Get it right!
I applaud Jamie Whyte’s dedication to clear thinking (4 September, p 40), but I think his analysis of the British Medical Association (BMA) is incomplete.
Doctors do know a lot about the effects of fatty food and possibly very little about taxation. However, we expect more of doctors than the neutral provision of information. Almost the most important thing about being a doctor is a strong commitment to improving health.
Most of us would be very worried about doctors who lacked this commitment: this is demonstrated by the fact that in general we disapprove of doctors who are in it only for the money, and we respect organisations like M茅decins Sans Fronti猫res. It makes perfect sense for the BMA to make pronouncements about health policy. I would just encourage it to employ some economists as well, if it doesn’t do so already.
Letter
By “truth” does Jamie Whyte mean verifiable facts: “what does this lump of matter weigh?”, “who is the baby’s father?”, “who fired the gun?”? Or does he mean the pronouncements of genuine experts who may differ profoundly in some ways: for example Richard Dawkins and Steven Rose? Or some statement supposed to correspond with the nature of the universe: a kind of philosophic “theory of everything”?
If he means respect for verifiable facts, more power to him. But when experts differ, the rest of us can only take sides according to our temperaments and wishful thinking. As for the philosophic theory of everything, to each her own.
Mine came from a character purporting to be God Almighty (though I doubt this), and it has served me well. He, or It, said: “I never promised anybody a good time. I’m an artist, not a philanthropist.”
Always out of reach
It is very encouraging to hear that quantum computing is making such progress that practical applications will be here in 10 years (21 August, p 27).
I wonder, though, is this the same persistent 10 or 25-year horizon that we have for practical controlled fusion?
Fewer bags, just as bad
I don’t wish to trivialise the fact that the Minke whale washed up in Normandy was found to have a selection of plastic bags and packaging in its gut (11 September, p 30). But the actual weight of the debris was 800 grams, not 800 kilograms.
Bloomware
Noel Chidwick uses heat from his computer to rise bread dough (18 September, p 22); you can also grow fabulous orchids. Get a wall planter slightly larger than the orchid requires, and set a small cup of water in it. Hang the planter over the computer so that the heat gently warms the water and the growing medium. This keeps the humidity high enough for the orchid to flourish.
For the record
鈥� The article “Tough choice for elephant lovers” (28 August, p 16) contained two editing errors that were inserted by us and not by the author, Daniel Stiles. While discussing how artisans can help to monitor the ivory trade, we made a distinction between mechanised and non-mechanised manufacture. We accept that this distinction is irrelevant. Secondly we stated that the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species should allow ivory sales only from governments that ensure corruption does not occur. Stiles’s more subtle point is that CITES should permit sales only from governments that pass strict criteria set by CITES itself.
鈥� The space shuttle that crashed in 1986 was the Challenger, contrary to what was implied in the article “We have a problem” (25 September, p 19).
Behaviour matters
Wild animals’ behaviour is indeed “important to look at to make sure a chemical is safe” (4 September, p 10). So isn’t it extraordinary that food regulators refuse to look at documented behaviour and learning effects from food additives before approving their use in the human animal?
Even more extraordinary, a recent Freedom of Information search in Australia revealed that regulators didn’t even have to produce scientific evidence before approval or extended use for two food additives 鈥� see
More unteachable kids, autism, hyperactivity and road rage, anyone?
Hybrid handbrake
It is strange indeed that a modest price rise for fuel in the US sparks a sharp increase in the sale of hybrid-engined vehicles, despite the fuel savings taking about seven years to finance the extra capital costs (11 September, p 22). In the UK, someone driving the same distance at our fuel prices could recover these costs in less than three years.
One has to wonder what, or who, is dissuading manufacturers from promoting the technology in this country. Diesel-electric hybrids offer even greater fuel savings; and the emissions problem is not unsolvable.
Stop selfish spaceniks!
How much carbon emission does a space tourist produce? Shouldn’t we put a stop to this selfishness now?
Simple is good
Technology is always developing new devices to replace older ones; these are almost invariably more expensive and complicated. An example is the device for measuring pupil reactions (21 August, p 21). We should question whether they are necessary. At present, all emergency practitioners can carry an easily replaceable pen torch. We are invited to consider using this undeniably clever box of electronics.
