Apology
In the 2 March issue we published, without the permission of J. C. Raven Ltd, which owns the copyright, two items from Raven’s Standard Progressive Matrices as illustrations to the article “Brain gain” Eyeball this. We also used a modified form of one of the matrices on the cover and in the article. While J. C. Raven Ltd does on occasion authorise publication of the five practice items from the first set of the matrices, it never authorises the items used in our article, since wider dissemination of the test items undermines their value.
We would like to apologise to J. C. Raven Ltd for our failure to obtain permission to use this material and to make clear that no items from Raven’s Standard Progressive Matrices may be published without the prior permission of J. C. Raven Ltd鈥擡d
Correction
Thanks to Bill White at BoxTop Technologies in Gloucestershire for pointing out that the 110-gigahertz chips announced by IBM (2 March, p 5) will be used for network communications rather than PCs
Fusion need not mean radioactive waste
In response to Eric Kvaalen’s letter about fusion and radioactive waste (9 March, p 54), fusion power plants could be designed and operated in a way that avoids an accumulating burden of waste for future generations. Although structural material may become radioactive due to exposure to neutrons, this activity decays to low levels on a timescale similar to a plant’s lifetime, so most of the material could be recycled or scrapped.
Also, new materials have been developed with a reduced propensity to become activated, known as low-activation materials. In Japan, Europe and the US, this has led to the development of a type of ferritic-martensitic steel that has the required properties. Tests of the European version, Eurofer, have been promising. A complete working experimental fusion device in Japan has been rebuilt using a similar steel.
If the development of more advanced structural materials is successful, for example vanadium alloys or silicon carbide composites, the level of neutron activation will be lower still. A fusion plant with components made of silicon carbide might produce no long-term waste at all. This is the subject of work currently under way in the European fusion programme.
Testing intelligence
In your article about a rise in intelligence since the 1950s (2 March, p 24), the quoted number series example of an IQ question, 2 3 5 8 ?, typifies the drawback which turns intelligence testing into a pseudoscience. Who should get the tick? The person who gives the mediocre answer 12 or the person who gives the answer 13 (Fibonacci-type series)? How about 14 (arrangements of beads on a necklace, or numbers of paraffin-chain isomers)? How about 21 (convergents to the fifth root of 5)? I could go on.
It seems to me that a genuine genius would score zero in a typical test. Also, because there are relatively few simple series puzzles that one can pose, they can easily be learned by rote, and this is the Occam’s razor explanation for the so-called “steady increase in intelligence”.
These tests do not measure the intelligence of the subjects, they reflect the intellectual limitations and laziness of the testers. The problem of detecting true genius (but not rote learning) is easily resolved: simply ask the subjects to add explanations for their answers.
Too much power?
Lord Sainsbury’s response to your editorial on the Export Control Bill ignores several issues regarding the bill (9 March, p 54).
He writes that the controls the government introduces will include exemptions for knowledge in the public domain. However, the bill gives ministers the power to issue new controls whenever they wish, without prior parliamentary approval. It may be this government’s intention to exempt information in the public domain but that would not prevent future governments removing such an exemption.
As for the bill imposing strict limits on the goods the government can control, this is nonsense in relation to the so-called “intangibles”. Section 5 and the schedule of the bill allow controls to be placed on information that can be used in connection with the production or development of any goods, or the development or carrying out of any activity. They can thus be applied to any information of any use whatsoever. For example, scientific papers, manuals, textbooks and courses can all be targeted.
Lord Sainsbury further claims that such controls would only apply when the government informs scientists that communicating information to certain persons would contribute to the development of weapons of mass destruction.
Perhaps he has not read the bill’s schedule, which explicitly states that a minister can impose controls if he thinks that the transfer of knowledge might have an impact on national security, the security of the armed forces, the peace, security or stability of any region or country in the world, the facilitation of serious crime or terrorism, the facilitation of breaches of human rights or international laws on armed conflict and, yes, the facilitation of the development of weapons of mass destruction.
This is a long list and there is much scientific knowledge that might facilitate any of these things. For example, knowledge from computer science may facilitate serious cybercrime while medical knowledge could facilitate torture or the development of bioweapons.
The bill also includes explicit provision allowing ministers to amend the schedule setting out the criteria for imposing controls (section 11). So future governments could add to or alter the criteria to include ever more knowledge.
