快猫短视频 bias
Thank you for publishing the revealing letter from Ceri Thomas, head of programmes at BBC News, which tells us exactly why the BBC coverage of climate change has been so flawed (19 April, p 33).
Thomas wrote that we should hear “other viewpoints” in the climate change debate. So a scientific consensus is treated as no more than an opinion. Later, he rejects the distinction between “scientific fact and sceptic fiction” and insists on treating the science as one side of an “ongoing debate”. This isn’t in the public interest as claimed.
If the failure to understand science in the top management of the BBC weren’t so tragic, it would be worthy of your Feedback page.
Edinburgh, UK
快猫短视频 bias
Ceri Thomas defends the BBC coverage of climate change, writing: “it is important to hear other viewpoints about the extent of climate change and what should be done about it”. That is a very laudable position for a public broadcaster in assisting public discussion about the options for taking action on climate change.
However, I’m unsure as to what he is actually talking about with reference to these viewpoints, and this may reflect a similar lack of clarity within the BBC itself. In “reflecting the different sides of an ongoing debate”, it isn’t clear to which debate Thomas is referring, and it would be helpful to this discussion if he would define this.
Canberra, ACT, Australia
Sexism in science
I feel sorry for Haruko Obokata, who has been found guilty of misconduct by her research institute in Japan (19 April, p 7). Stem cell research is a high-stakes field and it is right that other scientists will seek to repeat work of such potential importance. But really, was she the only author on the two papers published in Nature? Did she rush to publish against the advice of her PhD supervisor and senior colleagues? Was she the only person who might have enhanced her career on the basis of this finding?
How fortunate Watson and Crick were that their proposed structure of DNA was (nearly) correct, and similarly J茅r么me Lejeune (5 April, p 44) was lucky that the majority 鈥� although not all 鈥� of Down’s cases are based on trisomy 21. If their early conclusions had been doubted by other researchers, would they have taken the flak, or would they have had to acknowledge the contributions of their anonymous female colleagues so that they could take the blame for a hasty publication?
Leigh Town, Devon, UK
Coal alternative
In his story “IPCC: Go big on clean energy and catch carbon”, Fred Pearce highlights the societal, political and economic challenges of capturing, transporting and storing carbon dioxide emissions (19 April, p 9). In the final paragraph, he quotes Jochen Flasbarth as saying that “buried CO2 is seen as almost as bad as nuclear waste” in Germany.
One solution involves reacting coal with oxygen and either magnesium silicate or magnesium hydroxide, deposits of which are found around the globe. Such reactions release around 20 per cent more energy than burning coal, and the carbon produced is permanently locked-up in the minerals formed, so no CO2 needs to be separated, transported or stored.
The principle offers a simple solution for large-scale emissions reduction, but more research is needed to speed up these reactions without resorting to high pressures and temperatures.
We need to think outside the triangle of CO2 capture, pipeline transport and underground storage that currently defines carbon capture and storage technology and policy.
Cambridge, UK
Conscious cognition
I enjoyed Max Tegmark’s article on consciousness, which argued that a conscious system must strike a balance between too little integration, such as a liquid, and too much integration, such as a solid (12 April, p 28).
I agree with his suggestion that consciousness is maximised near the phase transition between less and more ordered states, but I think it would be more accurate to say that consciousness resembles the liquid state rather than the solid state (too ordered) and a gas (too disordered).
Life itself can be regarded as a balance between chaos and order. This dynamic balance is the hallmark of living systems, and perhaps consciousness too.
Blockley, Gloucestershire, UK
Conscious cognition
Much is written on consciousness, but perhaps its basic essence is most understandable on an evolutionary neurological level.
Presumably, the first vestigial senses of pressure, pain, sight, hearing and so on gave an evolutionary advantage. If more than one of these senses develops in an organism, and those senses can connect and work together, the advantages accrue, inadvertently giving rise to a very primitive neural network.
Before long, you have an organism that can correlate this information. If it then develops some sort of memory that allows interpretation of the sensory input, it would make the whole information-gathering system much more valuable in terms of survival. Thus, almost as a side issue, we have the first seeds of consciousness, which once established continues to develop.
Long Ashton, Bristol, UK
Patent revolution
In his letter, David Ray queries the role of patenting on innovation, suggesting that it may stifle the development of technology (19 April, p 33). This may be so, but it is balanced by the fact that much technology may not have been developed without patent rights.
