Political science
The correspondence (8 January, p 24) regarding Dan Hind’s proposal to put research funding to the popular vote (11 December 2010, p 26) reminded me of a project I was involved in, under the inspiring leadership of the late Phil May of the University of California, Los Angeles.
Phil knew of Arrow’s impossibility theorem: that it is impossible to develop a democratic voting method that provides a consistent overall ranking from individual preferences in all situations. But he was also aware that decisions have to be made, and that funding allocation seemed to be influenced by the perceived social value of the research.
To test this, he showed volunteers, from non-clinical scientists to patients, descriptions of six biomedical research projects which had recently been funded by US government agencies. The volunteers were then asked to rate the projects.
The results were published in Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica (), and confirm the reservations expressed by your correspondents: perceptions of value depend on factors such as occupation, age, location and life experience.
Phil was adamant that the distribution of research funds was geared towards the interest of scientists rather than society, and that this should change. When his research proposal was originally submitted to US government agencies, most reacted negatively. I am amused that, 33 years later, nothing much has changed. To my knowledge there has been no follow-up research to find out more about this vital issue.
From Ian Stewart, University of Warwick
In his letter in response to Hind’s proposal, Sebastian Hayes asks: “When did you last see a job in science advertised which mentions the potential benefits to ordinary people as the main attraction?” (8 January, p 24). Had he ever glanced through the adverts at the back of New 杏吧原创 he would have seen jobs devoted to sustainable agriculture, safe use of chemicals and research into age-related chronic diseases. Many other adverts also give prominent mention to the benefits to ordinary people.
His claim that “researchers take it for granted that the public should fund their particular hobby horse ad infinitum” is ludicrous. Nowadays, gaining funding comes as a pleasant surprise, and most grant-awarding bodies demand statements of public benefit in research proposals. His wish to return to a time when science was the preserve of “disinterested amateurs” is romantic nonsense, and if implemented would kill billions of people as modern society fell to pieces.
Coventry, UK
Justifiable cuts?
Your guest editorial by Niels Morling stated that the UK’s Forensic Science Service (FSS) will be wound down for commercial reasons (8 January, p 5). While few enjoy seeing such organisations close, we live in a world of limited resources, and governments must make hard decisions about the allocation of those resources.
It seems to me that some or all of the FSS’s activities could not compete with the private sector. Arguments about the organisation’s contribution to the public good should focus on tangible outcomes from its continuation, rather than romantic notions of its history.
Virtually law
Greg Lastowka seems to argue that current law does not cover virtual property (6 November 2010, p 44), yet I believe it does. A novel can be virtual since it does not necessarily have to have a physical existence, yet the ownership is established by copyright. Would copyright law not also protect virtual objects that exist in virtual space?
Both a novel and a virtual sword, for example, can exist as descriptions rather than material objects. In the case of the sword, it is a computer that “reads” the description, but otherwise I fail to see a difference between the two states.
The editor writes:
鈥� Authors’ rights law (copyright) governs virtual objects. That is its purpose, as Henry Harris observes. Problems arise when the owners of the virtual space demand that its users assign copyright to the company: who then has the power to enforce it?
The French paradox
I was once told, by one who associates with actuaries, that the “French paradox” (25 December 2010, p 54) is a measurement artefact. In France, if an elderly person is found dead without any evidence of health problems, it is acceptable to attribute the death to “old age”. If French law decreed that a post-mortem were required in such cases, many of these deaths would be attributed to cardiac problems. This may be enough to skew the apparent rates of coronary heart disease.
Bitter beer taster
In her otherwise excellent article on the rise of bitter craft beers (25 December 2010, p 60), it was a shame that Lizzie Buchen didn’t mention a major factor in understanding the increase: some people, myself included, don’t taste bitterness.
This hereditary trait would have been of particular interest given that the article explored the evolutionary implications of people taking pleasure in the undrinkable. I believe inheriting it is a lot more complicated than a person needing two copies of a recessive gene, which is what I was taught at university. In fact, I suspect there is a spectrum of how much bitterness humans can tolerate: some can appreciate the bitterness of beer, while others recoil violently and refuse to drink it ever again.
The flavour-aroma symphonies of great beers are as complex and exciting as those of the best wines, and can still be fully appreciated even without the sledgehammer effect of bitterness.
Spirit of the hive
Daryl Bem’s experiments showing small correlations that suggest some human ability for precognition (18 December 2010, p 30) made me wonder whether a global “buzz” like that caused by the eruption of the Eyjafjallaj枚kull volcano in Iceland last year might show a similar effect.
After the eruption, hundreds of millions of people were suddenly hearing, writing, reading and saying the word “volcano”. Suppose someone had been monitoring global internet traffic around that time and logged the frequency of various words in the communications, including “volcano”. They would have been able to measure whether there was a significant increase in the occurrence of the word volcano before the eruption. Of course any traffic generated by seismologists or people living near the volcano would have to be taken into account, but could a global buzz like this somehow cast a shadow backwards in time?
The massive sample size makes this the ultimate experiment to prove or disprove the theory. All we need do is start logging and wait for the next buzz.
To erase a memory
Helen Thomson reports on reconditioning methods that manipulate the brain to remove fear responses (11 December 2010, p 12). This is something I have been doing for around 20 years.
One day I challenged my fear of dogs and discovered the source was a childhood memory. Once I had realised this, I was able to reason that, just because one dog, one day, had a go at me does not mean they are all going to do the same. I talked myself out of my fear and am now quite happy to be around dogs. After that, whenever a fear or negative idea came to mind, I looked to my childhood for the original fear-inducing experience and challenged my assumptions and conditioning.
At the age of 60, I have challenged most of my fears. A lot of them stemmed from ideas about myself that I created to help me deal with emotionally overwhelming experiences when I was too immature to cope with them in other ways.
I, Human, not robot
Mohammad Mehdi Daneshi argues that he can create a justification for judicial punishment by describing a person as a “human robot” (11 December 2010, p 29). “If our human robot malfunctions, it is quite proper to take steps to correct him or her,” he says.
How are we supposed to decide what constitutes a malfunction? We know when a robot malfunctions because we know what behaviour was intended by its designer. Not so for humans, who are evolved beings and whose designer, natural selection, is notoriously uncommunicative.
This is far from being an academic point. The Chinese government might say that it was trying to correct the behaviour of Liu Xiaobo, and many leading political figures in the US clearly wish to correct Julian Assange.
Carrying the analogy further, a robot is subject to its designer and there are no limits to what that designer may properly do to get the behaviour they want. So if people were merely “human robots”, forced medication and torture, if effective, would be justified.
No justification of such unlimited coercion can possibly be acceptable in a humane society.
Clip it, Clippy
In Douglas Fox’s article about why we treat things like people (27 November 2010, p 32), he mentions Microsoft’s annoying animated paperclip. That it is referred to as “Clippy” throughout the article, while its actual name is “Clippit”, is a good indication of just how forgotten it is.
It isn’t the only piece of technology to be commonly misnamed, either. Many people refer to a particular city get-about as the Smart Car when it is, of course, just called Smart.
Maybe there ought to be a name for the phenomenon where something is known more widely by an erroneous name than by its correct one?
For the record
鈥� We’re sorry if we caused you to go hungry this month. When discussing the angle of a pizza slice in our interview with Michael Hartl (8 January, p 23), we should have said that he was working in radians, not degrees.