Scepticism vs debate
Lawrence Krauss relates the problems of publishing articles that challenge anthropogenic climate change (16 August, p 46). It seems to me that the problems arise from the habit of portraying the exposition of dissenting views as “a debate”.
A true debate allows each side to refute arguments made by the other, iteratively if necessary, until each assertion can be adequately sustained or debunked. If the arguments of the climate “sceptic” described by Krauss had been subjected to challenge by physicists, then no objective reader would have reached the conclusion that they were evidence against anthropogenic change. Conversely, if a sceptic is able to identify weaknesses in our understanding of climate change, then by all means let them be identified and addressed.
From Anselm Kuhn
What a sorry tale Lawrence Krauss has to tell. As he explains it, the editors of the American Physical Society’s newsletter published Christopher Monckton’s rebuttal of climate change in good faith. Yet the simple expedient of a Google search would have left them in no doubt as to what sort of person they were dealing with.
Otherwise unqualified autodidacts are often adept at picking up scientific terms and expressions, which can confer on their writings a misleading stamp of authority. A search makes it clear that Monckton’s writings have been demolished many times by professionally qualified physicists and climatologists.
There is a moral here for editors. Never publish anything by someone about whom you know absolutely nothing.
Stevenage, Hertfordshire, UK
Forecast fair
I was horrified to see Fred Pearce and Michael Le Page use the term “climate-change deniers” in reporting on mid-term climate forecasting (16 August, p 26). It is clearly intended to associate climate-change sceptics with holocaust deniers, a simple smear. There is a world of difference between denying concrete historical facts to support a fascist ideology, and arguing honestly about the costs and benefits of climate change policies. Anyone who does the latter is labelled a “denier”, and their opinions roundly ignored.
Michael Le Page writes:
鈥� We have never used the term “climate-change denier” to describe those who argue honestly about the costs and benefits of policies related to climate change, but rather to refer to those who either ignore the huge body of scientific evidence or, worse still, lie about it or misrepresent it to confuse people 鈥� a ploy that has been very successful. As for the comparison with holocaust deniers, is it worse to deny facts about mass deaths in the past or to deny facts that, if we fail to take action based on them, will lead to mass deaths at some point in the future?
Recycling economics
Your editorial states that “the present [credit] crisis was not caused by poor economic models” (19 July, p 5). You are right as regards the credit crisis itself, but not as regards the overall global crisis concerning the economy, energy and environment.
For 5000 years, our wealth has been based primarily on the extraction of virgin resources and on development of “raw” land. Capitalism, socialism and communism may argue over wealth distribution, but they agree on this “pioneer” model of wealth creation.
The basis of economic growth is rapidly shifting towards regenerating places we have developed and repairing natural resources we have damaged. I estimate that this “restorative development” or “rewealth” now accounts for some $2 trillion of activity annually, worldwide. Our global inventory of “restorable assets” is likely to be $100 trillion. Research and development budgets are being “re”directed towards remediating toxic sites, renewing infrastructure and restoring ecosystems 鈥� shifting from development to redevelopment, and from depletion to replenishment. An economy that leaves the world healthier, wealthier and more beautiful with each passing year might well produce a more peaceful world, without any change in human nature.
Economic evolution
Responding to Mark Buchanan’s criticism of economic theory (19 July, p 32), Christopher May asserts that markets are social phenomena that rather than evolving are “facilitated by governments, often prompted by commercial interests” (9 August, p 20). This is too narrow.
Governments and commercial interests are themselves evolved outcomes. We can conceptualise them, alongside many other social constructs, as features of a fitness landscape upon which a market has to function. Markets and institutions co-evolve, both shaping and being shaped by the fitness landscape.
An economics for the 21st century ought to be grappling with understanding the fitness landscape and finding ways to influence these evolutionary processes. We will need markets, but we also need to figure out how to make them function in ways that suit our changing needs.
Passenger pressure
The apparently quantum commands issued by London Underground and reported by Feedback (most recently on 9 August) can be better understood if you realise that, to those running the network, the substance called “passenger” is a moderately compressible fluid. Their job includes pumping this fluid into and out of trains as fast as possible. The fact that the molecules of this fluid are sentient is of no more importance to them than are any ruminations of the air in a motorist’s tyres.
Selfish what?
Richard Dawkins wriggles when confronted with a serious challenge to his pet “selfish gene” theory (12 July, p 28). First he is patronising: “The ‘transgenerational’ effects now being described are mildly interesting.” Then he goes into denial: “They cast no doubt whatsoever on the theory of the selfish gene.” Finally, he provides himself with an escape route by suggesting we replace the precise word “gene” with the vague “replicator”. We also learn that the job of a replicator is to “replicate accurately, the occasional mutation aside”. Well, thanks a lot, mate. Very illuminating.
Cut!
The three trials of circumcision in Africa that were curtailed (19 July, p 40) suffered from other problems too. I calculate from the published results that more than twice as many circumcised men dropped out (327) 鈥� their HIV status unknown 鈥� as the number of non-circumcised men who were eventually found to have HIV (137). Trial participants were encouraged to be tested elsewhere, it being considered unethical to tell them the results found in the trial. To find you had HIV after a painful operation to prevent it would be a powerful inducement not to go back.
