For the record
鈥� Michael Rutter is a psychiatrist and professor of developmental psychopathology at the Social, Genetic & Developmental Psychiatry Centre, King’s College London 鈥� not a psychologist as we suggested (17 December 2005, p 32)
鈥� We missed part of the credit for the Mars rover photo (24/31 December 2005, p 14). It should have read “Marco Di Lorenzo, Bernhard Braun, Doug Ellison and Ken Kramer courtesy of Aviation Week/JPL/NASA”.
Laws and theories
In common with many other people, Geoffrey Mann misunderstands the significance of scientific “laws” (Letter, 17 December 2005, p 23). A scientific law makes no attempt to explain a phenomenon; it is simply a summary of experimental results. A theory, on the other hand, attempts to explain and make predictions in as yet untried circumstances.
For instance, chemists used to have a law of conservation of mass, which stated that matter cannot be created or destroyed. This really meant “in no experiment that we have done sufficiently carefully so far have we found that the total mass of the products of a change differs from the total mass of the starting materials”. Nuclear fission and fusion break this “law”.
From Joel Wood
The suggestion that a “law” in science is merely a stronger form of a “theory” is not correct. A law is an observation of empirical fact, whereas a theory is in some sense an explanation or model of “why”. Thus Newton’s “law” of gravitation describes a strictly empirical relationship between the mass of objects and the attraction between them, whereas Einstein’s “theory” of gravity provides a putative mechanism 鈥� the warping of space such that objects follow a geodesic. Likewise, the law of evolution states that evolution occurs. This is an observable and empirical fact, whereas Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection provides a mechanism by which this readily observable fact occurs.
A better way to defuse creationist arguments that evolution doesn’t occur would be to note this distinction. Evolution definitely occurs, but various mechanisms have been proposed to explain why, and the best, most plausible, and most strongly supported is Darwin’s.
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, US
From Bernard Speight
Geoffrey Mann reminds us that we can go beyond theories, in describing the degree of confidence that can be ascribed to explanations of physical phenomena, quoting a number of examples of physical laws.
However, when something is no more than an idea, it does not warrant the use of the term “theory”. At this stage, it is more properly called a “hypothesis”.
Intelligent design is a hypothesis, and will surely remain so, until someone has devised a reproducible experiment that can gives us the confidence to call it a theory.
Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
Colour trademarks
Having noticed that your readers are worried about trademarking of colours (5 November, p 21) I thought I should point out that such trademarks only apply to competing ventures.
The Cadbury trademark of purple means that no one can market a chocolate bar using the same colour wrapper, and so prevents people being fooled into buying the wrong product, which seems fair enough. Anyone is free to use the colour for any other use as long as it isn’t seen to be competing with the trademarked use.
Clearing landmines
The difficulty with minefield clearance is that those likely to be killed or maimed have neither political nor commercial leverage with those who are able to solve the problem (26 November 2005, p 26). Had the Sri Lankan or Cambodian situations existed in Sussex or Surrey they would have been eradicated, but the loss of a leg or even the occasional life of a rice farmer in the Far East does not create an imperative in the west.
Your source suggests airships or satellites might be used as platforms for specialised mine detection equipment. A project called Mineseeker conducted a brief trial in Kosovo, and it was a qualified success. Mineseeker sought and obtained support from high-profile politicians, including Nelson Mandela. Along with Richard Branson, it approached Libya’s Colonel Gaddafi to seek collaboration on clearing second-world-war mines from the Western Desert using airships and radar. But after flirting with the idea, Gaddafi lost interest, Mineseeker’s funds ran out and work stopped.
In 2000, representatives of the Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian Demining were invited to discuss demining at the celebrations marking Count Zeppelin’s airship achievements. Taking a different view from Mineseeker, the Geneva group rejected the high-tech approach of airships with ground-penetrating radar to detect mines. Instead, it advocated cheaper equipment that could be made available to less-developed countries, the most advanced of which resembles the bizarre flailing “funnies” used to explode mines on the Normandy beaches in 1944.
Any change in demining policy is a hollow gesture unless it is accompanied by funds for developing the necessary equipment. This is particularly true of the dream of safe, remote detection and destruction.
Universes for life
Leonard Susskind comments on the anthropic principle 鈥� the proposal that the universe appears miraculously well-tuned to our kind of life because those are the conditions for us being here to make this observation 鈥� saying it “requires the strong assumption that our kind of life is the only kind possible” (17 December 2005, p 48). Not so.
Suppose merely that almost all possible intelligent life requires conditions just as finely tuned 鈥� however different to ours. It would follow that most intelligent life forms would find themselves in remarkably special circumstances.
Blue-green for danger
The article in Feedback detailing things we did not know about algae, as set forth in a book by Gillian McKeith, did not mention that eating blue-green algae on a regular basis could also connect you with something rather different from “messages of harmony and peace” (17 December).
Blue-green algae 鈥� properly called cyanobacteria 鈥� are able to produce a range of very powerful toxins, which pose health hazards to humans and animals and can result in illness and death.