Paramedics and doctors would require two of these devices: we need to measure the constriction of both pupils after a stimulus to each eye. And, as a doctor in accident and emergency, I can think of very few situations in which the pupillary reactions alone have a bearing on patient management. They are simply not that important. Although the chided “paramedic waving a torch at the victim on a wet dark road” may be low-tech, this method takes only seconds and is widely available.
Purchase-protected
I have stopped purchasing and downloading digital music files due to the overzealous copyright enforcement described by Danny O’Brien (4 September, p 15) and ridiculous file encryption that prevents the playback of downloaded music files on other PCs.
The music industry seems to think every consumer is computer illiterate. Freeware MP3 recorders widely available on the internet can record a song and create a copy of the music file without encryption, within minutes. Useless digital encryption is inconvenient for the law-abiding consumer and will simply increase demand for piracy and illegal distribution of music files on the internet.
Back in the USSR
It was sad to see New 杏吧原创 repeating NASA’s claim about the last return of extraterrestrial samples being the lunar material brought back by Apollo 17 in December 1972 (18 September, p 8). In August 1976 the Soviet Luna 24 returned lunar samples but NASA has decided this doesn’t count for some obscure reason.
Emergence isn't magic
Pondering the hard problem of consciousness, Simon Blackburn quite rightly describes “old-fashioned emergence” of mind from brain as “magic tissue secreting a magical effect” (11 September, p 42). But this does not mean emergence necessarily entails smoke and mirrors. It is a familiar phenomenon that science helps us to understand.
As we learn in school, if you chemically combine the gases oxygen and hydrogen the result is liquid water. There is no magic involved in the fact that the properties of water are different from its constituent elements. Equally, the emergence of consciousness from certain arrangements of neurons is a natural process. The problem of how it comes about is hard because we have only just begun to investigate the complexity of the brain.
While agreeing that neuroscientists can benefit from critical analysis of their ideas by philosophers, the latter tend to be led astray by metaphysical speculation. The Cartesian dualist tradition is a case in point.
Modern dualists such as David Chalmers argue that the emergence of consciousness from the brain is not just remarkable, but logically impossible. And so it would be if Descartes’ claim that the conscious mind is separate from the mechanistic body were true. Assuming a logical division between the mental and the physical begs the mind-body question. Mental and physical properties do appear to be radically different but we simply don’t know whether this is a real difference.
Renaming means chaos
Bob Holmes reports on proposals to replace our standard Linnaean system of classifying animals and plants with a new system called the PhyloCode (11 September, p 12). Advocates of this revolution 鈥� for that is what it is 鈥� claim names will be more stable, more precise in their meaning, and that the proposed abolition of ranks (genera, families, etc) will be helpful. They base their reasons for change on the charge that Linnaean taxonomy (founded well before evolutionary theory) is incapable of absorbing our changing ideas of genealogy.
Unfortunately, their proposals will probably lead to chaos. The PhyloCode small print reveals that a name may be formulated in one of several ways. Any user, such as a field biologist seeking to document our ever-decreasing biota, will have to know in what way.
Placing an organism into a PhyloCode system will require us to know its genealogical relationships, since this is how the names are formulated. Do we have time for this?
Also, names we now use can be commandeered to the PhyloCode, meaning that two systems will exist in parallel and sometimes in a hybridised form, so the same name could mean very different things. Finally, the idea that we drop the genus rank, and hence the binomial system (whereby every species has two parts to its name), would be universally disruptive and undermine the foundations of our current codes of nomenclature.
No one claims the current system is perfect. But it is flexible to the point of being usable by many, not just the few.
Eat more fish, mostly
I am afraid your correspondent William French has got the wrong end of the stick when he suggests that the Food Standards Agency (FSA) has recommended that the consumption of oily fish should be reduced (11 September, p 24). In fact, we are advising people that many could and should eat more oily fish. On average in the UK 7 out of 10 people don’t eat any fish at all and there is good evidence that eating oily fish reduces the risk of heart disease, which was responsible for the death of 117,500 people in 2002.
The FSA issued its advice following the opinion of an independent committee of experts who took into account the evidence on dioxins and PCBs when they weighed up the risks and benefits of eating oily fish. The advice is that girls and women who might have a child in the future, and women who are pregnant or breastfeeding, can have up to two portions of oily fish a week. Other women, men and boys can have up to four.