Machismo rules
Susan Greenfield’s analysis of women in science (30 November, p 23) sounded hauntingly familiar. As a man who dislikes and tries to avoid personal machismo, I have found that my career has suffered in similar ways. I have at times been pigeon-holed, shut out because someone else fought dirty, and passed over because of my hairstyle. I have even suffered from the old saying “never trust a man with a beard”.
It is not so much sexism that is institutionalised as machismo. Great store is set by aggressive career climbing and achieving goals, never mind who gets trampled along the way. If a woman wants to have a child, tough. If a man wants to avoid a confrontation, tough. I have been trampled indiscriminately by aggressive members of both sexes 鈥� it cuts both ways.
Sex discrimination is indeed a serious spin-off of all this. Others are cultural, racial, ageist and, as I found, simple behavioural discrimination. The answer is to tackle not just the sexist symptom but the aggressive cause as well. The culture of success-at-all-costs must be shown up as hollow.
Testing for health
We read your story about over-the-counter gene tests with initial interest that was followed by a sense of despondency at the misleading and selective nature of its facts and reporting (23 November, p 42).
There is a well-founded molecular and chemical basis to our knowledge of the role of nutrients in body chemistry, a body of literature that seems unfamiliar to many of the experts whom you quote (see for further reading). This body of data indicates a way to achieve health benefits which are significantly more profound than that indicated by the throwaway comments 鈥� “everyone should eat up their greens” 鈥� concerning testing for variants of the enzyme methylene tetrahydrofolate reductase (MTHFR), and its implications for increasing folic acid intake.
Recent studies indicating the size and robust nature of genetic/nutritional interactions are well documented in the literature. For example, David Wald and his team examined 92 studies, based on 20,000 individuals, and report that they all indicate “lowering homocysteine concentrations by 3 micromoles per litre from current levels (achievable by increasing folic acid intake) would reduce the risk of ischaemic heart disease by 16 per cent” (British Medical Journal, vol 325, p 1202). Other studies conclude that “characterisation of such gene polymorphisms will enable targeting of nutritional advice and treatment to ‘at risk’ groups” (British Medical Journal, vol 324, p 1438). This substantive piece of work by Wald and others would be a surprise to anyone reading your phrase “critics point to a mountain of conflicting or inconclusive findings”.
In conducting our business we have consulted widely with regulatory bodies and ethicists in both Europe and the US, and with technologists and scientists. We believe our service reflects these attempts to match best practice anywhere on the face of the globe.
Letter
鈥� We agree the new study by David Wald and others adds weight to the theory that raised homocysteine levels contribute to heart disease. It was omitted from the feature because it wasn’t published in time.
But these findings are a long way from demonstrating the value of Sciona’s test for the MTHFR mutation. If screening is desirable, why not assess homocysteine levels directly, rather than a mutation that may or may not indicate raised levels? Incidentally, even Wald does not support screening, either for raised homocysteine or the MTHFR mutation. He told New 杏吧原创 that this is because everyone benefits from reducing their homocysteine levels via increased folic acid consumption, no matter what their initial level.
Future for fox fur
Your report of a move in New Zealand toward the acceptance of fur from pest species is welcome news (14 December, p 13). I hope it achieves fruition and is emulated elsewhere.
In Australia foxes are feral pests that take a huge toll on native wildlife, and are a potential vector for disastrous exotic diseases such as rabies. A similar eco-fur initiative here would be of enormous environmental benefit and would provide a source of much-needed income in rural communities.
Hopefully, we are seeing an emerging shift toward reality and pragmatism in the policy of at least some environmental groups. For too long these groups have been the captives of extremists who hold a religious aversion to any form of wildlife “exploitation” or usage.
Statistical scares
The diagram in the article about a test to identify tumours that have the ability to spread is captioned “Chances of cancer recurring after having a prostate cancer removed %” and shows a red line that increases stepwise to 60 per cent over 50 months (14 December, p 19).
This is obviously wrong as the chances quickly sum to more than 100 per cent. It should probably have read “Chances of cancer having recurred after having a prostate cancer removed %”.
This is particularly distressing to cancer patients as it implies, for example, that having survived for four years after surgery with no evidence of disease, a patient with the relevant tumour type has a 60 per cent chance of a recurrence. This is clearly not true. While the number of recurrences rises with time, the individual’s risk must eventually fall.
As a regular contributor to an Internet cancer support newsgroup I have personally had to reassure patients who have been seriously frightened by just such misreporting of statistics in the media. I had thought New 杏吧原创 to be above these errors.
Labels you can trust?
