, but this is precisely the message of the second item on that spread (Corporate science v the right to know)鈥攖hat relying on statistics alone imperils justice. Doubtless the Criminal Cases Review Commission will consider all the available evidence.
Readers can access both the Meadow Communication to the BMJ and criticisms of it at 鈥抬诲
Copyleft protects
In response to Tam Dalyell’s comment on patents being taken out by private companies on the back of research done in the public sector (2 March, p 49), a possible answer to this problem was suggested in an earlier issue of New 杏吧原创.
Simply release all freely available, publicly funded research as copyleft (2 February, p 34). That way, any private company which uses this information has to make it free.
Solstice sunrise
Tim Essex confuses us by suggesting there is an annual solar event on 25 December which differs from the winter solstice (26 January, p 56). He says that it is on the 25th that the position of sunrise on the horizon changes direction from moving southward in the Autumn to northward in the Spring. Not so. The declination of the Sun reaches its most southerly position鈥�23掳 26.4鈥测�攁nd starts to return northward on either 21 or 22 December each year.
Essex may have been on the move, changing his latitude between observations and thus countering the effect of the changing declination of the Sun, thereby observing a maximum southerly sunrise on 25 December. But since the declination of the Sun changes by only tiny fractions of a degree per day immediately on either side of the solstice, it is hard to detect without a theodolite or its nautical equivalent. So I would be fascinated to learn more about his “easy to observe” solar event.
Brake hard
Your report on the Transport Research Laboratory’s investigation into the effects of anti-lock braking systems on road accidents concludes that risk compensation accounts for the benefits being less than might have been expected (2 March, p 9).
Our findings do not support this. The great majority of drivers never make use of the ABS function during everyday driving. They typically brake at rates half or a quarter of that required to bring ABS into action鈥攕o much so that when it is activated, the unfamiliar pedal sensation can cause quite a surprise.
A more significant factor than risk compensation is the driver not making full use of the ability to steer under heavy braking. This is reflected in the improvement that normally occurs after advanced driver training. Without ABS, experience on the road teaches the driver to limit steering input while braking. This has to be unlearned to get the best from ABS.
Save our ice cream
I read your story on the use of winter wheat protein to stop ice cream from forming crystals in the freezer with concern (2 March, p 16). Any additive derived from wheat protein poses a potential problem for the many people who have coeliac disease, an autoimmune disorder that causes the body to react to protein from wheat, oats, barley and rye as though it were poison.
As you can imagine, a diet that bans all foods with these proteins is already extremely limited. The addition of wheat protein to ice cream would be bad news for coeliacs, who have to stick to the diet for life. That means a child diagnosed with the disease would never taste ice cream again should the protein come to be commonly used.
Research shows that one in every 250 people has coeliac disease. They include my 11-year-old daughter, who loves ice cream.
Sweet or tasteless?
You might want to add lactulose to the list of compounds that some people are unable to taste (23 February, p 25). Lactulose is a mild laxative given to old folk (like me). It is available over the counter, so you can try it for yourself. To me, it is very sweet. To my otherwise perfect wife, it is tasteless.
And what about Brussels sprouts? Are they vile or delicious?
After the event
You suggest from the evidence of the tree ring dating of repairs to the trackway at the Witham ritual site that our Iron Age ancestors were able to accurately predict eclipses of the Moon on an 18-year cycle (16 February, p 40).
But there may be a much simpler explanation鈥攖hat they repaired the site immediately after an eclipse, not before. It could be that our ancestors thought an eclipse meant that the gods needed to be appeased to make sure that they did not take the Moon away again. They might have thought it would be a jolly good idea to repair the trackway to avoid getting wet feet when consigning votive objects to the water.
In denial
The issue of the US and Canada possibly having a conflict with Russia over shipping routes in the Arctic appears to be a moot point (2 March, p 5).
Since the official US government position is that there is no serious global warming problem that would require a concerted international effort to tackle it (such as the Kyoto Protocol), there cannot possibly be any such far-reaching consequence as the melting of the Arctic ice. Hence there will be no shipping routes opening up. This means there is no possibility of a disagreement over who will use them and how.
Overreaction?
Your article on supercomputer theft seemed to present sensational conjecture as news (23 February, p 4).
On the pages immediately before and after this article, the danger of overreacting to the perceived threat of terrorism is discussed. Nevertheless, the article suggested that the determined thieves are somehow linked to “Iraq or al-Qaida”, with little apparent justification beyond the fact that powerful computers might be used for sinister purposes. As you make clear in your editorial, this is true of almost any technology.
Frustration may lead a victim of repeated theft to highlight any potentially sensational aspect of the crime, but the first article of the news section is usually reserved for the major science/news story of the week, and I do not believe that this story warranted such prominence.
Neuron aesthete
I am surprised that your article on neuron/robot connections did not mention the Australian “body artist” Stelarc (23 February, p 26). He operates robotic arms using his own neural signals and moves his body in response to external signals, and he’s been performing for some time now.