Cyanobacteria can form excessive growths at certain times of the year 鈥� blooms, often forming thick scums on the shoreline. Such cyanobacterial blooms and scums have recently attracted public attention but have been around for a long time, with records of them dating back to the 12th century.
When the current stops
I have been puzzling over your article on faltering ocean currents triggering a freeze fear (3 December 2005, p 6). The poles are releasing fresh water into a salty sea. But an ice age ended approximately 10,000 years ago, and that must have released a phenomenal amount of fresh water into the oceans. This seems to have had little effect on ocean currents, otherwise I doubt I could be typing this email now.
The editor writes:
鈥� It did. Giant lakes collecting meltwater splurged so much fresh water into the North Atlantic at the end of the last ice age that they turned off the circulation twice. This happened once for 1200 years about 12,000 years ago 鈥� known as the Younger Dryas era 鈥� and again for about 300 years some 8200 years ago. The moral is that fresh water did it, and it took a long time to turn the circulation back on again.
Eyes wide shut
I was delighted to discover that I am not the only one to knilb (Feedback, 19 November 2005). I now have a name for this instinctive reaction of suddenly opening my eyes in the middle of the night, as an interesting 鈥� or disturbing 鈥� thought creeps into my mind, only to close them quickly again and resume my sleep.
From Claude James
As an example of an emordnilap, I propose the verb “to wollaws”, as in “he wollawsed his curry”.
Vermand, France
Disreputable research
The spectacular breaches of trust in scientific research we have seen recently, such as the South Korean cloning debacle, point to a problem far deeper than mere individual ethical defects (24/31 December 2005, p 3). It is as much to do with how we reward scientific results as anything else.
Simply put, although the truth is defined as much by what it isn’t as by what it is, we tend to reward people who consistently confirm their research hypotheses rather than those who do not. Whether it is a drug company, a cloning king or a university department, the ability to pick a winner is a significant asset that translates not just into kudos, but increasingly into hard cash.
It is unlikely that this will change any time soon. Nobody expects the stock market or the insurance industry to operate on good faith alone, and it is naive to expect a selfless drive to tell the truth to govern the multi-billion pound industries of science. So, rather than continuing to use the language and practices of the gentlemanly societies of the 18th and 19th centuries, we need to incorporate greater structural safeguards into the practice of science. If the drug industry began to publish negative results that would be a good start. We should be building structures to promote probity before the enterprise of science falls into permanent disrepute.
Real change on climate
You criticise environmentalists, probably correctly, for “being caught up in the euphoria” surrounding the Montreal climate change conference (17 December 2005, p 3). Yet you express a similar one-eyed optimism that it is scientists who alone can stand and deliver the “truth”.
The challenge of climate change is not going to be resolved by science, and certainly not by lofty statements from scientists pronouncing what is and what is not dangerous for people and societies. Dangerous for whom and by when? Relative to what? And with what probability? There is clear and mounting evidence that frightening people into attitudinal and behavioural change by ratcheting up the scare stakes just does not work.
Climate change is a much more subtle and socially intractable phenomenon that takes us well outside the domain in which natural science can, alone, be effective.
From Jason Anderson, Institute for European Environmental Policy
Few environmentalists would argue with your contention that far less was accomplished at Montreal, and indeed throughout the course of the negotiations on the UN climate convention and the Kyoto protocol, than is required to meet the challenge. But your swipe at groups like Greenpeace for being caught up in the euphoria of a deal at Montreal is misplaced: these groups know far better than others how inadequate the response has been, and have been trying hard to alert politicians to the work of the scientists you credit for being the only ones adequately concerned.
The problem is that you are mixing the ideal with the political 鈥� solving climate change isn’t a matter of recognising the problem, it’s a matter of fashioning a solution. And that can’t be done without the agreement of those taking the measures, beginning with governments.
You can throw stones all you want at the inadequacy of agreements, but they have to be made. If environmental groups are feeling a glimmer of hope it is not because they are satisfied with the result, but because it is they, and not those observing from the lofty moral high ground, who know how agonising the process is.
杏吧原创s are obviously fundamental both to understanding climate change and to underpinning our adequate reaction to it 鈥� but if nothing happens politically or socially as a reaction, your worry and indignation is simply fiddling while Rome burns.
Brussels, Belgium
From Russell Robles-Thome
Alongside your editorial you quote, in large font, “We have at most 10 years… to head off climate convulsions”.
The truth, as I learn from nothing more exotic than reading your magazine over several years, is that sudden, wrenching and dramatic climate change is part and parcel of living on this particular planet. The Sahara turned from greenery to desert in a few decades, entirely without the help of humans. Britain has disappeared under thick ice sheets that later retreated, with no help from humans in either direction. The Mayan civilisation was destroyed by drought that was nobody’s fault.
The current climate debate misses the point of addressing what we will do when climate change occurs, as it inevitably will, no matter what we do. How do we define when a region has become uninhabitable? And where do its people go when it does? Will anyone take the Brits when the ice comes back? What about when northern China runs out of water, or Bangladesh dips under the Indian Ocean? Where will the people go?
This negotiation should be happening now.
Edinburgh, UK