Correction
In “The natural choice” (16 March, p 10) we stated the average level of salicylic acid in organic soup was 177 nanograms per gram. That should have read 117 nanograms per gram.
Pills galore
I am relieved that others have now recognised that antidepressants are being prescribed rather too freely (9 March, p 15), especially the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). Although their actions have not been proven experimentally, they are a psychotropic medication and there is nothing benign about them.
I have seen people prescribed SSRIs within days of the death of a loved one, because they are “depressed”. I have seen all the “rare” adverse effects鈥攈eadaches, nausea, fatigue, diarrhoea and sexual dysfunction, to name a few. I have even seen the so-called serotonin syndrome, when doctors have changed people’s prescriptions from one SSRI to another without a “washout” period in between. A truly frightening side effect to experience or witness.
In Australia, mental illness, especially depression, is a hot topic right now. There is also interest and promotion by non-clinical, civic groups. The line is that if you are unhappy for any reason, you need to “see your doctor” and “seek professional help”. So all normal life experiences are being redefined in the public conscience as mental illness, requiring intervention and address.
I have no doubt that SSRIs are being overprescribed. Obviously, the pharmaceuticals industry needs to make its money, but I firmly believe that although some people benefit, a larger number are let down by the antidepressant revolution.
Letter
Regarding the new forensic test that can “confirm allegations of rape”, this test cannot, in fact, prove that a rape occurred (2 March, p 12). What it can prove is that intercourse occurred. No test can establish the complainant did not consent.
Watt was innocent
I was intrigued to read your article about James Watt (9 March, p 48). However, your inference that he was attempting to pass his own work off as another’s鈥攂ased on a stamp of his name鈥攊s a little far-fetched. As a maker of baroque woodwind instruments myself, I would like to share the schizophrenic pressure of my work: on the one hand trying to please customers who want a “copy” of a period instrument in a museum, and on the other aiming for recognition as a craftsman of significance in my own right.
The Crafts Council once dismissed people like me as mere reproducers of antiques. It is commonplace nowadays for the name of a great 18th-century instrument maker such as Bressan, Denner or indeed Lot to be placed prominently on the front of modern instruments鈥攅ven plastic ones, with the real maker’s mark discreetly hidden on the reverse. If we had an example of a flute with “Lot” on the front and “Watt” on the back, the man’s somewhat tarnished name could be quickly restored.
Everything unveiled
It was always said that the long-sought “theory of everything” would require a multidisciplinary team, able to stand back and view the overall picture from a distance. New 杏吧原创, of course, is well placed to constitute this team and to mine its articles for those common themes that weave throughout, unbeknown to the specialists who write them.
And, at last, it seems to be coming together. A common theme is indeed appearing. Down there, at the heart of the working of the Universe, we now know there are picket fences. Astounding! Their structure is the one needed: to connect neurons up to silicon chips (23 February, p 26); to encourage cold fusion to take place (same issue, p 22); and to understand the underlying model of how all the particles in the Universe vibrate (9 February, p 24).
Douglas Adams, who understood more about the working of the Universe than we realised (2 June 2001, p 50) must surely tell us where pikkit fences fit into the scheme of things, if only we take the time to search his books again.
Suffering semiopathy
Thank you, thank you, Feedback. I have suffered from semiopathy all my life, but never had a name for the condition (23 March). I am so relieved to find that I am not the only case.
Please don’t believe that semiopathy has no scientific value. The grammatical ambiguity which is at the root of most semiopathic phrases creates a special set of problems in artificial intelligence. In addition to passing the Turing test, a computer should also be able to comprehend that “Wet Paint” is not an instruction.
Happy rats
The effects on lab animals of providing a stimulating environment are in no way “unforeseen” (9 March, p 11). It has been known for some 40 years that animals such as rats housed in a complex environment develop a greater weight and thickness of cortical tissue. It has also been widely reported that rats group-housed in enriched environments are in better physical condition, and are less aggressive and more confident, than those housed in conventional caging. This is surely desirable for both animal welfare and science.
Enrichment may sometimes increase experimental variability and mean that more animals are required, but this should not be used as an excuse to house animals in barren environments. Reducing the number of animals used in experiments is undoubtedly important, but reducing the suffering of each one is even more so.
There is no justification for assuming that animals housed in barren environments are “normal” and produce “correct” results. There is a much stronger case for regarding results as valid when the animals being tested can express a range of natural behaviours because they are well housed and allowed to interact socially.
Stretchy space
While a discussion of general relativity was not central to Ivan Semeniuk’s article on Schr枚dinger’s cat (9 March, p 26), the piece did contain a serious (and very common) misrepresentation of one of its tenets. This is the famous image of the rubber sheet used to explain how the gravity of a massive body effectively creates a kind of dimple in space. Along with many people, Semeniuk thinks the stretchy sheet is space-time: “The Earth’s mass…creates a bowl-like depression in space-time which forces the Moon to roll around us like a racing car on a banked track.”
Of course, the Moon does nothing of the sort. Space-time, unlike a banked track, exerts no reactive force on moving objects that would push them in one direction or another. Furthermore, the force in a banked track is a reaction to the weight of the racing car, which itself depends on gravity. So even if the first part were valid, this model would only explain gravity in terms of some other mysterious gravity-like force in another dimension.
No viruses here
As a full-time GP whose patients’ medical records are kept on a computer database, I was very interested in Barry Fox’s article on computer security in the National Health Service (2 March, p 44). But it is so full of errors, it’s hard to know where to start. Still, I’d like to point out the following.
The majority of doctors still use paper-based medical records. Entirely paperless record keeping is a minority activity.
I have read, fully understood and try to abide by the NHSnet Code of Connection. Doctors do not usually sign documents they have not read. We are not stupid.
