The threat of war
I was extremely disappointed by your pro-war editorial (22 February, p 3). There is absolutely no scientific evidence that war or the threat of war increases peace in the world. In fact, there is considerable evidence that it does just the opposite. Non-violent action works much better than violence.
For New 杏吧原创 to promote the threat of war against Iraq is highly inappropriate. The war threatened by Britain and the US is widely viewed as immoral by numerous religious leaders, and unjust by the majority of the world’s nations and by the overwhelming majority of its citizens.
Your editorial also misrepresented the facts. Iraq listed its missiles in its declaration of 12 December 2002. Its purported violation of UN guidelines on the range of its missiles is debatable and minor. The inspection process has worked in the past without the threat of war. If the Palestinians were given their own country back and if Iraq were promised a lifting of sanctions for compliance with ongoing monitoring, violence would be decreased instead of increased.
Violence and the threat of violence are not necessary for good parenting, good government or good international relations. Considerable unbiased research is available on these issues. It is sad for New 杏吧原创 to stray so seriously from science and objectivity.
The Editor writes:
鈥� New 杏吧原创’s editorial related to the specific case of the UN weapons inspectors in Iraq, who have been asked to find evidence that could potentially start or prevent a war. We did not comment on wider questions, such as whether they should be there at all, or whether a war against Iraq would be just.
We hope the inspectors succeed in their mission of disarming Saddam Hussein or finding strong evidence that he has disarmed, because if they do not war will ensue. But here’s the rub: we know that when international pressure was lifted from Saddam Hussein in the late 1990s, Baghdad stopped cooperating with the inspectors and their job became impossible. So, for the inspectors to succeed 鈥� in order to prevent a war 鈥� the threat of war must remain.
No right to breed
The views of Betsy Hartmann are offensive and, worse, unscientific, and thus unworthy of your journal (22 February, p 44). To besmirch the names of some of the finest scientists in the world 鈥� Tom Lovejoy, Herman Daly, David Pimentel, Paul Ehrlich, Thomas Homer-Dixon, Virginia Abernethy 鈥� through guilt by association is appalling.
She accuses those who believe population pressures are a real environmental issue of being ideologues. But there is plenty of evidence that environmental decline is directly related to the scale of human population.
The worst thing that Hartmann has done is to drive a wedge between the environmental movement and that seeking reproductive rights for women. Human rights for women we may applaud. Allowing them to choose to have as many children as they wish, however, we cannot. No couple has a right to further overload the planet by having more than two children.
It is Hartmann who is ideological in her position, not the scientists.
Letter
It was depressing to find that Hartmann is still having to fight the same battles in the US that were fought on this side of the Atlantic 30 years ago.
I remember Paul Ehrlich, as president of the Conservation Society, being barracked in Westminster Central Hall in the early 1970s because he called for prescriptive population control 鈥� and Indira Gandhi lost an election because of her racketeering vasectomy programme.
Proper “greens” understood then that big business, and Soviet state management, were turning the biosphere into money at a dangerous rate. They were not talking about peasants using too much firewood.
We shall never achieve sustainable societies until there is a coherent green philosophy that does not bow down to the establishment opportunists, who deny both the enormous size of a Western individual’s ecological footprint compared with the world average, and the malign part played by large corporations.
In the frame
You say there is no such thing as “centrifugal force” (1 March, p 47). Yes, there is 鈥� in the right frame of reference.
There is, of course, no centrifugal force in an inertial frame of reference (in other words, from the point of view of a stationary observer). But when was the human body an inertial frame of reference? In the most important frame of reference in the Universe 鈥� me 鈥� there most definitely is centrifugal force. I can feel it and measure it.
Saying there is no centrifugal force is like saying there is no air pressure, because it is only air molecules bouncing off things, and that light doesn’t come in beams, it comes in discrete photons.
Letter
Your article is wrong. If you whirl a stone around on a length of string, you can feel and measure the centripetal tension in the string. But in the rotating frame of reference (that is, looking along the string), you are pulling the string but the stone isn’t moving towards you, so the stone must be exerting an equal and opposite force on the string. The centrifugal force is just as real and important as the centripetal one.
Wild horses
I would like to add some more information to the short article entitled “Vanishing horses” (1 February, p 7). Although the Przewalski horse became extinct in the wild in 1960, a genetically diverse and stable Przewalski horse population has been successfully established during the past 100 years, thanks to efficient coordination among zoos in Europe and the US.
