For the record 鈥� {16 Sep 2020}
The Vulcan character pictured in our look at the Star Trek franchise was Sarek, played by James Frain (5 September, p 34).
Long live the virtual ecological conference
I was surprised to find Graham Lawton relishing the thought of a trip to an Ecological Society of America conference in California (22 August, p 24). If ecological groups, of all organisations, can’t abandon their fixation with physical international conferences, then we really are in a pickle.
Does the chance to exchange ideas over a couple of drinks really justify flying thousands of miles when, by Lawton’s own admission, video conferencing ticks almost all the boxes? Virtual events are also fairer for scientists from low-income nations who may lack the funds to attend in person. So what if “aviation is only 7 per cent of global oil consumption”? When emissions come from such a wide range of sources, we can all play the game of claiming our favoured activity is responsible for only a small amount.
Other reasons we may react badly to out-groups (2)
You say that “using blind or anonymised hiring practices” may weaken unconscious bias. This reminds me of a tale, probably apocryphal, of the hiring methods of the chief pilot of an airline.
The story goes that he would take the pile of application forms and throw them down the stairs. The applicant whose form went the furthest got the job. When asked why he did things this way, he replied: “I don’t want any unlucky pilots working for me.”
Oil billionaires never asked permission
Mark Harris asks: “Should billionaires be able to start tinkering with the climate without asking the rest of us?” Surely removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is pretty benign (5 September, p 18). Shouldn’t we worry a whole lot more about the billionaires (and the rest of us) who are geoengineering the climate by adding CO2 without asking?
Other reasons we may react badly to out-groups
Your feature on unconscious bias mentions MRI experiments in which participants shown a face they saw as part of an out-group displayed increased activity in the amygdala, “the part of the brain that governs our threat response” (29 August, p 38).
Are we sure this always means they are seeing that person as a threat? Could it be a fear of communication issues instead? Accents and cultural customs with which we are unfamiliar may cause such a response 鈥� we are afraid we may mishear, misunderstand or, worse, inadvertently offend.
The article suggests that having “a diverse set of peers” may decrease bias, and likewise being exposed to and becoming familiar with a range of accents and cultures would lessen the fear of miscommunication.
On the fall in death rate for those who catch the virus
You say that the lower age of those getting infected with covid-19 doesn’t, on its own, explain the apparent decline in its deadliness (29 August, p 7). This is amid speculation of the rise of a less lethal strain. I favour a broader explanation for what we observe: we have effectively self-selected into two cohorts, those who fear the outcome of infection and those who don’t.
There are many predisposing factors for severity of the illness, of which age is but one. As a result, we have split into two halves: those continuing to practise strict isolation out of fear and so are avoiding infection, and those who are indifferent about catching the virus and so are probably doing just that. It is most likely that the second group will experience lesser illnesses overall, and so there will be proportionately far fewer cases needing a hospital bed.
Russia needs to test its coronavirus vaccine fully
Michael Marshall notes that Russia’s “Sputnik V” coronavirus vaccine hasn’t started phase III clinical trials, but has already been approved there (22 August, p 11). Phase III assesses the efficacy of a medical treatment, and some 50 per cent of all medicines tested initially fail at this stage, so it is no small issue.
Phase II trials are often designed to indicate a potentially useful safe dosage. They can only detect if a drug has any statistically relevant effects if the trials are large 鈥� including hundreds of patients. The Sputnik V “trials” reportedly involved a total of just 76 patients. The problem with this is that therapeutically effective drugs that have severe adverse effects in less than one in 1000 people are routinely withdrawn from sale.
To find ET, we must learn to think like ET
The “Star Tugs” envisioned by Yale University’s Alexander Svoronos as a form of engineering by aliens have generated quite the reaction among readers such as Chris Eve (Letters, 15 August). Yet imagining that an advanced civilisation would devise a means of moving a star system out of the way of trouble falls into the trap of applying human ingenuity to a problem. Any civilisation that is advanced enough to move a star would have their own ways of avoiding disaster that our human minds can’t begin to envisage.
Why working from home failed to launch earlier
Amid the pandemic, you posit reasons why remote working didn’t take off sooner, despite the urgings of experts like Peter Drucker (15 August, p 32). In all the discussions, you missed the most obvious and 鈥� based on my studies 鈥� probably the most influential reason: loss of power by supervising management.
There is a fairly large body of research showing that the major cause of resistance to remote work 鈥� called “telework” in the early days described by Drucker 鈥� was the management attitude of “how will I know they are working if I can’t see them?”. Even under current conditions, there remains an ingrained school of thought among management that resists anything minimising direct, personal control.
We like to think that this command-and-control model is outdated and long-since discarded, but if you walk into just about any organisation (profit, non-profit, charity, NGO etc.) you will find that reports of its demise have been greatly exaggerated.