November 29, 2003

Shock report: GM is neither good nor bad

Another drop of good sense in the ocean of ignorance and hype that is the GM debate in Britain:

To generalize and declare 'all GM is bad' or 'all GM is good' for the environment as a result of these [UK farm scale evaluation] experiments is a gross oversimplification, but statements from both sides in the GM propaganda war have claimed 'victory' based on these findings.

So says Robert May, president of the Royal Society. Someone should give him a newspaper column and a TV show.

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November 15, 2003

GM: The real organic option

Conrad Lichtenstein (who, as it happens, used to lecture me when I was a biochemistry undergraduate) has provided a welcome dose of sense and wisdom in the otherwise hysterical and ignorant world that is GM in the UK today.

Writing about the farm-scale evaluation (FSE) results that were widely (mis)reported in the British press a month ago, he says:

That the evaluation involved GM crops is not relevant: herbicide-tolerant crops can also be, and indeed have been, developed by conventional methods. GM is a process not a product - and, as demonstrated by this study, each new product (whether it is GM, conventional or organic) needs to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis using rational evidence-based science.

Thank you — at last someone's talking sense. Contrary to press reports, which led people to believe that these experiments cast further doubt on the safety of GM technology, they were really investigations into different herbicide treatment regimes and only indirectly relevant to the GM debate.

This confusion arises from a profound misunderstading that has infected the debate in Britain: GM technology is just a tool and, as such, is intrinsically neither good nor bad. It can be put to both kinds of use and it's our job to pick the good ones in as rigourous and dispassionate a way as we can. Instead the British media (backed up, it must be said, by most of the country's population) chooses to misrepresent and denouce GM technology through deep prejudice and ignorance. If we'd done the same to mechanical and electronic engineering as we're now doing to genetic engineering we'd have no cars and no computers, among many other good things.

Lichtenstein also goes on to point out that GM is a truly organic technology, and that it can provide us with plants that are less damaging to the environment than the chemical-laced "organic" stuff that we're forced to put up with today. For example, did you know that, to protect them from late blight, "organic" potatos come laced with copper sulphate-based chemicals? No, thought not — the organic lobby don't tend to dwell on facts like that. GM is currently the only realistic hope of creating disease- and copper sulphate-free potatoes. Do we really want to stop our kids from enjoying them for dinner one day?

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August 11, 2003

About time

A week or so ago the blogosphere lit up with news of a bright spark to rival Einstein. Peter Lynds, a 27-year-old with no academic affiliation had achieved the impressive feat of having his paper about the nature of time not only published in a peer-reviewed journal but also publicly praised by some professional physicists.

However, though there were lots of postings on this news, I didn't see any from people who'd actually read the paper. Perhaps this is partly because the original (more general) paper seems to be behind the subscriber-only access system of the journal in question. But Lynds' follow-up paper (which concentrates on much narrower implications for Zeno's Paradox and related puzzles) is freely available online. So I took a look.

The first thing that struck me about it was the quality of the writing, which is poor. It's full of typos, uses some strange turns of phrase that aren't quite English and, when it gets to the really important parts, becomes bogged down in dense blocks of opaque text. For example:

After all, before the second half of the distance can be travelled, one must cover the first half. But before that distance can be travelled, the first quarter must be completed, and before that can be done, one must traverse the first eight [sic], and so on, and so on to infinitum [sic].

and:

Zeno would of [sic] known full well...

and:

One could certainly also assert that there were no interval in time, and so if one wishes, there were a precise static instant underlying a physical process, without it being dependent on there actually being interval: as is the case with the hypothetical absence of mass and energy, and the resulting absence of 3 spatial dimensions [sic, sic, sic, sic, ...].

But these are signs of incompetent editing as well as authoring. And, in any case, they shouldn't be allowed to distract us from any interesting ideas contained in the text. The trouble is, I can't find many.

The main claim is as follows:

[I]n all cases a time value indicates an interval of time rather than a precise static instant in time at which the relative position of a body in relative motion or a specific physical magnitude would theoretically be precisely determined.

As a result, a body in relative motion does not have a precisely determined relative position:

[T]his is not associated with the preciseness of the measurement, a question of renormalizing infinitesimals or the result of quantum uncertainty... It simply does not have one. There is a very significant and important difference.

Mmm... maybe. But this approach isn't required to explain Zeno's Paradox. That depends only on understanding that an infinite series can sum to a finite quantity (resulting in a finite time for Achilles to overtake the tortoise). Lynds dismisses this approach as a mathematical fiction. I disagree.