Lord Sainsbury claims that the bill does not allow the government to require licensing of foreign students. It may be that the government has no intention of doing this, but section 6(1)(a) of the bill explicitly allows orders to be issued requiring an activity to be licensed. Thus future governments may do this if they wish.
No mention was made of section 6(2)(b) of the bill which states that an order may “amend, repeal or revoke, or apply (with or without modifications) provisions of any Act or subordinate legislation”. Thus the ministers can issue orders that make arbitrary changes to any Act of Parliament, including its repeal, using this legislation. They can do this without prior parliamentary approval.
Maybe this government can be trusted with such power, but what about the next one? Or the one after that?
Emotive campaign
Tam Dalyell applauds the recent campaign by the pro-vivisection Research Defence Society (RDS) featuring a 16-year-old girl who is living with cystic fibrosis and diabetes (2 March, p 49).
However, the RDS is not the first group to realise the potential of such a “campaign mascot” as an effective though predictable choice in their propaganda war. Indeed, such patronising campaigns where patients are often portrayed as helpless victims eternally indebted to the tireless philanthropy of the pharmaceuticals industry are nothing new.
The girl’s highly emotive campaign call of “Had it not been for animal experiments, I would have died before my first birthday” is indeed deeply moving. But I have to question not only the validity of this counterfactual proposition, but also whether it is sufficient justification for the deliberate and systematic infliction of suffering on sentient creatures.
Antivivisectionists do not live in an Utopian bubble where people are immune to disease and death. Our families, partners, friends and colleagues get ill and die, and so do we. We too want to see cures for disease and the alleviation of suffering, but we do not believe in selling the public the myth that our health depends on animal experimentation.
Animal experimentation can only ever be at best a crude and blunt instrument, and the scientific community’s preoccupation with it is holding back rather than advancing medical progress and sidelining more modern, reliable and humane non-animal research methods.
The RDS and the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection are unlikely ever to agree over the science. However, the debate over animal experiments is not just a scientific one, it is also an ethical one. The RDS claims that people benefit from vivisection. The BUAV believes people will benefit if vivisection is banned. Either way, it is indisputable that throughout history the oppressor has often benefited from the suffering and exploitation of the oppressed, sometimes substantially. The question the RDS seem unwilling or unable to address is whether it is ever morally acceptable for the strong to ameliorate their suffering by transferring it to the weak.
Computer chaos
Barry Fox’s article is rightly critical of the security of medical records in Britain (2 March, p 44). However, this is only the tip of the iceberg. Of greater importance, perhaps, is the proliferation of information technology systems with no common standards of data sets and functionality.
Throughout Britain, health IT is being purchased from a host of providers, with proprietary interests in the software and control over how and with what applications it can be interfaced.
The National Health Service Information Authority website outlines strategies to overcome this, which seem to be worthy mission statements but not much more.
Issues of confidentiality and functionality could be addressed by the design and implementation of an NHS National Medical Records Computer, run on a secure backbone like those used by the police and intelligence services. Such a system would be the informatics equivalent of a moon shot, and if successful would bring with it a health research tool of colossal power. The potential benefits for NHS planning and administration, as well as for healthcare would be awesome.
Britain’s universities have world-class computing and information systems departments, and it would make more sense to commission generic components for a national system from them than to effectively hand over the nation’s health data and how it can be used to commercial interests.
Wax pioneer
Geoff Watts’s article provides an interesting examination of the development of methods of making solid casts of delicate hollow structures in the human body by injecting liquids that then solidify (23 February, p 46).
The earliest work described in the article was that of the surgeon John Hunter in the 18th century, who used curdled milk, gelatin and even molten metal as injection liquids. In fact the history of the development of related methods extends much further back, into the Middle Ages.
During the 14th century, Alessandra Giliani, who performed dissections for the great Italian anatomist Mondino de Luzzi, pioneered the wax injection technique. She devised methods for extracting the blood from even the smallest arteries and veins of cadavers, and injecting them with various coloured waxes that solidified quickly. As a result, she was able to present an anatomically accurate display of the circulatory system in all its details and complexity.
When she died in 1326, a tablet was erected to her memory and skill in the hospital church of Santa Maria de Mereto in Florence. Wax modelling of anatomical structures continued during the Middle Ages and also found a resurgence during the late 1600s and early 1700s.