Today the worldwide population of Przewalski horses stands at approximately 1500 individuals. In the past few years, a number have been reintroduced into their natural environment. These reintroduction projects are mainly initiated and supported by zoos and the governments of the respective countries. The largest successful reintroduction scheme was launched in 1994 as a cooperative project between the Dutch and Mongolian governments. Today about 400 Przewalski horses once again roam the Mongolian steppes.
Several semi-reserves have also been established throughout Europe. A particularly clever semi-reserve project exists in Hungary, supported by the Cologne Zoo in Germany. In return for being allowed to wander freely in herds through the 70,000-hectare enclosure in the Hortob谩gy National Park, the Przewalski horses keep the native grasses short, thereby helping to secure the future of the unique Hungarian steppe, known as the Puszta.
The wild horse was once an integral part of the steppe ecosystem and it was native to China, Mongolia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan. Reintroducing the Przewalski horse into its original environment helps restore ecological associations and preserve endangered steppe ecosystems for future generations.
Bent by a kilogram
Since science can measure distance accurately, why can’t 1 kilogram be defined in terms of the mass required to bend a beam of light by a certain angle (22 February, p 32)?
Valerie Jamieson writes:
鈥� Einstein pointed out that mass does bend light, but a 1-kilogram mass would have a minute effect 鈥� far too small to be detected even by today’s instruments. During a solar eclipse in 1919, Arthur Eddington determined that starlight was bent by less than 2 arcseconds (a few thousandths of a degree) by the Sun. Given that the Sun weighs 2 脳 1030 kilograms (2 billion billion billion tonnes), 1 kilogram would bend light by a truly undetectable amount.
Dating Mungo Man
In your article, I am quoted in reference to the dating of the Lake Mungo site in south-eastern Australia (22 February, p 15). The relevant paragraph could be interpreted as signifying that I have expressed support for the so-called “blitzkrieg” theory of the extinction of Australia’s large mammals. This is not true.
The paper by Jim Bowler and his colleagues on which the story is based presents a detailed record of climatic change at Lake Mungo and actually argues against the theory. Moreover, irrespective of whether the figures are or are not accurate, dating a single site could not in isolation be used to infer the rapid colonisation of Australia assumed by the theory.
As a geneticist, what I would emphasise about the dating of the Mungo III burial at 40,000 years rather than 60,000 years ago is that it does not substantially affect our interpretation of human evolution in light of the mitochondrial DNA sequence data collected by Greg Adcock and his colleagues. The claim that the earlier date is too close to the migration proposed in the “out of Africa” hypothesis (around 100,000 years ago) was never a serious challenge to the hypothesis.
Male man-eaters
Your article on man-eating lions was presented as if it discussed original research by Bruce Patterson and his colleagues on the skulls of 23 “problem lions” killed by rangers in Kenya (15 February, p 14). In fact, my colleague Tom Gnoske and I published on this identical data set in 2001, coming to virtually identical conclusions.
Our paper showed that the majority of Tsavo’s troublemakers were healthy males. We used standard techniques to prove that most of the skulls are male 鈥� something not actually done by Patterson’s team.
We further strengthened this argument by reviewing over 100 written records from the headquarters of Tsavo East National Park discussing the sex of lions that had come into conflict with humans, and reviewed several other published papers discussing healthy lions in their prime as culprits for human-carnivore conflict.
Our paper also documented lions with severely broken teeth currently living in the Tsavo region as preying on elephant and buffalo, further demonstrating that broken teeth do not prevent these animals from gaining substantial meals from wild ungulates.
Power of crystals
“Gareth Thomas”, the inventor of crystal homeopathy, has perhaps missed something important in his triumphant debunking of it (Feedback, 1 March).
Regardless of whether or not a treatment has any value in itself, belief can have a profound effect on its own. A placebo often achieves results as good as “real” medicine. Many survival manuals recommend administering anything that looks like medicine to someone bitten by a snake, if you have no antivenom to hand. Some alternative medicines, particularly homeopathy, have a huge theoretical structure that makes almost no scientific sense, but that structure is nowadays a necessary belief for both therapist and patient.
Patients who are used to modern medicine expect a pill for everything, and doctors seem rather too willing to supply them. Perhaps if doctors had the freedom to hand out crystals and amulets and placebo potions, far less harm would be done.
Letter
I was highly amused by Thomas’s expos茅 of the powers of crystals and suchlike. However, it was sad that no one on the UK Pagan website supported his debunking. As an ex-UK Pagan subscriber I can assure you I would have leapt to his defence.
The members of UK Pagan have given the unfortunate impression that paganism is a New Age religion that will accept any mumbo-jumbo. The truth is that while this may be the case for some, paganism is about the veneration of nature and there are a large number of pagan scientists, engineers, teachers and health workers who embrace both real science and paganism.