True threats to reason
I was dismayed that, as author of The Threat to Reason, your contributor Dan Hind names politician Dick Taverne as a defender against the powers of darkness (19 January, p 46). I have just listened to Taverne on BBC Radio 4 declaring that anyone who refuses to be browbeaten or hoodwinked into eating genetically modified products is “committing a criminal act”. How much Taverne knows about science, I do not know.
Frustratingly, politicians 鈥� and radio programmes 鈥� continue to speak as though most people who oppose GM foods do so for health reasons. I suggest that the main concern is that we do not want a single molecule of anything we eat to contribute to, or to be patented and owned by, a reckless, ruthless chemical organisation.
Dan Hind highlighted an important issue facing western society: that of ideological dominance, which leads the intelligentsia to avoid criticising the crimes of their own states and instead to focus on those of the “official” enemy. It is very easy, for example, to condemn the weak as terrorists. The condemnation of the strong is a rare activity indeed.
The historical record shows that terrorism is usually a weapon of the strong, not the weak: compare the violence perpetrated by “Muslim extremists” towards the west with the much greater violence perpetrated by the west in the Middle East. It is also clear that the former violence receives much greater condemnation and analysis than the latter. This is self-censorship: to break it threatens an individual’s mainstream acceptability.
Yet it is the job of any scientist to apply analysis and criticism equally, and to do otherwise is irrational. This is the principle of universality. If the intelligentsia are serious about the rational thought of others, they need to be rational themselves.
Brighouse, West Yorkshire, UK
Asymmetric credit
While Zeeya Merali provides a most interesting article on “unparticles” (26 January, p 32), many physicists will be taken aback by the statement that Howard Georgi “pioneered supersymmetry, a theory he proposed in 1981 with Savas Dimopoulos at Stanford University”. Most particle physicists agree that the theory of supersymmetry was originally proposed in the late 1960s by Soviet theorists Yu Gol’fand and Evgenii Likhtman and developed by Julius Wess and Bruno Zumino in 1973. Indeed, simple models of supersymmetry breaking, such as the O’Raifeartaigh model, had already emerged by 1975.
Perhaps Merali meant that the first realistic supersymmetric version of the standard model of particle physics was proposed in 1981 by Georgi and Dimopoulos.
What is pro-life?
I sometimes wonder whether I’m the only pro-life, religious reader of New 杏吧原创. Your latest bit of silliness is a rant courtesy of philosopher A. C. Grayling in his Mindfields column (22/29 December 2007, p 76). I wish that those arguing against the pro-life position would at least understand what we are saying and argue against that, instead of fighting some straw man of their own making.
I was once asked whether an acorn is an oak tree, the questioner’s point being that a fetus is not a person. An acorn is not an oak tree. It is, however, an oak. The life cycle of an oak is from acorn to shoot, from sapling to young tree and, finally, to a mature oak tree. Likewise, pro-lifers do not see an embryo as a “potential” person, to use Grayling’s term, but rather as a person at one stage of their life cycle: from fertilised ovum to blastocyst, embryo, fetus, infant, child, adolescent and, finally, adult. At every stage its essence is the same.
Our argument is not that one cannot sacrifice a “potential” person to help another 鈥� as in the case of medical discoveries using embryonic stem cells 鈥� but that one cannot sacrifice an actual person to help another 鈥� any more than one could sacrifice one child to save another.
The argument that fertilised ova dying naturally somehow justifies killing them is one of the more ridiculous I’ve come across. People die naturally 鈥� does that make it OK to kill them to use for medical experiments? Surely a philosopher should be able to understand the difference between a natural death and a wilful killing.
Wait or walk?
Mathematicians may have tackled the problem of deciding whether to wait for a bus or to walk (26 January, p 18) but in Nottingham, among other places, it has been solved by computer science and engineering. At each stop an electronic display lists the estimated arrival time of buses on each route serving the stop.
Space price
You report, without comment, Virgin’s proposals for space tourism (2 February, p 21). What are the anticipated emissions of carbon dioxide per passenger per 5 minutes of space experience?
Filth, glorious filth
I enjoyed your fine article on the idea that dirt and infections could ward off cancer (12 January, p 34). It reminded me of the 1983 novel Cancer Ward Alert (Uzbuna na odjelu za rak) by Neven Orhel, a Croatian medical doctor.
Claimed to be purely fictional, it deals with the idea of fighting cancers by triggering infections. The author cites several real studies that attempted to explore the concept.
I am looking forward to proposals to treat cancers with bacteria, and not purely to support a Croatian doctor and his ideas.
Bugged by bugs
Please, please, please! What are the garishly coloured bacteria illustrating “Well-informed bugs stay ahead of the pack” (19 January, p 10)?
鈥� The illustration showed a scanning electron micrograph of Escherichia coli treated with antibiotic, in which the images of individual bacteria had been given arbitrary colours.
