Beneficial alliance
David Rand and Martin Nowak discuss the use of the public goods game 鈥� a financial game that tests self-interest versus social responsibility 鈥� to gain insights into collaborative group behaviour in the context of human impact on the environment (14 November 2009, p 28). The winner of the 2009 Nobel memorial prize for economics, Elinor Ostrom, has written extensively on this topic, focusing on common pool resources (CPRs) 鈥� finite resources that we exploit to our benefit but whose supply must be maintained.
Her ground-breaking book Governing the Commons: The evolution of institutions for collective action concludes that there is no single panacea to solve all the troubles of managing CPRs. In many of the most pressing collaborative challenges we face today, nationally and internationally, politicians often look for simple polarised prescriptions of either state ownership and control or free market models. Ostrom’s research combines game-playing simulations with painstaking fieldwork in many remote parts of the world. She concludes that we must “embrace complexity” in order to manage scarce resources. Her research provides compelling evidence that under some conditions, solutions can emerge based on shared control within a self-managed community.
Of the eight principles Ostrom lists for successful collaboration, some are intuitive: group boundaries need to be clearly defined, all members have access to low-cost conflict resolution mechanisms. Others are more striking, such as the idea that sanctions and penalties devised by the group itself are much more effective than those applied by an external police force.
The subtitle of the book is telling; in so many areas of business, public policy and international collaboration we need to learn those evolutionary lessons right now.
Engineered hopes
In your editorial on an oil from soybean genetically modified to produce essential fatty acids, you state: “Created by Monsanto, the soybean is a far cry from just about everything that the industry has thrown at us so far: modified crops benefiting no one but seed companies and farmers” (31 October 2009, p 5).
You fail to mention the fact that as production costs go down or yields increase, consumer benefits from the cost either hold steady or reduce. If under these circumstances prices do increase, everything else being equal, then the food supply chain is reaping the profits, not the farmers.
It is about time that those campaigning against GM technology recognised its benefits. GM crops are highly regulated, need less pesticide than conventional crops and produce higher yields. Consequently, less land is needed to produce the same amount of food or industrial crops. This frees up land for other activities, including carbon sequestration, promoting biodiversity and recreational activities.
Space exploration
Michael Hanlon paints a bleak picture for the future of human exploration of the solar system (21 November 2009, p 28). His hopes might be bolstered by considering the ambitions of countries other than the United States: from today’s perspective it seems likely that the next flag on the moon will be Indian or Chinese.
The blame for Hanlon’s pessimism lies in significant part with the media he represents. Much has happened since the moon landings Hanlon sees as NASA’s apotheosis, but these events have been all but invisible in the mass media.
Science on a tight budget takes time. Nevertheless, the International Space Station has been doing invaluable preparatory work for any extended crewed mission. Perhaps Hanlon is right when he says $3 billion a year is too much to expect the US to spend in the west’s current narrow-minded political climate, but compared with the Pentagon bid last year for $567 billion this is peanuts.
Drip data, drip
Stuart Clark’s opinion piece on how to treat the data set from the big bang’s echo relates that a group of astronomers has suggested drip-feeding the data to researchers so that they can use some to create their models, and refine them with subsequent data (5 December 2009, p 26). This baffles me. Surely the whole data set must be presented at one time. Working on that set, sensible investigators will examine only part of it at first and then try applying any tentative model to the remainder. Somebody might be very lucky and discover an overarching theory in a matter of only months after the figures are released, and thus enable researchers to move on to bigger or alternative issues far sooner than if the data release is artificially slowed.
Stuart Clark writes:
鈥� The goal is to extract the maximum information from a limited data set. Hypotheses are tested by their ability to predict. If all the measurements are used to form a hypothesis then there is nothing left with which to test it. A staged release of data, with competing hypotheses predicting what will be seen next, is the only way to extract the maximum amount of understanding.
Research agenda
Any funding source, government or private, can co-opt research to its own agenda. Stuart Parkinson and Chris Langley claim that the recommendations of their organisation, 杏吧原创s for Global Responsibility (SGR), could remedy this problem through new processes of transparency and accountability (7 November 2009, p 32), but their article fails to detail how these processes will be managed.
Leaving implementation to professional bodies or government agencies seems merely to displace the problem of special interests to a different level. Regulatory bodies can have agendas too.
It is also not clear how the SGR’s approach will address the military’s appropriation of research. In the contemporary context of increasing militarisation 鈥� justified in democracies by perceived security threats 鈥� such research is often kept secret, and may be exempt from regulatory processes.
The SGR suggests the public should participate in setting the goals of science. Given the many complaints about the poor quality of science education, one must wonder how meaningful such public contributions would be.
Public lectures, and publications like New 杏吧原创, offer hope for the propagation of scientific literacy. At the same time, scientists may need to give up their coveted “cult of the expert” if things are to progress. Specialised conferences and journals are only part of the practice of science; scientists also have an obligation to communicate their results in a jargon-free, accessible form.
Bone-headed
In their article on discredited dinosaur hunter Nate Murphy, Jeff Hecht and Joe Iacuzzo state that: “for decades out-of-state palaeontologists had been coming to Montana to plunder its dinosaur fossils” (12 December 2009, p 42). This is unfair: there was neither the means nor motivation in many western states to preserve their palaeontological resources. Most of the important work in excavation, preservation and interpretation of fossils from the area has been carried out by just these obtruders 鈥� work that has not only resulted in scientific knowledge but also fuelled much of the interest shown by these states in dinosaurs and other fossils.
While the media may be castigating Murphy now, we must keep in mind it was the same media that created his persona in the first place. Compared with this, I would take the principled plunderers any day.
Get off my land
Mark Davis suggests, in his article on invasive species (25 September 2009, p 26), that concerns over the fate of affected native species arise from prejudice.
The article appeared to ignore the major policy driver in this area, which is the Convention on Biological Diversity. Supported by more than 190 governments, the convention recognises the increasing rate of extinction of species and loss of habitats, and a trend towards decreasing variety within habitats. It recognises the need to sustain existing diversity and reverse the loss of diversity.
Even in developed countries, our awareness of trends in biodiversity and indicator species is often hard won and subject to substantial uncertainty. For example, in the UK the collection of such data is mainly carried out by NGOs and volunteers.
Given the complex and subtle interactions between native and alien species, the precautionary principle should be applied to the introduction of alien species to an ecosystem. This will lead to native rather than alien species being favoured for protection.
Training cats and dogs
Kate Douglas’s article on whether cats or dogs make the best pets was fascinating, but there is a small gap in her research (12 December 2009, p 32). Douglas claims that “no one has really tried training cats”; she should have visited the Popovich Comedy Pet Theater.
One of the lesser-known shows on the Las Vegas strip, it involves some two dozen trained cats and dogs, performing a myriad of tricks and jumps. In conversation with Gregory Popovich after the show, he explained that you cannot train cats in the same way as you would train dogs. Cats cannot be forced to do anything; rather, you must discover what the cat enjoys and encourage it to perform this action all the more. This explains why my cat is highly trained in eating and sleeping.
How many times?
Feedback is too hasty to ridicule the News of the World newspaper for its questionnaire that caused contributor Michael Barraclough to puzzle between the first and second choices: “In a typical month, I buy the NOTW: never/less than once/1-2 times/3-4 times” (19 December 2009). If Barraclough bought a copy once every two months, he would of course have to choose “less than once”.
For the record
鈥� In our article on results from the Large Hadron Collider (12 December 2009, p 6) we said that a paper was accepted for publicaton in the European Journal of Physics. It will appear in the European Physical Journal C.