The views of Britain’s Food Standards Agency are becoming legendary (7 December, p 8). The FSA has branded Europe’s plans for tough laws on labelling genetically modified foods a “cheat’s charter”. Its rationale goes like this: products are devoid of any detectable GM material; trading standards would have to rely on paper trails documenting the history of the product; one would have to rely on the honesty of producers in other countries.
I wonder then what the FSA’s views on timber certification would be?
Turn on, tune up
Although Don Gilmour’s invention of an electronically self-tuning piano has merit, I shudder to think of the amount of energy that would be wasted if it catches on (7 December, p 20). The idea of every one of the thousands of new pianos being sold consuming 500 to 600 watts of electricity every time they are played is abhorrent in these environmentally conscious times. For some pianists, their monthly power bill might well exceed the cost of having the piano tuned frequently enough to keep it in tune.
Aged and active
Not everyone is as considerate of centenarians as the Chemistry & Industry subscription people (Feedback, 7 December). In the winter 2002 edition of the Vegetarian Society magazine, there was an article about a Greek man who found himself removed from the electoral roll, as it was thought anyone born before 1890 must now be dead. Mr Karawassilis was alive and well at 113 and keen to vote for one of his grandsons.
Pointillistic poser
Feedback notes that in computer terminology a collection of forests is called a blob, and wonders what a collection of blobs would be called (14 December).
How about a Seurat?
Letter
Your article should surprise nobody in the scientific community. I have obtained papers cited in many journal articles, only to find that the authors had clearly not read the paper, as nothing about it was relevant, despite a title that sounded as if it would be. Indeed, certain friends mock me for the effort I make to read all the papers I cite. I know of one colleague who constructed his entire PhD literature survey in an afternoon by use of cut and paste, and at his submission date had probably read fewer than 10 per cent of the papers he had cited.
Letter
This is not necessarily about sloppiness, though I am sure it is a factor. Anyone who has tried to get hold of a list of articles will realise just how difficult it is to obtain some of them.
Establishments rarely hold old or obscure journals, and ordering copies can be costly, especially for cash-strapped institutions. Any serious attempt to overcome this problem would mean giving every scientist easy and inexpensive access to every article of every journal ever printed.
Bhopal tragedy
The article on the Bhopal disaster is incorrect in many important respects (7 December, p 6). First, the evidence is not “fresh”. The documents referenced very likely have been in the hands of the Indian government for many years, and none contains information contradicting the facts as they have been long expressed by Union Carbide (UC) and confirmed by US courts.
Secondly, there is no evidence to support the claim that UC had authority or control over the plant’s ultimate design or operations and thus bears responsibility for the disaster. To the contrary, as the US Court of Appeals has concluded, the Indian government “precluded UC from exercising any authority to detail design, erect and commission the plant. UC’s participation in the design of the plant was strictly limited and its involvement in plant operations terminated long before the accident 鈥� in short, the plant has been constructed and managed by Indians in India.”
Third, “unproven technology” was not in use at the time of the disaster. All of the technologies referred to in the 1972 memo were either never used or were taken out of service years before.
Fourth, the valves were not “faulty”. After the disaster they were found closed and not leaking. This was one of many reasons investigators concluded that employee sabotage was the only plausible cause of the disaster.
Finally, the Bhopal plant design was in fact rated superior to the UC facility at Institute, West Virginia, from an environmental standpoint 鈥� in part because the Indian facility had the benefit of knowledge acquired from the operation of the older US plant.
Allegations similar to those in the article have been made repeatedly during the 18 years since the tragedy. The “new documents” bring no new facts to light, nor do they provide support for the claims that have been soundly rejected by the US courts and resolved by the Indian courts under the 1989 settlement.
Cite unseen
Mikhail Simkin and Vwani Roychowdhury estimate that 78 per cent of cited academic papers were not actually read by the citing article’s author (14 December, p 12). This is surely an overestimate.
It often happens that when authors compile their citation list, a reference to a paper they wish to cite will be closer to hand than the paper itself 鈥� which they have read some time before and is now filed away. This is especially true for the frequently cited articles that Simkin and Roychowdhury analysed. Often these “convenient” sources will be review articles (I keep them handy for this very reason) or the author’s own electronic copies of previous papers on the topic.
I would not be surprised if Simkin and Roychowdhury’s method revealed that 80 per cent of my own citations were apparently “cited but unread”, but I would estimate the actual occurrence of this to be fewer than 10 per cent of my citations (and most of these to have been proposed by co-authors, who I hope had read the sources themselves). Although the prevailing rate in scientific community may be higher, I doubt that it is 78 per cent.