Even if the sloppy and careless scenario Fox paints were true, the computer system used by over 50 per cent of GPs is not accessible to computer viruses. All the information on patients is in a single database several gigabytes long, and reading it without specialist programming experience and an in-depth knowledge of the database structure is practically impossible. It is accessed with proprietary browser technology, and no patient records are stored on the workstations. It is protected by encrypted passwords and a full audit trail.
I think my chief concern about Fox’s article was the implication that viruses are randomly distributing patient records, which raises fears about confidentiality. As far as I am aware this has never happened and will never happen, so patients can be assured we are looking after their records extremely carefully.
Letter
Computer security will become a huge problem as we begin to record more and more confidential patient information on electronic systems.
Keeping the network virus-free is key to this. However, as Ross Anderson, a reader in computer security at the University of Cambridge, points out in his book Security Engineering and on his website, the greater security threat will be from bona fide users ().
It is the aggregation of personal data that can be seamlessly accessed across NHSnet that will make it such a target for insurance companies, employers and the press.
A bit dopey?
I have not read the report on which the article on cannabis and brain damage was based (9 March, p 6), so some of these comments may be off the mark. But if one group had smoked cannabis for an average of 24 years, another for 10, and a third had never smoked, it’s likely the more experienced smokers were older.
Did the testers control for age? I’m into my sixties, and I can vouch for the fact that an addtional 14 years of breathing slows down one’s cognitive processes too.
To be valid, the test doses must reflect the usual amount a smoker will use. Two joints a day does not represent common use. Was the use of other drugs (both legal and illegal) controlled for? If the subjects had used other illegal drugs, is there any assurance they actually were the purported drugs? Was the heavy use an attempt to self-medicate? If so, then the problems may have been the root cause, not the result, of use.
If one’s sample is drawn from people who show up for mental health treatment, it isn’t surprising to find they may be depressed, or have cognitive problems. They should be compared with 10-year smokers and non-smokers who also show up for mental health treatment.
Was healthcare constant? Lower socio-economic status is likely to mean poorer healthcare. People with higher incomes are likely to have better healthcare and seek private treatment, and so not show up in a sample.
How power perpetuates itself
Ivan Semeniuk’s entertaining article ends with a question from Roger Penrose: “What puzzles me isn’t the mystery of Schr枚dinger’s cat, but the mystery of human beings” (9 March, p 26). He refers to fellow physicists’ acceptance of the absurd Copenhagen interpretation of the wave function, a paradox highlighted by Schr枚dinger’s thought experiment.
Earlier in the article, Penrose hints at the answer to his own question: “Initially students will say ‘What the hell’s going on?’. Then they find that the lecturer seems to know what he’s talking about and so, after a while, they get used to it.”
Most students who wish to make a career in science have to adopt this submissive attitude to their elders and betters. Thus we see the standard operation of the hierarchy of an organisation, where those in positions of power talk meritocracy and fairness but select using their own judgement to carry on the tradition, however stupid some of its principal ideas are.
The same answer applies to the editor’s question in the same issue: why Europe’s top scientists and industrialists are almost exclusively white (Location, location, location). Of course there are many issues that need to be addressed before the situation can be rectified, but the main cause is that elites are by nature self-perpetuating and the whites got there first.
Racism in science
Many of us would agree that the lack of black people in our scientific communities is worrying (9 March, p 44), but no more so than the under-representation in, for example, science journalism or journalism generally, which has almost no Afro-Caribbean or Asian stars. I see few African or Asian ethnic names on your masthead.
As with so much else that is wrong with science education in Britain, the problems are with the schools, not the universities or the Royal Society. It is gratifying to see the brave and (let’s hope) productive work being done by Elizabeth Rasekoala in bringing the excitement and elegance of modern science to black schoolchildren.
She has got it right in targeting young people and you have got it wrong in your editorial by suggesting that positive discrimination with ring-fenced quotas for fellowships and grants for particular racial backgrounds is how to proceed. It is unlikely that there would be a decent number of sufficiently qualified candidates anyway, unless they came from overseas.
The real problem almost certainly is to do with the very low status of science in the media, the poor quality of graduates going into science, the almost total lack of science-trained primary school teachers, the appalling curriculum that is anathema for most kids, and the cutbacks on science laboratory funding which the present British government has done almost nothing to correct.
Improvements in these areas will lift the awareness and the standards for all, but will have a particularly powerful impact in less well-resourced schools struggling to educate children of all ethnic groups.
Letter
I found this article enlightening and heartwarming. I am a black engineer in the IT industry. I have often wondered why I sit lonely on this hill. I fail to accept that things are the way they are purely by accident.
Thank you for highlighting this issue by interviewing Rasekoala. You have taken a big step forward.
Letter
As the son of an immigrant and an immigrant myself, I know that it takes immigrant communities time to establish themselves鈥攗sually several generations.
The black community arrived fairly recently in this country. We are only now beginning to see black British teachers in our schools in any significant numbers. This is the first step in a long lead-up to social success, and happens with any immigrant community regardless of its colour or culture. It will have a very positive effect on the up-and-coming generation of British black children, but it won’t happen overnight.
The high-flyers from within that community, those who have gone on to be doctors, lawyers, scientists and other high-profile professionals outside the entertainment industry, probably don’t see themselves as emissaries of their communities, but as people who have struggled to make good. So it is a little early yet to expect them to dedicate themselves to serving as role models, but that too will come in time, to everyone’s benefit.
As a teacher, I can tell you that progress is being made, but it is necessarily slow and not subject to someone waving a magic wand or making simplistic pronouncements. The problem isn’t the education system and the solution isn’t blame. The problem is time and the solution is honesty and effort.