Progs rocked
Alex Berezow and Hank Campbell are correct to claim that progressives can be selective in their use of science (2 February, p 24), but in making a muddled distinction between science and ideology, they fall into the trap they criticise in others.
Take their example of genetically modified crops. Scientific hypotheses about GM crops can be formulated and answered more or less objectively. But whatever the results, it doesn’t necessarily follow that one should embrace “technological progress, such as GM crops”. Technological progress is an ideological, not a scientific term, with a whole series of social, political and economic correlates.
This conflation of science with ideology illuminates the scepticism of many progressives, who have a keener eye than Berezow and Campbell for the way that “science” is too often used as a magic incantation to lend respectability to ideological commitments.
Most progressives are not against vaccines; most biodegradable spoons do not dissolve in soup; and if progressives are waging war against academics who question their ideology, it is one fought with mere cotton balls for bullets and feathers for swords.
By contrast, when people talk about a Republican war on science, they mean hundreds of millions of dollars spent spreading falsehoods and getting scientists fired.
It is heartening to read your editorial about freedom of thought (2 February, p 3) when an unholy alliance of scientific and political correctness is threatening free enquiry and publication in the West.
As Berezow and Campbell state (p 24), this combination is formidable, since the political wing of this discourse gives the “scientific” wing moral authority, and the scientific wing gives the other intellectual credibility.
Shaftesbury, Dorset, UK
Greener opposition
Given talk of Republican resistance to tackling climate change, it is ironic that a large proportion of the emissions cuts President Obama has pledged to make (2 February, p 10) will be met by private-sector fracking initiatives, opposed by a caucus of Democrats, and California state policies initiated under a Republican governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger. As well as this, large corporations are improving the efficiency of their plants and the vehicles they produce under the principles established by the Clean Air Act, which was last amended during .
Cirrus omission
You report a proposal to reverse global warming by seeding the atmosphere to reduce cirrus cloud cover (26 January, p 14), but you do not address the assumption that . Whether or not it does may depend on the shape and size of the ice crystals in these clouds.
Evidence is growing that cirrus may reflect more solar radiation than once assumed. If so, the proposal would warm, rather than cool the climate.
Bullet points
Your editorial rightly decried the National Rifle Association’s “strangling of research” on US gun violence as “utterly reprehensible” (26 January, p 3). As recognised in a 2005 US National Research Council report, there is a need for better firearms data and deeper investigation of the causal relationships underlying gun violence. But there is already compelling evidence to guide policy.
Consider just three points: the US is home to 35 to 50 per cent of the world’s civilian-owned firearms; US civilians own four times as many automatic and semi-automatic rifles as the US army; the firearm homicide rate in the US is many times higher than in other . Surely, violence is to be expected where gun ownership is widespread, automatic weapons are abundant and gun ownership laws are weak.
More evidence will not generate fresh answers, nor influence those who continue to champion the Second Amendment.
鈥� The evidence regarding how to act appears to be less clear than the statistics suggest (20 December 2012, newscientist.com/article/dn23026).
Caustic reflections
My memory was jogged by the reference to Chinese magic mirrors in Philip Ball’s article on how the optical phenomena known as caustics can be used to create intricate images (2 February, p 40).
, by R. Austin Freeman, includes a description of how the mirrors were made. Freeman wrote detective stories, most featuring a scientific twist. The Magic Casket was first published in 1927, five years before William Henry Bragg’s explanation of the mirrors.
鈥� I’m not sure that the explanation in the book corresponds exactly to Bragg’s, not least because the details of the fabrication process are at odds. However, there is clearly overlap in the idea that somehow an imperceptible raised image appears on the mirrored side.
Division of labour
Jared Diamond states that “in our complex society, 2 per cent of the people can produce all the food” and that traditional tribes, in which every member has to help obtain food, would regard the rest of us as “freeloaders” and “parasites” (12 January, p 26).
Thankfully, in our complex society we have highly productive farmers that keep all of us from having to eke out a subsistence existence, so we are free to pursue other varied, productive activities.
I dreamed a dream?
Your special report on sleep looked at dreams (2 February, p 31). To what extent does describing dreams to a researcher modify your dreaming on subsequent nights?
Cushioned impact
Nigel Henbest’s feature “Close call” looked at averting the threat to Earth from asteroid strikes (26 January, p 42). I wonder if deploying a large number of balloons might work, in the manner of a bouncy castle.
Uncanny idea
I would like to suggest a few follow-up experiments that might shed more light on the “uncanny valley” 鈥� the feeling of unease when faced with a humanoid robot (12 January, p 35).
If part of the reason for the discomfort is that it is impossible to pin down the emotional state of such robots, then it is possible that people with autism might not experience as much discomfort. Alternatively, some of them may experience similar levels of discomfort with humans and androids.
It may thus be of interest to test how people with varying degrees of autism react. Besides providing more information about the uncanny valley, the experiment might also increase our understanding of that condition.
Subsidised pollution
Fred Pearce wrote about the upcoming decision on the proposed Keystone XL pipeline to bring tar sands oil from Canada to the US (26 January, p 26). One has to ask: why are we mining tar sands? We don’t need to.
The problem is that carbon burners pay nothing for their pollution. Yet if I ran a factory belching out, say, lead arsenate, I would be required to clean up every atom of this harmful material. I would pass on the cost to the consumers of my products.
Now apply this model to fossil fuel. If oil companies had to pay for the clean-up of every molecule of carbon dioxide their product created, the cost of fuel would soar. Overnight, renewable energy would become the cheaper option.
We taxpayers subsidise the fossil fuel mega corporations as we pay for the climate costs of CO2 emissions. Put a real price on carbon and close down fossil fuel. We’re an inventive lot. We’ll come up with alternatives.
Sparing chimps
I am pleased that the National Institutes of Health is leading the way towards the phasing out of US medical research using chimpanzees (2 February, p 4).
However, I don’t accept the suggestion in your report that the move will slow research on a hepatitis C vaccine. Our emphasis should be on existing research methods using human subjects, and the development of more such methods.
You did watt?
The commissioning of the Notrees battery facility in Texas to store surplus electricity from wind is interesting, but your story confuses energy and power (2 February, p 20). It makes no sense to speak of storing megawatts of power: it is energy, denoted in joules or (mega)watt-hours, which is stored.
Heated issue
The recommendation by the royal commission in Victoria, Australia, for a “retreat and resettlement” strategy for homeowners in areas of “unacceptable” bushfire risk was a knee-jerk reaction (19 January, p 12). Many factors behind increased vulnerability to bushfires remain to be properly addressed. These include reluctance to replace native fire-prone vegetation with more resistant species, and poor planning of towns and homes with regard to fire risk.
It is not necessary to retreat from areas of “unacceptable” risk. What we need is an integrated, scientific approach to fire vulnerability in terms of roads, vegetation and architecture.
Poor compensation
Letter writer Brian Farrington is mistaken if he thinks free electricity will persuade people to accept a wind farm near their house (2 February, p 28). I know of people unable to sell property at any price because of a nearby wind farm. So the idea of offering a few hundred pounds of free electricity is insulting.