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Bugged by bugs
See newscientist.com for letters on: ● Cybrid vigour ● Electric clouds ● True threats to reason ● Dragon death pose pictures
eat to contribute to, or to be patented and owned by, a reckless, ruthless chemical organisation. Newmarket, Suffolk, UK From Patrick Murray Dan Hind highlighted an important issue facing western society: that of ideological dominance, which leads the intelligentsia to avoid criticising the crimes of their own states and instead to focus on those of the “official” enemy. It is very easy, for example, to condemn the weak as terrorists. The condemnation of the strong is a rare activity indeed. The historical record shows that terrorism is usually a weapon of the strong, not the weak: compare the violence perpetrated by “Muslim extremists” towards the west with the much greater violence perpetrated by the west in the Middle East. It is also clear that the former violence receives much greater condemnation and analysis than the latter. This is self-censorship: to break it threatens an individual’s mainstream acceptability. Yet it is the job of any scientist to apply analysis and criticism equally, and to do otherwise is irrational. This is the principle of universality. If the intelligentsia are serious about the rational thought of others, they need to be rational themselves. Brighouse, West Yorkshire, UK
Asymmetric credit From Cormac O’Raifeartaigh, Waterford Institute of Technology While Zeeya Merali provides a most interesting article on “unparticles” (26 January, p 32), many physicists will be taken aback by the statement that Howard Georgi “pioneered supersymmetry, a theory he proposed in 1981 with Savas Dimopoulos at Stanford University”. Most particle physicists agree that the theory of supersymmetry was originally proposed in the late 1960s by www.newscientist.com
Soviet theorists Yu Gol’fand and Evgenii Likhtman and developed by Julius Wess and Bruno Zumino in 1973. Indeed, simple models of supersymmetry breaking, such as the O’Raifeartaigh model, had already emerged by 1975. Perhaps Merali meant that the first realistic supersymmetric version of the standard model of particle physics was proposed in 1981 by Georgi and Dimopoulos. Waterford, Ireland
What is pro-life? From Jerry Mack I sometimes wonder whether I’m the only pro-life, religious reader of New Scientist. Your latest bit of silliness is a rant courtesy of philosopher A. C. Grayling in his Mindfields column (22/29 December 2007, p 76). I wish that those arguing against the pro-life position would at least understand what we are saying and argue against that, instead of fighting some straw man of their own making. I was once asked whether an acorn is an oak tree, the questioner’s point being that a fetus is not a person. An acorn is not an oak tree. It is, however, an oak. The life cycle of an oak is from acorn to shoot, from sapling to young tree and, finally, to a mature oak tree. Likewise, prolifers do not see an embryo as a “potential” person, to use Grayling’s term, but rather as a person at one stage of their life cycle: from fertilised ovum to blastocyst, embryo, fetus, infant, child, adolescent and, finally, adult. At every stage its essence is the same. Our argument is not that one cannot sacrifice a “potential” person to help another – as in the case of medical discoveries using embryonic stem cells – but that one cannot sacrifice an actual person to help another – any more than one could sacrifice one child to save another. The argument that fertilised ova dying naturally somehow justifies killing them is one of the
more ridiculous I’ve come across. People die naturally – does that make it OK to kill them to use for medical experiments? Surely a philosopher should be able to understand the difference between a natural death and a wilful killing. San Jose, California, US
Wait or walk? From Phil Birkin Mathematicians may have tackled the problem of deciding whether to wait for a bus or to walk (26 January, p 18) but in Nottingham, among other places, it has been solved by computer science and
Cancer Ward Alert (Uzbuna na odjelu za rak) by Neven Orhel, a Croatian medical doctor. Claimed to be purely fictional, it deals with the idea of fighting cancers by triggering infections. The author cites several real studies that attempted to explore the concept. I am looking forward to proposals to treat cancers with bacteria, and not purely to support a Croatian doctor and his ideas. Kalinovac, Croatia
Bugged by bugs From Tim Stevenson Please, please, please! What are the garishly coloured bacteria illustrating “Well-informed bugs stay ahead of the pack” (19 January, p 10)? Bracknell, Berkshire, UK The editor writes: ● The illustration showed a scanning electron micrograph of Escherichia coli treated with antibiotic, in which the images of individual bacteria had been given arbitrary colours.
engineering. At each stop an electronic display lists the estimated arrival time of buses on each route serving the stop. Ilkeston, Derbyshire, UK
Space price From Roger Plenty You report, without comment, Virgin’s proposals for space tourism (2 February, p 21). What are the anticipated emissions of carbon dioxide per passenger per 5 minutes of space experience? Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK
Filth, glorious filth From Renato Filjar I enjoyed your fine article on the idea that dirt and infections could ward off cancer (12 January, p 34). It reminded me of the 1983 novel
For the record ● The UK Committee on Medical Aspects of Radiation in the Environment found no excess cancers within 25 kilometres of nuclear plants. Because of an editing mistake, our story “Nuke-plant leukaemia link?” (9 February, p 6) conveyed exactly the opposite. ● The reference for the paper by Craig Wheeler and colleagues on the shape of the Cassiopeia A supernova remnant should have been www.arxiv.org/ abs/0711.3925 (26 January, p 16). Letters should be sent to: Letters to the Editor, New Scientist, 84 Theobald’s Road, London WC1X 8NS Fax: +44 (0) 20 7611 1280 Email: [email protected] Include your full postal address and telephone number, and a reference (issue, page number, title) to articles. We reserve the right to edit letters. Reed Business Information reserves the right to use any submissions sent to the letters column of New Scientist magazine, in any other format.