For the record
鈥� The found no excess cancers within 25 kilometres of nuclear plants. Because of an editing mistake, our story “Nuke-plant leukaemia link?” (9 February, p 6) conveyed exactly the opposite.
鈥� The reference for the paper by Craig Wheeler and colleagues on the shape of the Cassiopeia A supernova remnant should have been (26 January, p 16).
Cybrid vigour
You quote stem cell researcher Lyle Armstrong as being “very disturbed that the Catholic bishops claim the [UK-parliament] bill will allow us to create half-human, half-animal embryos” (online news, 25 January). But it is clear that the will allow the crossing of human and non-human gametes to create true hybrid embryos. The Catholic bishops are quite reasonably concerned not only with what is currently planned by scientists but also with what is explicitly permitted by the bill.
The bill places cybrids (whose genetic material is 99.9 per cent human) and true hybrids (50 per cent human, for example) in the same very broad classification. It permits both to be created under licence. If scientists are unhappy that cybrids and true hybrids are lumped together in the public debate then they should call for an amendment to the bill.
There could and should be limits on what kinds of mixed embryos can be licensed. Amending the bill so that it draws a legal line between cybrids and chimeras on the one hand, and true hybrids on the other, would enable scientists who support research using cybrids to distinguish this work from the disturbing creation of half-human, half-animal embryos.
鈥� The proposed bill does not explicitly permit either cybrids or true hybrids. It also does not explicitly ban either 鈥� which is perhaps what is bothering its critics. What it does do is require that any embryo combining any human and animal material 鈥� even a cybrid in which the only animal contribution is cytoplasm 鈥� be made only with the express permission of a government committee. Then, no such embryo may be kept past a certain point, or implanted in a woman. The aim seems to be to prevent outcomes we have already decided to reject 鈥� carrying a hybrid to term 鈥� while allowing flexibility in the research and establishing a process in which society can decide what research it will allow.
Electric clouds
I was surprised that Mark Anderson, discussing rain production (26 January, p 44), made no mention of the role of electrical charge in cloud and rain formation. Surely, one of the main factors in fog persistence is the mutually repellent nature of the fog particles due to static charge, and this must apply in clouds as well. We are all aware that lightning is the fruit of the charge separation which occurs when droplets form in clouds (and which is reversed when snow crystals cause the droplets to evaporate away).
Those working in the semiconductor and allied industries should be all too painfully aware that charge separation occurs (static is generated) when mists are made through pressure nozzles and when air moves, even relatively slowly, over surfaces. Sadly, these sources of static are all too often overlooked in practice.
Also, personal observation suggests that a nearby lightning discharge is very frequently soon followed by exceptionally heavy rain, strongly suggesting that the free radicals arising from the lightning plasma have neutralised charge on droplets, allowing them more readily to coalesce. Flame is often used to disperse fog, and instinct suggests that this is effective more because of the free radicals generated than because of the local increase in temperature.
Concerning the speed of droplet formation, I’ve watched contrails form at the trailing edge of airliner wings on many occasions. The droplets causing this fog arise within tens of millimetres at most from the trailing edge which initiates the pressure drop and makes them form. This means that their time of formation is of the order of 100 microseconds. Their time to re-evaporate once formed is several orders of magnitude longer, suggesting that droplet formation is in some sense a one-way ticket.
Aircraft engine contrails also provide an intriguing and probably relevant phenomenon. When conditions are right, the contrails can be seen to diverge into two, the lower white contrail having another dark trail above it. Presumably the droplets fall due to gravity while the surrounding hot, humid and dirty exhaust air rises.
True threats to reason
I have spent almost 30 years in the field of engineering, honing my rational thinking. As someone who also happens to be agnostic, I’ve frequently been puzzled and frustrated by the public’s preference for the apparent non-sense of religion over rationality.
Dan Hind’s observations (19 January, p 46) regarding the threats to rational thought by the forces of unreason were on the mark. And he correctly points out that corporate and government self-interests are far bigger threats than the attacks from various factions of religion and new-ageism. But I think he misses an important link between the attitudes of corporations and government, and the fact that most people support those positions.
Governments and corporations get away with what they do because they know that the general population won’t take the side of science. If that is to change, then we need to examine why it’s happening in the first place.
This reminds me of an experience that many boys have, where we’ll be sharing a clever story with some friends and enjoying what we believe to be shared mirth, only to have someone in the group whisper “Pssst… hey Mark, your zipper is down!” That revelation completely changes our perspective when we realise that the rest of the group’s mirth is not at the clever story, but at the fact that we look so silly.
I believe that the science community needs to have a similar revelation.
Let’s briefly look at science from the perspective of the lay person. Yes, science has provided us with some wonderful things. But it has also provided us with some not-so-nice things, such as the eternal threat of destruction from thermonuclear weapons, the creation of the technologies that have brought us global warming, the carnage and misery that science wreaks in its labs on animals. Then there are the endless disputes about genetic modification, cloning, and stem cell research to name just a few.