Lynds bolder claim is that his approach is required to allow any change at all. To me, it boils down to saying that any physical quantity that is changing with time has an degree of indeterminacy associated with it's value during any specified time interval; the smaller the interval (and slower the change) the less the indeterminacy. This is a trivial statement. Lynds seems to be claiming that, on the contrary, his statement is profound. But if it is then I have missed the reason why.

In any case, none of this deals with the really interesting things about time, which relate to its qualitative differences from space (something I've written about before. In my (admittedly limited) experience, better places to read about the nature of time are:

  • The Fabric of Reality by David Deutsch. This book ranges far and wide but one claim it makes is that time doesn't flow — it only seems to do so from our subjective points of view.
  • Time's Arrow by Huw Price. This whole book is about the nature of time but the main point I took away from it is the close link between time and the Second Law of Thermodynamics, and also the fact that the increase in entropy with time is a lot less mysterious than the fact that the universe appears to have started in a (hugley improbable) low-entropy state.

On the other hand, if you want a more prosaic, but no less entertaining, discussion of time, read this piece by David Adam in The Guardian is well worth a read.

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July 16, 2003

The world's numerical recipe

Since Richard Feynman died, Frank Wilczek has become my favourite living physicist. I base this on the quality not of their research (which I'm nowhere near fit to judge) but their words and thoughts (which are sublime).

I was therefore please to stumble across this the other day while searching for something else online. (It reminds me a lot of a piece that Wilczek wrote for Nature a few years ago.) It's basically about (i) the remarkable ability of numbers to explain the world and (ii) an extreme application of Occam's Razor by which scientists are trying to create theories of the universe that contain the minimum number of nonconceptual (i.e., apparently arbitrary) quantities. As so often, Einstein explained it best:

I would like to state a theorem which at present can not be based upon anything more than upon faith in the simplicity, i.e., intelligibility, if nature: there are no arbitrary constants... that is to say, nature is so constituted that it is possible logically to lay down such strongly determined laws that within these laws only rationally completely determined constants occur (not constants, therefore, whose numerical value could be changed without destroying the theory).

Wilczek takes us from the mystical Pythagorean Brotherhood for whom "All Things are Number" via Kepler's Zeroth Law (a bold but incorrect attempt to fit the solar system into a structure determined by the Platonic solids) and quantum electrodynamics (which has only two nonconceptual quantities, the mass of an electron and the fine-structure constant) to quantum chromodynamics (QCD), which takes us surprsingly close to the ultimate goal:

To the extent that we are willing to use the proton itself as a meterstick, and ignore the small corrections due to u and d quark masses, QCD becomes a theory with no nonconceptual elements whatsoever.

I also liked his mention in passing that our naming of the square root of 2 as being irrational stems from the, well, irrational anxiety thatn this number engendered the Pythagoreans. We might say the same about "imaginary" numbers (products of the square root of -1), which are really no more or less imaginary than any other numbers and, like other numbers, seem to have a lot to do with the world. The Special Theory of Relativity, for example, suggests that the relationship between space and time is the same as the relationship between "ordinaryreal" and "imaginary" numbers. Time is certanly mysterious compared to space (we can only directly exprience the time that we call "now" and can only remember the past, not the future) but not many people would consider space to be "real" and time to be "imaginary". We need better words to describe this relationship. Answers on a postcard (or in a comment) please...

Posted by timo at 07:49 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Defeating cancer by 2015

The NCI has declared that it aims to overcome (though not cure) cancer by 2015. Wired has this nice follow-up article on the scientists and methods at the forefront of this endeavour.

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July 15, 2003

Darwinian poetry

I'm currently reading a pretty good book by that great neo-Darwinian, Richard Dawkins.

I remember him writing in The Blind Watchmaker about an experiment that he intended to do in his garden one summer to see if he could generate computer graphics that attracted insects (just like flowers do). His plan was to take a strict Darwinian approach: display several graphics on the screen then wait for an insect to hit one of them and use the charateristics of that shape for his next generation of patterns. I never did hear how he got on with this.

Now this guy is doing something similar but another step removed from the natural world. He's trying to generate beautiful poetry by natural selection (where people like you and me are the natural selectors). As I write, he's got through four generations and the top-ranked poem is:

when sometime the life loved to be throne revoking of shield in blood

Hey, give it some time. We're still in the Precambrian here. ;-)

I'm going to follow this project with interest.

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July 06, 2003

Qualia

In my quest to escape from all those self-referential blogs about blogging and RSS feeds about what should be done with RSS, I've been taking a look at this blog, which contains hardly a reference to things technical, thus making it a hugely refreshing sight in the blogosphere.

