Of little brain
The article about the “hobbit”, Homo floresiensis, raises the question of how a creature with such a small brain could have made advanced tools (18 June, p 41). Palaeoanthropologists and archaeologists always seem to take the view that the bigger a creature’s brain, the cleverer it must be; and that you cannot have a clever creature without a large brain. I wonder if there really is such a correlation between brain size and ability.
We know, for example, that humans do not use anything like the whole of their brain’s processing capability. We also know that people who have suffered hydro-encephalitis and similar afflictions show just as much mental ability as others, even though their brains may be much smaller than average, or of the same complexity but crammed into a much smaller space. And some creatures with very small brains, such as birds, especially members of the parrot family, show considerably greater mental skills than other creatures with much larger brains.
It seems that what matters is the number and complexity of the connections the brain is able to make, not its overall size. Having a large brain might help but it is not a necessary condition of greater mental abilities. But the size of a brain can be measured when its power cannot. Is that why size is given such prominence?
'Sex' with 'animals'
It is worrying that, though your writers may know how internet search engines work, they fail to clarify what the results mean 鈥� or do not mean. You say “Type ‘dog sex’ into Google and you get 13 million hits” (4 June, p 42). Today you get nearly 7 million. But all this tells us is that many pages contain both the word “dog” and the word “sex”. You cannot draw the conclusion that all 7 million pages are about having (or wanting, as your article implies) sexual intercourse with dogs.
Many sites, including those dealing with breeding and canine gender, will include these keywords. Also, virtually every sex site will use as many sex-related keywords as possible, and many outlandish or apparently unrelated words, to catch the highly individual pervert, so you cannot even say how many are lying about their content.
The query “sex with science magazine writers” produces 5.8 million hits; “sex fridge” 1 million; and “sex amoeboid Zingat-Ularians” 11.
For the record
鈥� In “A bomb to bust the deepest bunkers” (16 July, p 30) we attributed a comment to Michael Levi of the Brookings Institution in Washington DC. In fact, Levi is with King’s College London. And despite our preamble to his quote, Levi does not “see the need” for the new weapon. When he said: “Increased penetration is more important for chemical and biological agent-destroying weapons than other bunker busters,” he was referring to what had led Pentagon engineers to develop the weapon in question, rather than his own belief.
Autism and ethics
I wish to answer the questions posed by C. Wright’s letter (2 July, p 22). I am sorry I did not use the pronouns “we” or “I” when I described my simple, childlike emotions of fear, sadness, anger or happiness. It never crossed my mind 鈥� pronouns have little meaning to me.
C. Wright also wonders why so many people with autism are trustworthy and seldom lie if we do not have complex emotions like shame or guilt. I experience the simple fear of getting caught. I used logic to determine that lies and deception are bad. Logic tells me that it is important to be honest because a civilised society will fall apart if too many people lie or cheat. This may explain why complex emotion is not required for ethical behaviour. I have the four simple emotions and they do not mix together.
From Therion Ware
While one can understand where C. Wright is coming from and have some sympathy with the views expressed, equating “the autistic aversion to lying and deception” with the capacity for guilt and shame and thence to some species of moral superiority seems at best, optimistic.
Lying and deception requires a considerable “empathic imagination”, which leads one to ask if the “autistic aversion” is indeed an aversion, and moral one at that, or a simple inability, and if an inability, what’s missing to prevent the capacity?
If I can lie, but don’t, then that’s moral. If I can’t lie, there’s no virtue in telling the truth and so claims of the order of “some of the most moral and trustworthy people I know are diagnosed with [an] autism spectrum condition”, while possibly true in an experiential sense, are in a wider context at best incredibly naive and certainly no basis for criticism of Grandin.
Stevenage, Hertforshire, UK
Myths about savants
As a parent of a daughter of 31 who was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome at the age of 24 I read Bijal Trivedi’s article with interest (18 June, p 36).
Although much of what she says is reasonably accurate I would take issue with one particular, and potentially very misleading, comment. She states that symptoms of autism vary widely (true) and: “Many have mind-boggling talents” (false).
Much has been made in recent years, as public awareness of autism has grown, of the so-called savants and their remarkable skills. These skills do undoubtedly exist 鈥� but many years of working with national bodies, regional societies and local groups have made it clear to me that they are very rare. The vast majority of folk on the autistic spectrum do not have any specific talent, although 鈥� as in the population as a whole 鈥� they may have particular strengths and weaknesses. And it is true that, for example, some may have an above-average skill with computers 鈥� perhaps because of the systematic predictability of what a computer does (at least when it behaves properly!).
