BBC balance
Bob Ward writes that the BBC is vital to the public debate on climate change but that we are sacrificing accuracy for impartiality in our coverage (newscientist.com/article/dn25353). The BBC covers the issue of climate change comprehensively and we do our utmost to report on this complex subject as clearly and accurately as possible.
The vast majority of our interviews on the subject are conducted with climate scientists, but it is important to hear other viewpoints about the extent of climate change and what should be done about it. This stance is not the result of lobbying by sceptics, as Bob Ward suggests, but a commitment to impartiality outlined in the BBC guidelines. On publication of Steve Jones’s report on our science coverage, we agreed that we should avoid false balance between climate scientists and sceptics and this is what we are doing. While we may not always get this right, we would ask people not to judge our extensive coverage across TV, radio and online on the basis of a few instances. We feature a small number of dissenting voices in our coverage, not because we seek to be impartial between “scientific fact and sceptic fiction”, as Bob Ward suggests, but because reflecting the different sides of an ongoing debate is very much in the public interest.
London, UK
No smoke without ire
Sally Davies, the chief medical officer for England, is wrong on e-cigarettes (5 April, p 29). If the marketing of these devices is “often aimed at children”, as Davies suggests, then it has been a spectacular failure. E-cigarette use is rare among young people, and confined mostly to those who have smoked cigarettes. E-cigarettes are now the most popular choice for those who want to quit smoking. The rise of the e-cigarette has seen no increase in tobacco consumption, rather the reverse, as cigarette sales continue to drop. It is more plausible that e-cigarettes are a gateway out of smoking, rather than into it. That must be a good thing. Davies takes issue with the word “vape” to describe e-cigarette use, and suggests this risks normalising smoking. On the contrary, the terminology indicates that “vapers” distance their activities from “smokers” and “smoking”. We have a staggering level of smoking in the UK, despite all the good efforts to reduce it. Time for public health to get on-side and support this consumer-based health movement.
London, UK
<i>From Graham Saxby</i>
I have something to add to Alan Larman’s experience of seeing ultraviolet (15 March, p 33). I underwent a cataract operation involving eye lens replacements. Some time later I visited a research lab at the University of Cambridge. The team had just taken delivery of a UV laser emitting a beam with a wavelength of 355 nanometres, and was having trouble aligning it in their optical set-up. I found I could see the beam clearly, and aligned it for them without difficulty.
When they asked me what colour I saw, I had to tell them that it was, disappointingly, no different from the violet light from their existing 405-nanometre laser, which they could all see. I wonder whether anyone has researched this interesting phenomenon.
Wolverhampton, UK
<i>From Graham Saxby</i>
There are widely reported inaccuracies about human colour vision. The absolute range of retinal sensitivity extends from near-ultraviolet to near-infrared. Strong, and possibly harmful, illumination is necessary to see these extremes. As we age there is increasing absorption of near-UV light by the eye’s lens, and so it becomes harder to perceive. A child can dimly see UV light with a wavelength down to 350 nanometres, but in older people this limit retreats to about 380 nanometres. Some people who have had an eye lens removed and replaced with a UV-transparent one can see down to about 310 nanometres. Below this, the cornea itself absorbs UV.
At the other end of the spectrum, the nominal upper limit of human colour vision is about 760 nanometres, edging into near-infrared. Vegetation reflects about 90 per cent at this wavelength, so most people would be able to see the scene in your “invisible” infrared photograph (22 March, p 42), using the right filtering and adapting to the dim light.
Napier, New Zealand
Nuclear plant
In your article on metal-eating plants, Katia Moskvitch writes that phytomining 鈥� using plants to extract metal from the ground 鈥� is for the moment mainly focused on the uptake of nickel by some Alyssum species (22 March, p 46). This is good news for those of us who worry we are leaving a poisoned planet to our grandchildren. Perhaps would-be phytominers would be further encouraged by a note in John Emsley’s fine book Nature’s Building Blocks, located at the end of the section on uranium. He writes that in 1998 researchers discovered the lichen Trapelia involuta growing on spoil heaps of an abandoned uranium mine in Cornwall, UK. Investigation by X-ray showed that the lichen was absorbing and storing uranium in the walls of its outer fruit cells, and appeared to be unaffected by the radioactive metal.
Kent, UK
Nuclear plant
One theme that ran through Katia Moskvitch’s feature is that commercial exploitation of phytomining technology is expected to take off when key patents expire. This underlines the importance for researchers to distinguish between the real and perceived impact of patents on the intellectual property. C茅sar Milstein and the University of Cambridge are consistently criticised for not patenting monoclonal antibodies (mAb), on the grounds that the UK economy did not benefit as it might have from the huge wealth created by this technology. But perhaps the scale of this wealth creation would have been markedly constrained if the mAb intellectual property had been controlled by a single pharmaceutical company for 20 years. One only has to look at the failure of aptamers to create an equivalent level of wealth in the two decades during which that technology has been controlled by two US biotechs. That said, there are of course technology companies that have created considerable wealth on the back of extensive patenting combined with aggressive exploitation of innovation: Arm and Xaar spring to mind. Perhaps the time is ripe for 快猫短视频 to examine patenting and wealth creation?