Brian Morris is reported as claiming that circumcising 1000 baby boys will prevent one case of penile cancer. A fast surgeon may do 40 circumcisions in a day, so that’s 25 days’ surgery to prolong one life, usually near its end.
The trials found circumcision to be equally inefficient at preventing HIV, especially in the developed world where it is rare, but such calculations are seldom done by those determined to promote this peculiar operation.
Alzheimer's puzzlement
In your article about using injections of an anti-inflammatory to treat Alzheimer’s patients, Amgen seems to think the reported rapid clinical response after the treatment 鈥� which neutralises tumour necrosis factor alpha (TNF-伪) 鈥� doesn’t make sense (9 August, p 32). But this assumes that TNF-伪聽acts in this disease only in its “traditional” role of causing inflammation, and takes no account of its recently realised function as a neurotransmitter.
For example, at this year’s meeting in Chicago, a group of researchers from the US in Baltimore, Maryland, proposed an explanation for the reported rapid response in cognitive function.
If investigated, rather than dismissed as implausible, puzzling clinical observations can drive basic research in useful directions, and become tomorrow’s accepted wisdom.
What doesn't kill you…
You report the phenomenon of hormesis, in which small doses of a harmful substance are protective (9 August, p 36).
Is this not an underlying principle of homeopathy, an idea constantly being criticised in your magazine?
The editor writes:
鈥� Hormesis and homeopathy are superficially similar but actually very different. The basic tenet of homeopathy is that illnesses can be cured with vanishingly small doses of substances that produce symptoms of the same illness in a healthy person. Hormesis, on the other hand, is the general beneficial effect of toxins at doses just below the toxic threshold. Hormetic agents have no beneficial effect at homeopathic doses. Perhaps more importantly, hormesis is established by scientific investigation whereas homeopathy is, to say the least, not.
Pronounce what?
It was interesting to read of others sometimes being unsure of pronunciation (21 June, p 27).
I am a distance-learning science undergraduate with the UK’s . One tutor at an OU summer school, who had also taught in brick universities, commented that she could often tell brick students from distance learners: the former knew how to pronounce a word but didn’t know what it meant, while remote learners knew what a word meant but not how to pronounce it.
The CANDU can
Your report on plans for a “Nuke in a box” (2 August, p 34) ignores the reactor design, on which the Indian reactor is based. CANDU can use natural uranium fuel, whereas light-water reactors use enriched fuel. It can also be refuelled while in operation.
While Phil McKenna reports concerns that refuelling poses a proliferation danger 鈥� since it allows removal of plutonium-containing fuel elements 鈥� CANDU can burn up all the plutonium, producing used fuel that has very low levels of radiation compared with light-water reactors. CANDU reactors are highly suitable for disposal of plutonium from degraded nuclear weapons, if it is first converted into metal oxide fuel elements. Visit for more on CANDU.
Natural plutonium
You claimed that plutonium does not occur naturally (12 July, p 36). Small amounts of plutonium-239 are found in uranium ores 鈥� about 1 part in 1011 of uranium 鈥� and plutonium-244 has been detected in the spectrum of the sun. All nuclear-reactor fission nuclides have also been found in the Earth’s geological record, especially in the ancient natural reactor at Oklos in Gabon, as reported by Fran莽ois Gauthier-Lafaye and colleagues in 1996 .
Analogue/digital
Bill de Mott and Feedback appear to be a bit literal-minded in querying what other kind of CDs can exist besides the “fully digital” (9 August). Most classical CDs are classed as follows: AAD, meaning digitally mastered from an analogue recording which was edited on an analogue system; ADD, digitally edited and mastered from an analogue recording; or DDD, fully digital.
So the Best of Mozart CDs mentioned are modern digital recordings, not analogue recordings from the 50s or 60s remastered for the CD format.
Protect the rainforest's people
Plans by governments to open up the western Amazon to oil and gas exploration do not only threaten “pristine” rainforest and exotic species (online news, 13 August): they pose enormous dangers to some of the world’s last uncontacted tribes. As the report by Save America’s Forests makes clear, much of the land now open to oil and gas exploration is inhabited by uncontacted tribes who cannot give consent to work on their land and who would be “extremely vulnerable” to any contact with oil and gas workers because of their lack of immunity to outsiders’ diseases. As the conservationists themselves urge, uncontacted tribes’ land should be granted “outright protection” from exploration.
Creation menu
If you want hilarious creation myths, you don’t need to invent a Flying Spaghetti Monster (9 August, p 21), There are already dozens of bizarre ancient creation myths all over the world. They involve animals, birds, giants, axes, oak trees, bridges, caves, dreams, tobacco, islands, seeds, eggs and fingernails, as even a very hasty internet search will demonstrate. Most of these fictions are now accepted by the modern descendants of their original inventors to be simple stories made up to explain difficult things to primitive minds.
I have found only one creation myth which allocates blame and guilt for the destruction of a primeval paradise. It is the same myth which seems to be the hardest to eradicate in the modern world. It is the Judaeo-Christian myth which manages to blame half the human race for primal sin, thus forever justifying the subjection of women to men’s control and punishment, and freeing men from the same blame.
Do we even need to wonder why these fundamentalists cling so tightly and so anachronistically to such myths? Could it be because the myth lets fundamentalists get so much more fun out of controlling women than controlling themselves?