- Email: [email protected]
Unselfish genes
OPINION LETTERS Unselfish genes
In my reality…
Existential issues
Patently absurd
From Sebastian Hayes What a pity that David Sloan Wilson, who aims to improve lives using evolutionary principles (27 August, p 28), has not received the press coverage given to Richard Dawkins. For once, someone not only signals positive aspects to evolution, but tries to put them into practice. A board replacing a shop window in Clapham Junction, London, broken during the recent riots in the UK, bears the message: “Darwin was right – the beast in us will always out.” Many thanks to trendy biologists for the current perversion of evolutionary doctrine. As Sloan Wilson says, in evolution cooperation is as important as aggression: Dawkins himself would not survive if the cells in his body did not cooperate, many of them giving up their “lives” in the process. The doctrines of unrestrained free market capitalism and selfish-gene-ism have not created the violence seen in the UK, but they have provided a favourable habitat in which it can flourish. Shaftesbury, Dorset, UK
From John Chubb Contrary to Andy Bebington’s letter (13 August, p 30) it is what you do, not what you think, that demonstrates and proves your existence and that of the world around you. What you do may require thought, but thought is a private activity – whereas your actions have a public impact. A public impact provides you with the opportunity to appreciate the consequences of your actions and the thinking that preceded them. It also includes the opportunity for others to react and demonstrate that there are others around like you, but not you. Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, UK
From Peter Hacker, Jane Heal, Mary Midgley, Anthony O’Hear Some of your readers have spotted several alarming points about your existential special issue (23 July), including Eric Adams (6 August, p 32), who noted that the question “How do I know I exist?” makes no sense. The articles follow the convention which allows fantasy
From Barrie Wells You report that the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit overturned a lower court’s judgment that human BRCA genes, linked to breast cancer, cannot be patented because they occur in nature (6 August, p 4). The court reached this decision on the grounds that the genetic sequences patented omit junk DNA – non-coding base sequences – and therefore do not occur in nature. Common sense would seem to imply that this is nonsense: I could not patent a wheel simply by omitting one of the spokes. But surely in practice the biotech industry is shooting itself in the foot. Can anyone now legally and freely copy any patented gene, simply by adding a random amount of junk DNA, since any junk DNA makes it different, according to this ruling? Deganwy, Conwy, UK
Recursively finite From Rex Anderson Since there is an infinite number of alternative universes (23 July, p 37), there must be one in which there isn’t an infinite number of alternative universes. Perhaps this is it. London, UK
Enigma Number 1663
Flintoff’s farewell RICHARD ENGLAND Recently retired cricket all-rounder Andrew Flintoff was known as Freddie until a much-publicised incident with a pedalo gave rise to the new nickname Fredalo. In the sum shown, digits have been replaced by letters, different letters representing different digits. Since
F A R E W E L L +
F R E D A L O F L I N T O F F
there are 11 different letters everything is in base 11. Use 0 to 9 as normal and X for the extra digit. What is the eight-digit number (still in base 11) represented by FLINTOFF?
WIN £15 will be awarded to the sender of the first correct answer opened on Wednesday 12 October. The Editor’s decision is final. Please send entries to Enigma 1663, New Scientist, Lacon House, 84 Theobald’s Road, London WC1X 8NS, or to [email protected] (please include your postal address). Answer to 1657 Magically different: ENIGMA is 11, 5, 14, 17, 2, 8 The winner Keith Brain of Oxford, UK
32 | NewScientist | 10 September 2011
tales unconnected with physical reality to count as part of physical science, provided that they have no spiritual meaning. This practice freely invokes objects of doubtful intelligibility and descriptions of logically questionable coherence simply to fill gaps in what are supposed to be factual scientific theories. Thus the notion of the multiverse, many forms of which present severe logical and conceptual problems, is confidently welcomed in the “Is there more than one me?” segment (p 37) as just “an emerging idea; science in the making”. Guessing the science of the future is, of course, always unpredictable. But the preference for asking questions that make no sense or, at least, a sense that cries out for elucidation, over realistic ones is surely not the right approach. We, as philosophers, find it distinctly alarming that some scientists seem willing to accept this approach. St John’s College, Oxford; Cambridge; Newcastle-upon-Tyne; Royal Institute of Philosophy, London, UK
From Tony Bell As I understand the patenting process, for a patent to be granted for any invention it has to satisfy the criterion of being unobvious to a person “skilled in the art”. In the case of the BRCA genes, surely anyone skilled in biotechnology would consider removing junk DNA an obvious improvement, as nothing resulting from the changes could be considered new or unexpected. Nelson, New Zealand
Gene stockpiling From Ivan Erill, University of Maryland You report that antibioticresistant bacteria can, in some cases, outcompete the wild-type strain (6 August, p 14). The “common sense” view was that resistant bacteria should shed the determinants of resistance, for example by losing genes, after removal of antibiotic pressure.