The true point Trivedi makes concerns the variability of symptoms, which is indeed huge. I would venture to say, however, that even those with Asperger’s who may at first sight seem relatively “normal” require at times a huge amount of personal assistance if they are not to succumb to chronic mental health problems stemming from the constant difficulties and stresses they experience in trying to interpret the demands society and people place upon them. I would also say that, yes, of course it is good to be able to give people the maximum amount of independence and self-determination possible. The very real challenge, though, is in ensuring that those who strenuously do claim not to need assistance do not run into serious difficulties.
The terms “high-functioning autism”, “mild autism” and “traces of autism”, thankfully not used by your contributor, but used regularly by the medical and caring professions, are all false friends. Autism is, at present, a lifelong condition requiring constant support and monitoring, albeit at times minimal and discreet for some.
Music matching language
Regarding the article about musical phrasing matching the syllable-stress structure of the language: there was no need to experiment (9 July, p 32). A visit to any advanced musical composition course would give you the same answer. To write a memorable melody, we were taught that it must be “prosodic”, that is, match the lyric precisely. For compositions with no lyrics, we are taught to write as if there were, including space for “breaths” even for breathless instruments.
A fun experiment would be to compare music that is considered to be highly prosodic, such as that of Stephen Sondheim, with music that is not, such as Tim Rice’s, and then compare the metric and pitch closeness of words from the songs when spoken with the actual musical phrases they overlay 鈥� is Sondheim’s music really more prosodic?
Patently secret
I was interested to see that none of those commenting on the issue of secrecy orders, apart from Patent Office employees, seem to have actually looked at declassified patents to see what sort of inventions have been classified in the past (9 July, p 24).
An interesting example are the two patents with Barnes Wallis as inventor relating to the “bouncing bomb”. These were initially filed in 1942 and were not published until 1963 (GB 937959 and GB 937960). The film The Dam Busters, made in the 1950s, showed a bouncing bomb nothing like those that were used as the design details were still classified.
Coding machines are an area where US patents remain secret for a long time. For example, US 6130946 was issued in October 2000, having been filed in 1936. A British example in this area is the GB 1142361, which was filed in 1948 and not published until 1969. Presumably these patents related to coding machines which were still in use long after the patent applications were filed but could now be disclosed without benefiting a potential enemy.
Supermarket smells
I wonder if Nick Neave is missing a trick when he says that men’s magazines soaked in androstenol are unlikely to be picked over the competition (2 July, p 18). That may be the case, but could supermarkets pump the stuff out through the air conditioning system in the men’s magazine section to increase overall sales? That’s not as far-fetched as it seems. I have heard that they already pump canisters of gas smelling of baked bread, ground coffee or perfume at strategic points within a store for exactly the same reason.
Fantasy physics
The article by Marcus Chown on the problems facing big bang theory draws attention to a wider problem associated with scientific research, namely, the unease with which many scientists regard the speculative nature of fundamental physical theories (either on a macro or micro scale), coupled with the very significant levels of funding that they attract (2 July, p 30).
Elsewhere in the physical sciences, researchers are hard pressed to gain funding for new initiatives, and uncertainty, doubt and ambivalence are considered major weaknesses in any research proposal. Put baldly, the degree of speculation inherent in “theories of everything” would simply not be entertained in other scientific arenas, yet they continue to receive vast budgets. As a scientist, I recognise that research which brings a deeper understanding of nature deserves support, even though it may never have any practical use. However, against this principle we must balance the finite resources of any nation, and the need to find solutions to the many problems that only the applied sciences can provide.
Fundamental theories seem increasingly bizarre, quixotic and just plain wrong. The ineluctable conclusion is that the remainder of the scientific community, as well as the taxpayers and the general public, have been well and truly hoodwinked.
From Simon Adams
It is good to see New 杏吧原创 continuing its tradition of reporting challenges to the mainstream of opinion in a balanced way, in this case with regard to the big bang. But I find it strange that the core arguments of those contesting the big bang rely on inconsistencies with the standard cosmological model, when Hubble’s findings are one of the more solid areas of this model.
What is not supported by any kind of direct evidence is dark matter and dark energy. It could be argued that the mathematical basis for extra dimensions is more solid than either of these, even though the current theories around that complex yet fairly erudite series of equations are mostly speculation.
Weybridge, Surrey, UK
Safe nuclear waste
With reference to the long letter from David Lowenthal, there is no doubt that there are problems with US nuclear waste repository projects (9 July, p 20). Many of these can be traced back to the projects’ origins during the cold war and the political nature of some of the key decisions taken on sites for the repositories. These problems do not, in any way, call into question the fundamental feasibility of deep geological disposal, however.
Advanced repository designs in Europe (for example, in Sweden, Finland and Switzerland) probably represent the safest structures ever conceived, with design lifetimes in excess of a million years. Even when barriers break down in the distant future, the hazard is negligible, with any releases being far below natural background.