16 February 2008 | NewScientist | 23
eat to contribute to, or to be patented and owned by, a reckless, ruthless chemical organisation. Newmarket, Suffolk, UK From Patrick Murray Dan Hind highlighted an important issue facing western society: that of ideological dominance, which leads the intelligentsia to avoid criticising the crimes of their own states and instead to focus on those of the “official” enemy. It is very easy, for example, to condemn the weak as terrorists. The condemnation of the strong is a rare activity indeed. The historical record shows that terrorism is usually a weapon of the strong, not the weak: compare the violence perpetrated by “Muslim extremists” towards the west with the much greater violence perpetrated by the west in the Middle East. It is also clear that the former violence receives much greater condemnation and analysis than the latter. This is self-censorship: to break it threatens an individual’s mainstream acceptability. Yet it is the job of any scientist to apply analysis and criticism equally, and to do otherwise is irrational. This is the principle of universality. If the intelligentsia are serious about the rational thought of others, they need to be rational themselves. Brighouse, West Yorkshire, UK
Asymmetric credit From Cormac O’Raifeartaigh, Waterford Institute of Technology While Zeeya Merali provides a most interesting article on “unparticles” (26 January, p 32), many physicists will be taken aback by the statement that Howard Georgi “pioneered supersymmetry, a theory he proposed in 1981 with Savas Dimopoulos at Stanford University”. Most particle physicists agree that the theory of supersymmetry was originally proposed in the late 1960s by www.newscientist.com
Soviet theorists Yu Gol’fand and Evgenii Likhtman and developed by Julius Wess and Bruno Zumino in 1973. Indeed, simple models of supersymmetry breaking, such as the O’Raifeartaigh model, had already emerged by 1975. Perhaps Merali meant that the first realistic supersymmetric version of the standard model of particle physics was proposed in 1981 by Georgi and Dimopoulos. Waterford, Ireland
What is pro-life? From Jerry Mack I sometimes wonder whether I’m the only pro-life, religious reader of New Scientist. Your latest bit of silliness is a rant courtesy of philosopher A. C. Grayling in his Mindfields column (22/29 December 2007, p 76). I wish that those arguing against the pro-life position would at least understand what we are saying and argue against that, instead of fighting some straw man of their own making. I was once asked whether an acorn is an oak tree, the questioner’s point being that a fetus is not a person. An acorn is not an oak tree. It is, however, an oak. The life cycle of an oak is from acorn to shoot, from sapling to young tree and, finally, to a mature oak tree. Likewise, prolifers do not see an embryo as a “potential” person, to use Grayling’s term, but rather as a person at one stage of their life cycle: from fertilised ovum to blastocyst, embryo, fetus, infant, child, adolescent and, finally, adult. At every stage its essence is the same. Our argument is not that one cannot sacrifice a “potential” person to help another – as in the case of medical discoveries using embryonic stem cells – but that one cannot sacrifice an actual person to help another – any more than one could sacrifice one child to save another. The argument that fertilised ova dying naturally somehow justifies killing them is one of the
more ridiculous I’ve come across. People die naturally – does that make it OK to kill them to use for medical experiments? Surely a philosopher should be able to understand the difference between a natural death and a wilful killing. San Jose, California, US
Wait or walk? From Phil Birkin Mathematicians may have tackled the problem of deciding whether to wait for a bus or to walk (26 January, p 18) but in Nottingham, among other places, it has been solved by computer science and
Cancer Ward Alert (Uzbuna na odjelu za rak) by Neven Orhel, a Croatian medical doctor. Claimed to be purely fictional, it deals with the idea of fighting cancers by triggering infections. The author cites several real studies that attempted to explore the concept. I am looking forward to proposals to treat cancers with bacteria, and not purely to support a Croatian doctor and his ideas. Kalinovac, Croatia
Bugged by bugs From Tim Stevenson Please, please, please! What are the garishly coloured bacteria illustrating “Well-informed bugs stay ahead of the pack” (19 January, p 10)? Bracknell, Berkshire, UK The editor writes: ● The illustration showed a scanning electron micrograph of Escherichia coli treated with antibiotic, in which the images of individual bacteria had been given arbitrary colours.
engineering. At each stop an electronic display lists the estimated arrival time of buses on each route serving the stop. Ilkeston, Derbyshire, UK
Space price From Roger Plenty You report, without comment, Virgin’s proposals for space tourism (2 February, p 21). What are the anticipated emissions of carbon dioxide per passenger per 5 minutes of space experience? Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK
Filth, glorious filth From Renato Filjar I enjoyed your fine article on the idea that dirt and infections could ward off cancer (12 January, p 34). It reminded me of the 1983 novel
For the record ● The UK Committee on Medical Aspects of Radiation in the Environment found no excess cancers within 25 kilometres of nuclear plants. Because of an editing mistake, our story “Nuke-plant leukaemia link?” (9 February, p 6) conveyed exactly the opposite. ● The reference for the paper by Craig Wheeler and colleagues on the shape of the Cassiopeia A supernova remnant should have been www.arxiv.org/ abs/0711.3925 (26 January, p 16). Letters should be sent to: Letters to the Editor, New Scientist, 84 Theobald’s Road, London WC1X 8NS Fax: +44 (0) 20 7611 1280 Email: [email protected] Include your full postal address and telephone number, and a reference (issue, page number, title) to articles. We reserve the right to edit letters. Reed Business Information reserves the right to use any submissions sent to the letters column of New Scientist magazine, in any other format.
16 February 2008 | NewScientist | 23