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A blockbuster year
EDITORIAL
LOCATIONS UK Lacon House, 84 Theobald’s Road, London WC1X 8NS Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1200 Fax +44 (0) 20 7611 1250 Australia Tower 2, 475 Victoria Avenue, Chatswood, NSW 2067 Tel +61 2 9422 2666 Fax +61 2 9422 2633 USA 225 Wyman Street, Waltham, MA 02451 Tel +1 781 734 8770 Fax +1 720 356 9217 201 Mission Street, 26th Floor, San Francisco, CA 94105 Tel +1 415 908 3348 Fax +1 415 704 3125 to SUBSCRIbe UK and International Tel +44 (0) 8456 731 731 [email protected] The price of a New Scientist annual subscription is UK £143, Europe €228, USA $154, Canada C$182, Rest of World $293. Postmaster: Send address changes to New Scientist, PO Box 3806, Chesterfield, MO 63006-9953, USA. cONTACTS Editorial Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1202 [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Picture desk Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1268 Who’s who newscientist.com/people Contact us newscientist.com/contact Enquiries Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1202 Display Advertising Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1291 [email protected] Recruitment Advertising UK Tel +44 (0) 20 8652 4444 [email protected] Permission for reuse [email protected] Media enquiries Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1202 Marketing Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1286 Back Issues & Merchandise Tel +44 (0) 1733 385170 Syndication Tribune Media Services International Tel +44 (0) 20 7588 7588 UK Newsagents Tel +44 (0) 20 3148 3333 Newstrade distributed by Marketforce UK Ltd, The Blue Fin Building, 110 Southwark St, London SE1 OSU Tel: + 44 (0) 20 8148 3333 © 2011 Reed Business Information Ltd, England New Scientist is published weekly by Reed Business Information Ltd. ISSN 0262 4079. Registered at the Post Office as a newspaper and printed in England by Polestar (Colchester)
A blockbuster year Next year let’s deal with the world as it is, not as we would like it to be “BEGIN with an earthquake a massive concern everywhere and work up to a climax.” That from the Arab street to Wall Street. aphorism, usually attributed to Yet our understanding of whether legendary film producer Samuel or how it should be addressed has Goldwyn, epitomises Hollywood’s only recently advanced beyond attitude to movie-making: when trickle-down dogma. In general, you’ve got no better ideas, simply trials of social innovation – in throw everything at the screen drugs policy, say – are flimsily and hope to dazzle the viewer. designed, and politically This year has felt like one of inexpedient outcomes rejected. Goldwyn’s movies, beginning Genuinely evidence-based with the first-act earthquake in policymaking remains the Japan and working up to the exception, rather than the rule. financial crisis in Europe, via Behavioural psychology and nuclear disaster, tumult in the agent-based modelling have long Middle East, the assassination of undermined the foundations of the world’s most wanted man and neoclassical economics, in which particles that travel faster than investors are deemed all-knowing light. At times, the news was more “Ideology has come to gripping than anything prevail over evidence; Hollywood was producing. blind faith has triumphed And more bewildering, too. over reason” To put it in cinematic terms: this year’s storyline has been pretty difficult to follow. Even and speculative bubbles no more the “experts” have been left than occasional blips. Until now. struggling to anticipate or Are financial markets too free, explain the course of events. or not free enough? No one yet Why? Because they, like the knows how to answer that rest of us, have been seduced by question. Only recently have simplistic models of complex we started to look for clues in systems that range from social network analysis (see page 31). policy to market economics to the The problems of perpetual environment. Ideology has come growth have long been discussed, to prevail over evidence; among too: we are clearly consuming some factions, blind faith – in resources at an unsustainable markets, destiny or deities – has rate. But alternatives are triumphed over reason. dismissed as woolly crankery, and Social inequality has become change fiercely resisted: witness
the furore over climate change. In short, the world doesn’t just resemble a blockbuster movie; it’s being run like one too. And that can’t be good. As acclaimed writer William Golding said about Hollywood in his 1983 memoir Adventures in the Screen Trade, “nobody knows anything”. Rules of thumb, hunches and received wisdom have proved time and again to be no substitute for genuine understanding. Now the movie business is trying to change that, using computers to pace films and brain scans of viewer reactions. That may sound far-fetched and perhaps even sinister. But the best way to make progress is to consider fresh new ideas, test them and accept the lessons learned, no matter how unsettling they may be. When researchers discovered in September that neutrinos might be able to travel faster than light, they did not simply dismiss their findings out of hand. They checked them carefully, published them and awaited confirmation. While few physicists may expect it to come, most would be delighted if it did. Some are already cooking up new models of reality. That speaks to a willingness to deal with the world as it is, not as we would like it to be. We should go into 2012 in that spirit. n
Win the 10 best science books of 2011 HERE at New Scientist we aim to keep you up to date with the wonderful world of science, from cosmology and quantum physics to evolution and the brain. By necessity we have to be brief: so much to report, so little time. Now and then it is a pleasure to delve deeper. That is one reason why our CultureLab section exists – to
keep track of popular science books and bring the very best to your attention. For bibliophiles, 2011 has been a bumper year. Here’s an opportunity to fill your shelves with 10 of the best. We have three sets of the year’s best science books to give away, including a signed copy of The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven
Pinker and copies of books by Mark Changizi, Richard Dawkins, David Deutsch, David Eagleman, Richard Fortey, Brian Greene, Daniel Kahneman, Lisa Randall and Robert Trivers. For your chance to win a set of all 10 books, visit newscientist.com/ bestbooks2011. n