This is in stark contrast to global warming and climate change, which could cause devastation on a global scale within decades. Even if every repository performed in the worst way imaginable, there is no possibility of any equivalent global effect.
Acid oceans
I wonder whether there might just be some small flaw in the claim that we are about to experience dramatic oceanic acidification as a result of our profligate release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere (9 July, p 15). Is it not more appropriate to ask if there is any evidence that higher CO2 levels actually cause oceanic acidification of such biologically catastrophic importance?
For almost 500 million years atmospheric CO2 has ranged between 1500 and 7000 parts per million. It is only in the last 100 million years that it has fallen to the present extremely low levels. During the Ordovician and Silurian periods there was an astonishing rise in the diversity and number of animals relying on carbonate shells and similar structures, although CO2 concentrations were 10 times the level which this group of experts warns will soon threaten marine life as we know it.
During the Carboniferous, life appears to have temporarily sucked up virtually all the atmospheric CO2 available 鈥� but much of it came back with a rush in the later Permian, and shelly creatures still flourished. The ammonites existed when CO2 levels were between 1500 and 2000 ppm and apparently had no problems struggling for oxygen. Yet according to this latest scare story they should have dissolved.
Rowan Hooper writes:
鈥� According to the Royal Society report, it is the rate of change in CO2 levels that is crucial. Gradual rises over of tens of thousands of years make little difference to ocean acidity because more of the calcium carbonate in deep ocean sediments dissolves, buffering any pH change. But this process occurs much more slowly than the absorption of CO2 from the atmosphere, meaning sudden rises in atmospheric CO2 do increase acidity. A study of a sudden rise in CO2 55 million years ago has found there was a mass extinction of shelled creatures in the deep (18 June, p 19).
Darwin and design
Your attack on intelligent design has more then a whiff of bigotry about it (9 July, p 10). You appear to suggest that any criticism of Darwinism is unwelcome. In fact, much of the ID argument is reasoned and based on scientific principles. It may prove to be wrong, but to suggest that this, and all other, teleological argument should be suppressed is irrational.
Alfred Russel Wallace, who was once described as being more Darwinian than Darwin, had no problem with his own version of teleology. To dismiss arguments for ID merely because they have been hijacked by creationists is like dismissing Darwinism because social Darwinism lead to the holocaust. The Darwin-Wallace theory is not a religion and should not be treated as such. If it is durable, it can only be strengthened by rational attempts to attack it.
From Michael Abraham, Department of Chemistry, University College London
In connection with your editorial on creationism, someone, somewhere, sometime must have asked the question “Who designed the cosmic designer?” If the answer, most probably, is that no one designed the designer, then one can legitimately ask the follow-up question “If a designer is not needed to design the designer, why is a designer needed to design a butterfly?”
London, UK
From Nicholas Adams
It seems to me that if ID advocates accept the time periods associated with evolution, rather than the pure Judaeo-Christian seven-day creation, then they have created a new question that they must answer: why did the creation of humans take so long? To fit the evidence, you have a designer who created single-celled life, got stuck for a very long time, tried several routes later rubbed out with mass extinctions (the last error being the dinosaurs) and then finally got it right with humans.
Of course, that assumes that He/She/It has got it right this time and we aren’t just another mistake to be rethought after another cup of coffee.
Cambridge, UK
From Pasquale Vuoso
It seems curious that the same magazine that a year ago ran an article by Paul Davies suggesting that highly conserved regions of so-called “junk” DNA might represent a very efficient signalling mechanism that far-off aliens employ to alert us to their presence (7 August 2004, p 30) would now take the time to slam the ID movement for suggesting that, indeed, the biological world looks as though it was intelligently designed. Is this the price proponents of ID have to pay for pointing out that King Darwin has no clothes?
Santa Paula, California, US
From Paul Mealing
In Australia, there are a number of clergy who oppose the teaching of creationism in schools. They acknowledge creationism is an intrusion that serves no purpose except divisiveness.
Creationists think science and religion are interchangeable, and are totally unaware that if you bring God into science you stop doing science. Creationism (or ID) answers all questions and gives no explanations, which is why it is the road to the end of science.
杏吧原创s, on the other hand, afford themselves no favours when they attempt to defend scientific theories by claiming they know all the answers, because an important attribute of science is that it is always open to question, a perpetually dynamic knowledge system. Frozen knowledge systems like religion cannot compete.
Ivanhoe, Victoria, Australia
From David Vardy, Emmanuel Schools Foundation
Debora Mackenzie states that Emmanuel College in Gateshead “teaches both evolution and creationism in science classes”. This is simply not true.