In my reality…
Existential issues
Patently absurd
From Sebastian Hayes What a pity that David Sloan Wilson, who aims to improve lives using evolutionary principles (27 August, p 28), has not received the press coverage given to Richard Dawkins. For once, someone not only signals positive aspects to evolution, but tries to put them into practice. A board replacing a shop window in Clapham Junction, London, broken during the recent riots in the UK, bears the message: “Darwin was right – the beast in us will always out.” Many thanks to trendy biologists for the current perversion of evolutionary doctrine. As Sloan Wilson says, in evolution cooperation is as important as aggression: Dawkins himself would not survive if the cells in his body did not cooperate, many of them giving up their “lives” in the process. The doctrines of unrestrained free market capitalism and selfish-gene-ism have not created the violence seen in the UK, but they have provided a favourable habitat in which it can flourish. Shaftesbury, Dorset, UK
From John Chubb Contrary to Andy Bebington’s letter (13 August, p 30) it is what you do, not what you think, that demonstrates and proves your existence and that of the world around you. What you do may require thought, but thought is a private activity – whereas your actions have a public impact. A public impact provides you with the opportunity to appreciate the consequences of your actions and the thinking that preceded them. It also includes the opportunity for others to react and demonstrate that there are others around like you, but not you. Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, UK
From Peter Hacker, Jane Heal, Mary Midgley, Anthony O’Hear Some of your readers have spotted several alarming points about your existential special issue (23 July), including Eric Adams (6 August, p 32), who noted that the question “How do I know I exist?” makes no sense. The articles follow the convention which allows fantasy
From Barrie Wells You report that the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit overturned a lower court’s judgment that human BRCA genes, linked to breast cancer, cannot be patented because they occur in nature (6 August, p 4). The court reached this decision on the grounds that the genetic sequences patented omit junk DNA – non-coding base sequences – and therefore do not occur in nature. Common sense would seem to imply that this is nonsense: I could not patent a wheel simply by omitting one of the spokes. But surely in practice the biotech industry is shooting itself in the foot. Can anyone now legally and freely copy any patented gene, simply by adding a random amount of junk DNA, since any junk DNA makes it different, according to this ruling? Deganwy, Conwy, UK
Recursively finite From Rex Anderson Since there is an infinite number of alternative universes (23 July, p 37), there must be one in which there isn’t an infinite number of alternative universes. Perhaps this is it. London, UK
Enigma Number 1663
Flintoff’s farewell RICHARD ENGLAND Recently retired cricket all-rounder Andrew Flintoff was known as Freddie until a much-publicised incident with a pedalo gave rise to the new nickname Fredalo. In the sum shown, digits have been replaced by letters, different letters representing different digits. Since
F A R E W E L L +
F R E D A L O F L I N T O F F
there are 11 different letters everything is in base 11. Use 0 to 9 as normal and X for the extra digit. What is the eight-digit number (still in base 11) represented by FLINTOFF?
WIN £15 will be awarded to the sender of the first correct answer opened on Wednesday 12 October. The Editor’s decision is final. Please send entries to Enigma 1663, New Scientist, Lacon House, 84 Theobald’s Road, London WC1X 8NS, or to [email protected] (please include your postal address). Answer to 1657 Magically different: ENIGMA is 11, 5, 14, 17, 2, 8 The winner Keith Brain of Oxford, UK
32 | NewScientist | 10 September 2011
tales unconnected with physical reality to count as part of physical science, provided that they have no spiritual meaning. This practice freely invokes objects of doubtful intelligibility and descriptions of logically questionable coherence simply to fill gaps in what are supposed to be factual scientific theories. Thus the notion of the multiverse, many forms of which present severe logical and conceptual problems, is confidently welcomed in the “Is there more than one me?” segment (p 37) as just “an emerging idea; science in the making”. Guessing the science of the future is, of course, always unpredictable. But the preference for asking questions that make no sense or, at least, a sense that cries out for elucidation, over realistic ones is surely not the right approach. We, as philosophers, find it distinctly alarming that some scientists seem willing to accept this approach. St John’s College, Oxford; Cambridge; Newcastle-upon-Tyne; Royal Institute of Philosophy, London, UK
From Tony Bell As I understand the patenting process, for a patent to be granted for any invention it has to satisfy the criterion of being unobvious to a person “skilled in the art”. In the case of the BRCA genes, surely anyone skilled in biotechnology would consider removing junk DNA an obvious improvement, as nothing resulting from the changes could be considered new or unexpected. Nelson, New Zealand
Gene stockpiling From Ivan Erill, University of Maryland You report that antibioticresistant bacteria can, in some cases, outcompete the wild-type strain (6 August, p 14). The “common sense” view was that resistant bacteria should shed the determinants of resistance, for example by losing genes, after removal of antibiotic pressure.