The impression this gives is that science refuses to limit itself by employing the same morals and ethics that society in general does. And it will stop at nothing to get that last little bit of knowledge, which ultimately gives some corporation or government more power over the people.
From that perspective, religion appears to offer warmth, compassion, understanding, and life, compared to the cold facts, calculation, uncaring carnage and death provided by science. Viewed that way, is it any surprise that people choose religion?
This perception needs to change if science is ever to win over the general population, and thereby start winning the battles against government and corporate self-interest.
Pssst… hey science. Your morals and ethics are down!
Dragon death pose pictures
In his article “The big sleep” (22/29 December 2007, p 62), Graham Lawton mentions various theories for the awkward-seeming posture apparent in many dinosaur fossils. Perhaps the neck bend was not so difficult for dinosaurs after all. Presumably this interpretation was the inspiration for Chinese artists who sometimes represented living dragons in similar postures. Here is an example from a that I recently noticed at the Ackland Art Museum in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The dragon’s posture is almost identical to that of the fossil shown on page 63.
Respect required too
Working for many years as a senior product development chemist for a major international corporation, I always took off my white lab coat whenever I attended board meetings. My bosses used to question this. I always responded that the commercial managers regarded the white coat as a badge of low office and that I preferred to leave that status back in the laboratory when allowed to emerge, blinking, into the “real world”.
Youngsters gravitate towards careers in areas that have older people enthusing about the fun, respect, kudos, earnings, promotion or other incentives they have received. Contrast this with science’s unsocial hours, rubbish conditions, poor salary and few chances of advancement, and you will understand why I discourage my sons from following in my footsteps.
What political difference?
I was very interested in the ideas presented in Jim Giles’s discussion of the possible genetic roots of political preference (2 February, p 28) and its even-handed consideration of what is obviously a contentious concept.
The real problem for me, however, is the way this is being framed by predominantly American researchers, and their use of the terms “liberal” and “conservative” as if they were actually meaningful in American politics.
It gets worse outside the US, where the distinction between “liberal” capitalists and “conservative” capitalists is so small that it barely exists at all.
Taking the four remaining major US presidential candidates as an example, is it any wonder that factors other than these labels seem more important to their chances of success? Hillary Clinton’s chances seem less determined by “liberalness” than by gender, Barack Obama’s by race, Mitt Romney’s by religion and John McCain’s by age.
None of this undermines the possibility of some genetic influence on political preference, which seems as logical as the idea of genetic influence on pretty much any aspect of human behaviour. However, a better approach might be to use labels that are not parochial to an illusion of political difference in mainstream American politics.
Where is the money?
How could Alan Jones write an entire page on the skills shortage in the sciences (26 January, p 23) without a single appearance of the word “salary”?
From
Alan Jones calls for universities to produce more high-quality bioscience graduates and his industry group, Semta, proposes to establish a forum where employers can tell universities what skills they need.
I am sure they will find universities receptive to their ideas 鈥� if they can speak with one voice. But this can only have a marginal effect because the main problem is a shortage of good students entering the programmes: minor changes to the curriculum will have little effect on the attractiveness of science to school-leavers.
What will have an effect, as ever, is money. If employers sponsor students through their three or more years of study, provide vacation employment and training, and guarantee a job at graduation (subject to performance), the situation could change radically.
University departments would have an additional incentive to provide suitable courses if employee sponsors paid their students’ full fees, rather than the reduced rate for UK/EU nationals.
In industrial terms, the cost of each sponsored student is small, and the employers will benefit from reduced recruiting costs and staff stability. Come on, industry: if you want the students, help us find and provide them!
From Stephen Bazlington
As the father of a biomedical graduate, a mechanical engineer, a medical doctor and a physiotherapist, I have formed the clear opinion that industry needs to pay scientists a living salary if graduates are to be encouraged to enter the science world. The biomedical graduate has become a carpenter. The mechanical engineer is in the army and sees no future in engineering when he leaves.
Great Dunmow, Essex, UK
I am continually reading about the lack of science graduates in the UK 鈥� especially female science graduates 鈥� and concerns that the UK will become uncompetitive.
This contrasts sharply with my own experience. I have just graduated with a first class honours degree in human biology, yet I have been unable to find employment either at a suitable graduate level or even a position that just pays enough to manage the bills. It is frustrating that I have to rely on accountancy skills from my previous career to find gainful employment.
The dearth of jobs for new science graduates, combined with the current excess of PhD graduates in the market, means that new graduates are always second choice. My options now are to continue temping, gradually losing my skills through lack of use, or to embark on a PhD.
What will happen to graduates like me, who want an assistant role and do not particularly want to study to PhD level? Is there just no room for us any more?
Banbury, Oxfordshire, UK