24/31 December 2011 | NewScientist | 3
LOCATIONS UK Lacon House, 84 Theobald’s Road, London WC1X 8NS Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1200 Fax +44 (0) 20 7611 1250 Australia Tower 2, 475 Victoria Avenue, Chatswood, NSW 2067 Tel +61 2 9422 2666 Fax +61 2 9422 2633 USA 225 Wyman Street, Waltham, MA 02451 Tel +1 781 734 8770 Fax +1 720 356 9217 201 Mission Street, 26th Floor, San Francisco, CA 94105 Tel +1 415 908 3348 Fax +1 415 704 3125 to SUBSCRIbe UK and International Tel +44 (0) 8456 731 731 [email protected] The price of a New Scientist annual subscription is UK £143, Europe €228, USA $154, Canada C$182, Rest of World $293. Postmaster: Send address changes to New Scientist, PO Box 3806, Chesterfield, MO 63006-9953, USA. cONTACTS Editorial Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1202 [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Picture desk Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1268 Who’s who newscientist.com/people Contact us newscientist.com/contact Enquiries Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1202 Display Advertising Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1291 [email protected] Recruitment Advertising UK Tel +44 (0) 20 8652 4444 [email protected] Permission for reuse [email protected] Media enquiries Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1202 Marketing Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1286 Back Issues & Merchandise Tel +44 (0) 1733 385170 Syndication Tribune Media Services International Tel +44 (0) 20 7588 7588 UK Newsagents Tel +44 (0) 20 3148 3333 Newstrade distributed by Marketforce UK Ltd, The Blue Fin Building, 110 Southwark St, London SE1 OSU Tel: + 44 (0) 20 8148 3333 © 2011 Reed Business Information Ltd, England New Scientist is published weekly by Reed Business Information Ltd. ISSN 0262 4079. Registered at the Post Office as a newspaper and printed in England by Polestar (Colchester)
A blockbuster year Next year let’s deal with the world as it is, not as we would like it to be “BEGIN with an earthquake a massive concern everywhere and work up to a climax.” That from the Arab street to Wall Street. aphorism, usually attributed to Yet our understanding of whether legendary film producer Samuel or how it should be addressed has Goldwyn, epitomises Hollywood’s only recently advanced beyond attitude to movie-making: when trickle-down dogma. In general, you’ve got no better ideas, simply trials of social innovation – in throw everything at the screen drugs policy, say – are flimsily and hope to dazzle the viewer. designed, and politically This year has felt like one of inexpedient outcomes rejected. Goldwyn’s movies, beginning Genuinely evidence-based with the first-act earthquake in policymaking remains the Japan and working up to the exception, rather than the rule. financial crisis in Europe, via Behavioural psychology and nuclear disaster, tumult in the agent-based modelling have long Middle East, the assassination of undermined the foundations of the world’s most wanted man and neoclassical economics, in which particles that travel faster than investors are deemed all-knowing light. At times, the news was more “Ideology has come to gripping than anything prevail over evidence; Hollywood was producing. blind faith has triumphed And more bewildering, too. over reason” To put it in cinematic terms: this year’s storyline has been pretty difficult to follow. Even and speculative bubbles no more the “experts” have been left than occasional blips. Until now. struggling to anticipate or Are financial markets too free, explain the course of events. or not free enough? No one yet Why? Because they, like the knows how to answer that rest of us, have been seduced by question. Only recently have simplistic models of complex we started to look for clues in systems that range from social network analysis (see page 31). policy to market economics to the The problems of perpetual environment. Ideology has come growth have long been discussed, to prevail over evidence; among too: we are clearly consuming some factions, blind faith – in resources at an unsustainable markets, destiny or deities – has rate. But alternatives are triumphed over reason. dismissed as woolly crankery, and Social inequality has become change fiercely resisted: witness
the furore over climate change. In short, the world doesn’t just resemble a blockbuster movie; it’s being run like one too. And that can’t be good. As acclaimed writer William Golding said about Hollywood in his 1983 memoir Adventures in the Screen Trade, “nobody knows anything”. Rules of thumb, hunches and received wisdom have proved time and again to be no substitute for genuine understanding. Now the movie business is trying to change that, using computers to pace films and brain scans of viewer reactions. That may sound far-fetched and perhaps even sinister. But the best way to make progress is to consider fresh new ideas, test them and accept the lessons learned, no matter how unsettling they may be. When researchers discovered in September that neutrinos might be able to travel faster than light, they did not simply dismiss their findings out of hand. They checked them carefully, published them and awaited confirmation. While few physicists may expect it to come, most would be delighted if it did. Some are already cooking up new models of reality. That speaks to a willingness to deal with the world as it is, not as we would like it to be. We should go into 2012 in that spirit. n
Win the 10 best science books of 2011 HERE at New Scientist we aim to keep you up to date with the wonderful world of science, from cosmology and quantum physics to evolution and the brain. By necessity we have to be brief: so much to report, so little time. Now and then it is a pleasure to delve deeper. That is one reason why our CultureLab section exists – to
keep track of popular science books and bring the very best to your attention. For bibliophiles, 2011 has been a bumper year. Here’s an opportunity to fill your shelves with 10 of the best. We have three sets of the year’s best science books to give away, including a signed copy of The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven
Pinker and copies of books by Mark Changizi, Richard Dawkins, David Deutsch, David Eagleman, Richard Fortey, Brian Greene, Daniel Kahneman, Lisa Randall and Robert Trivers. For your chance to win a set of all 10 books, visit newscientist.com/ bestbooks2011. n
24/31 December 2011 | NewScientist | 3