Milton Keynes, UK
Population problem
It was good to see the full detail of how China’s unpleasant one-child policy worked and its ineffectiveness compared with other factors affecting population such as increased education (22 March, p 26). Unfortunately China’s policy has cast a shadow over the whole idea of any country having a policy on population control. And that’s despite the effectiveness 鈥� and humanity 鈥� of such policies in countries such as Iran and Bangladesh.
This is a pity because, in spite of Wang Feng’s assertion that population growth was no more than a chapter in human history, such policies are still badly needed in many parts of the world. The continuing huge population increases in developing countries are likely to undo much of the economic development these countries have achieved to date. It would be helpful if we could have a more balanced view on population growth instead of a complacent one.
St Albans, Hertfordshire, UK
Potato pests
From David Shaw, S谩rv谩ri Research Trust
If the disease Andrew Sanderson observed (29 March, p 31) on his blight-resistant Sarpo potato varieties (but not on his blight-susceptible Kestrel variety) really was late blight caused by Phytophthora infestans, it might indicate that the Sarpos’ resistance had been eroded by genetic change in the pathogen.
On the other hand, there are several other much more likely explanations. Diseases like early blight and grey mould can easily be confused with blight, as can symptoms of nutrient deficiency that are quite commonly observed in one of the Sarpo varieties. Even if late blight was present, the Kestrel plants could have escaped infection if they had grown in a drier microclimate; leaf wetness is essential to allow spores to infect.
Bangor, Gwynedd, UK
Shakes and ladders
I suffer a milder fear of heights than Jessica Hamzelou (15 March, p 34) but her article’s opening picture was nevertheless enough to trigger increased heart rate, tension and a morbid urge to look again. I have found gradual exposure to be very effective but not long-lasting. Over many years I occasionally pruned some tall trees that overhung my house and the power lines in the street. I would climb a ladder to the first, quite low branch, then haul the ladder up and tie it to the tree so that I could ascend to my mental limit 鈥� the second branch. Yet just two hours later I would be crawling out along branches, over the power lines, enjoying the novel views of distant hills and the bay. The following year’s pruning always started slowly, with tied on ladders again.
Melbourne, Australia
Buzz off
Stripes disrupt a zebra’s outline, making it more difficult for large predators to see them (22 March, p 38). This is certainly true but they may well have other purposes hidden from our visual system. Insects such as the tsetse fly, which goes after big game, can see ultraviolet light. They are attracted to what appear to us as dark colours like blacks and browns 鈥� the colours of their favourite targets, cattle and buffalo. To tsetse flies, these UV-reflective surfaces are veritable beacons to home in on. By being striped, zebras could also be using their colour patterns to reduce UV reflectance and so conceal themselves from tsetse flies.
Catching these flies is certainly easier if you have someone (in my case my wife) to attract them by dressing in a light top and dark trousers. As the tsetse catcher, I wore uniform beige and they ignored me.
Hurstpierpoint, West Sussex, UK
Earth shattering
Colin Stuart’s article on what makes planets ideal homes (15 March, p 38) could have included another important feature of Earth 鈥� tectonics. Renewing mountain ranges after the levelling by weather redistributes the elements and sustains the geochemical cycling.
Without tectonic cycling, our planet would become stagnant and close to homogeneous, with few niches for the abundant life forms we now have.
Missoula, Montana, US
Plural possessive
As the father of two daughters, I would dispute something in Linda Geddes’s article on the first signs of human possessiveness. Susan Gelman is quoted as saying that a 3-year-old protesting about another child’s toy being taken does not involve self-interest (March 29, p 40). On the contrary, it is all about self-interest. They know very well that if another child’s toy can be taken away, their own toy could be next, and they aren’t going to stand for that.
Monkseaton, Tyne and Wear, UK
Anti-gravity
In discussing gravitational waves (22 March, p 8), Lisa Grossman quotes Alan Guth of MIT as saying “Inflation depends on a kind of material that turns gravity on its head and causes it to be repulsive.” Could this be cavorite, the material dreamed up by H. G. Wells, which astronauts used to propel their spaceship in his 1901 science fiction classic, The First Men in the Moon?
London, UK
Warning signs
I always wondered why smokers ignored “No Smoking” signs at the entrance to London Waterloo Station. It seems the reason can be found in your invisibility special (22 March, p 32): the prohibition signs prompt smokers to smoke!
Worcester Park, Surrey, UK