Emmanuel College follows the national curriculum which requires the theory of evolution to be taught in science. The national curriculum for science also states specifically that students should understand that scientific data can be interpreted in different ways and produce different theories. Both requirements are met fully at Emmanuel College.
The biblical view of creation is taught in religious education lessons. Students are taught to consider opposing theories and to come to their own, reasoned conclusions.
Carrville, Durham, UK
From Geoff Russell
Your editorial on ID seems a little confused. On the one hand you say ID isn’t a testable theory, but on the other you say: “Evidence against it is mounting from many branches of science.” ID makes claims, and claims can be argued against and demolished.
It is clear that while old-style ID advocates used the eye as the prime example of something that couldn’t have evolved, nobody can get away with that after Richard Dawkins demolished it in The Blind Watchmaker.
Adelaide, South Australia
From G J Badley
Creationists often quote a sentence On the Origin of Species in which Darwin admits that “to suppose the eye… could be formed by natural selection, seems, I freely suggest, absurd to the highest degree”. What they don’t quote are the following five pages, in which he meticulously piles up example after example, link after link, until what at first seemed “absurd” is turned into the convincingly obvious.
Southampton, Hampshire, UK
From Gregory Nicholls
Why all the fuss over attempts to introduce ID in US schools? Let’s assume they are successful and an entire generation of children grow up to believe in creationism. So what? The research and breakthroughs will still happen, just not in the US. The end result will be that the US will have crippled its competitiveness in biotech, surely one of the economic growth engines of the 21st century. Rather than heaping scorn on ID proponents, we should encourage them and then sit back and watch a massive experiment in natural selection play out.
Boca Raton, Florida, US
From Scott Schad
It startled me to see my home town of Tulsa, Oaklahoma, mentioned in your magazine in relation to the intelligent design debate. Even though our local park board recently rescinded their plan to add a creationism display to the zoo, the genesis of the mess bears examination. It arose when a single fundamentalist Christian, upset at the display of a relic Hindu elephant carving at the Tulsa zoo, gathered like-minded supporters and steamrolled the local park board. Our mayor, aware of the voting power of the religious right, quickly jumped on the bandwagon. As the embarrassment spread through the news media, Tulsa Earth scientists organised and collected several hundred signatures on a petition designed to kill this foolish idea. We succeeded. The mayor redefined his position, explaining his original intent as openness to other views, not subsidy of religion.
Which illustrates a point. The religious right in the US wields tremendous voting power, albeit myopically. Politicians commonly toss this group a bone in the form of support for closer church-state links, then back off when controversy erupts, earning sufficient political capital for re-election. The religious right, eager to put state power behind their views, never catches on to this game.
It concerns me, though, that the religious right never rests. In April of this year, for example, the Creation Truth Foundation of Oklahoma opened its new Museum of Earth History in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. The museum contains 10 plastic-cast dinosaur skeletons and nine skulls, all dated in some way to 10,000 years BC. The skeletons sit in a lush, tropical diorama and the museum’s founder explains that only a few dinosaurs made it onto Noah’s ark, and even they soon perished in the climate and environment upheavals that followed. Their website () causes a few chuckles, but before you dismiss this as a harmless roadside stop akin to the world’s biggest ball of twine (which, oddly enough, resides in Darwin, Minnesota), consider that this new museum joins the 60-acre Great Passion Play complex, which draws 60,000 people each year.
Fundamentalist evangelical churches in the US feed on ignorance. They send thousands of missionaries each year across South America, Africa and Asia, spreading ID and other nonsense. Washed-up PhDs lend their names to such campaigns because it makes them money, and because they know the court that matters is public opinion. With enough of that, they can and will steamroll the rest of us.
Science needs to take your magazine’s suggestion and engage in more self-promotion and education. We as scientists can win the game of public opinion, but only by playing our face cards.
Tulsa, Oklahoma, US
From Christopher Ellerby
I believe in God, but I suspect that in attempting to blur the distinction between science and religion, supporters of ID are seeking scientific endorsement of their religion. And that’s not far from wanting all of science to conform to some religious dogma. The 17th century church had the same agenda because it wanted to maintain a religious dictatorship. For these reasons, especially the sheer extremism of some of its followers, I think it’s important to keep religion out of science classrooms.
London, UK
From Adam James
While the ideological clash between science and religion is unlikely ever to be reconciled, debate on the subject continues to be important, if only for its effect on western politics.
In devoting so much page space to criticising the ID theory, it appears you are lending some sort of credibility to its arguments. The entire framework of ID is dead in the water from the outset, because its foundations lie in describing one theory in terms of another. The crux of the empiricist tradition (which underlies modern science) is repeatability and mathematical logic. Faith is the crux of religious ideology, a claim to know the unknowable, which by definition must be self-justifying.
Harrold, Bedfordshire, UK