In his 2010 book The Most Powerful Idea In The World, William Rosen puts forward the idea that the greatest facilitator of the industrial revolution in the UK was the institution of the early patent system. Prior to this, scientists were almost all gentlemen with private means or royal patronage, such as Newton, Hooke and Boyle, who wouldn’t dirty their hands with anything more mechanical than lens grinding or watchmaking.
In contrast, those with practical mechanical knowledge were mostly working class. Rosen gives the example of James Watt’s steam engine, which took almost 10 years to create. Almost every component had to be invented, all to tolerances and precision unknown until then. Substantial investment was needed, and without a monopoly on the technology for a set period of time to guarantee returns, these investments would never have been made. Without patents the industrial revolution would have been a long-drawn-out process, rather than the rapid explosion of technology and science it was.
Dorrigo, New South Wales, Australia
Call time on traders
Your article on atomic time for high-speed trading (19 April, p 12) is the latest of many such pieces about mathematical and technical innovations in financial activities presented as if they were improvements.
Making money out of stock market fluctuations is a purely parasitic activity, sucking money from and destabilising the real economy. The so-called improvements just enable one parasite to rob us more quickly than its competitor.
A real improvement would be a legal end to the fiction that a finance house “owns” something for a millisecond or less, and a return to actual investment and proper trade.
Leeds, UK
Swiss model
Is “strong” government really one of the factors that prevents war (19 April, p 28)? How exactly do you define “strong”? Undemocratic, perhaps?
Like most theories about war, the disproof can be summed up in one word: Switzerland. This is a small country that is highly decentralised, democratic, stable, prosperous and with four language groups coexisting peacefully. It has seen no war since 1815. Unlike other country’s citizens, the Swiss can control or remove their leaders through citizen-initiated referendums.
It would seem that effective people-power coupled with the absence of want are more effective guarantors of peace. In this day and age, when governments everywhere seem to be becoming more totalitarian, we should be on our guard against arguments for concentrating power and removing it from the control of ordinary people.
Bristol, UK
Checkered memory
I have never read such balderdash before in 快猫短视频. Michael Ramscar and Harald Baayen believe that cognitive decline is not an inevitable part of growing older (22 March, p 28). But in order to build up their case, they are using the wrong tests and thus reaching the wrong conclusions.
I have played chess keenly for 80 years, and have watched my rating decline steadily with age until I dropped out of the bottom of club chess. I gave up playing because it clearly underlined my own cognitive decline. I can still analyse the possible development of a position, but I cannot compare the current analysis with an alternative I calculated five minutes earlier.
My aunt, a language teacher, could still converse with me in French, German or English in her old age but she could not remember the first chapter of a book, even after reading it half a dozen times.
Words go deep into the mind. Ramscar and Baayen should try testing cognitive ability with short-term memory and decision-making, not just with word games.
Andover, Hampshire, UK
Bad advice
Michael Pawson congratulates himself on having advised women seeking to conceive to give up their high-powered jobs (12 April, p 32).
I know someone who was so advised, and gave up her job but didn’t become pregnant. She merely had plenty of time to dwell on her grief, and not enough else to give meaning and purpose to her life. How many other such cases are there? Doctors should be careful when interfering in the lives of their patients without scientific support for their recommendations.
Name and address supplied
Gravity's draw
On the subject of antigravity (19 April, p 34), understanding the essential nature of forces that act at a distance, such as magnetism and gravity, must be one of the most exciting challenges in science.
Gravity is very obvious in our everyday world, and because we are so accustomed to its positive pull, it is hard to conceive of a negative gravity.
Positive gravity has enough tantalising properties to keep us going for the moment 鈥� for instance, an object, no matter how small, generates gravity; it can’t be shielded against; and it isn’t lost when two masses collide under its force.
I have no doubts that these forces will one day be thoroughly understood.
St Peters, South Australia
Who will mourn?
Gareth Jones’s emotive plea on behalf of unclaimed dead bodies (19 April, p 26) is completely unconvincing.
Who cares about them? Certainly not the living, otherwise the bodies would be claimed. And certainly not the dead, for they are long past caring. Even if someone were to care during life, their wishes have no standing in law since the disposal of a body is at the discretion of the executor of the person’s will 鈥� none, in the case of those who lie unclaimed.
It is certainly worth discussing whether dissection is the best way to teach anatomy to medical students, but this isn’t the purpose of Jones’s article. If anything is to be done for what Jones calls these vulnerable people, surely it is better for help to be given during their lifetime when they might gain some advantage from it, rather than beating one’s breast about their fate once they are dead.
Great Ryburgh, Norfolk, UK