They recently published this item about "qualia" (subjective sensations). As a former neuroscientist, I reckon they do a pretty good job despite their self-avowed amateur status. Though I don't buy their ideas on the possible evolutionary benefits of qualia, I really like their comments about qualia and art.

They were largely inspired by the work of VS Ramachandran. I agree that he's a fascinating guy to follow (I got my stint at The Economist 10 years ago after writing a test piece about some of Ramachandran's work.) But if there's anyone who's contributed even more to neuroscience than him, it's Daniel Dennett (who's a philosopher, not a scientist, but that doesn't seem to stop him ;-) and he reckons that qualia don't even exist.

So the debate goes on. Which is nice, because I'm rather enjoying it.

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June 23, 2003

End of noisy TV ads?

New Scientist has a description of technology that could help get rid of those noisy TV ads. At last!

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June 08, 2003

How to make biotech better

Business Week has a five-point plan for biotech:

  1. Decode the Causes of Diseases
  2. Free the Flow of Information
  3. Craft Smarter Regulations
  4. Explore New Modes of Manufacturing
  5. Sustain Investors' Confidence
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Scientific study finds jack shit

The Onion really is a much better read than the Journal of Negative Results.

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June 06, 2003

The Bible Code: Snake-oil hoax?

"The Bible code is a silly, dumb, fake, false, evil, nasty, dismal fraud and snake-oil hoax"

Though this quote sounds like it might come from a cynical scientific type, it actually comes from The Bible Code II itself. Careful numerological analysis of the text by US physicist David E. Thomas revealed the hidden message. At last this approach yields something worth knowing!

See this wonderful little snippet from Scientific American for more, including how Herman Melville predicted JFK's assasination.

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June 03, 2003

Bill Bryson on science

Bill Bryson (of tongue-in-cheek Brit-baiting fame) has a new book out, this time about science. He spoke with New Scientist about what he's learned writing it.

On the work of my editorial colleagues:

I was quite delighted with how accessible most of the writing in Nature is.

On scientists' failure to communicate:

If there is a failure in science it is the way scientists neglect to tell people how amazing their work is. I was constantly struck as I was learning by the thought that this is really interesting, why has nobody ever told me about it?

On science as a spiritual experience:

One thing that did strike me is that if you dip into science at any point and follow any line of enquiry back to its origin, you come to a point where God becomes as valid an explanation as anything else - if you go back to the big bang and start asking what caused that or what was going on before that, or what caused life to arise when it did. I don't necessarily mean the God you go to church to worship, but you eventually arrive at some point where it is completely humbling.
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May 20, 2003

Einstein Archives Online

Einstein's papers are now online. (From Nature Science Update.)

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May 10, 2003

How much knowledge is safe?

A piece on Kuro5hin argues that the costs of witholding potentially dangerous scientific and technical information are greater than the costs of releasing them. I tend to agree. The collective wisdom of scientific journal editors reached a somewhat more cautious conclusion. However, a recent article in The Economist expresses doubts that this caution is having much effect in practice.

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May 09, 2003

Do we need nature?

I'd quite like to enter the Shell Economist writing prize this year. Must remember to submit by 22 August.

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May 05, 2003

The risk of standing still

Spiked asked 40 scientists to list dicoveries that would not have been made if today's risk-averse approach to science had prevailed in the past. Their collective response: "pretty much everything".

Matt Ridley also had a rather nice piece in The Guardian explaining why there can be more risk in impeding progress than in promoting it. My favourite bit:

"Organic farming is sustainable," says Indian biotechnologist CS Prakash. "It sustains poverty and malnutrition."
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May 03, 2003

Why can't humanities professors be more like scientists?

An English professor seems to wish that his fellow humanities academics were more collegial and honest — like scientists. Trust in peer review, in particular, seems to be very different in the two realms. A touch of 'the grass is greener' I think, but interesting nevertheless.

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April 26, 2003

The future of genomics

Collins & Co. have written a vision for the future of grenomics research in Nature

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A Devil's Chaplain

Richard Dawkins has a new book. Well, a collection of old essays really. Jerry Coyne gives it a good review in Nature. Some of the quotes are delicious. For example, here's Dawkins on Sephen Jay Gould's idea that no new phyla — only lower level taxa — are currently evolving:

It is as though a gardener looked at an old oak tree and remarked wonderingly: "Isn't it strange that no major boughs have appeared on this tree recently. These days all the new growth appears to be at the twig level!".

And here he is in defence of atheism:

Modern theists might acknowledge that, when it comes to Baal and the Golden Calf, Thor and Wotan, Poseidon and Apollo, Mithras and Ammon Ra, they're actually atheists. We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.

Finally, on religious xenophobia (shortly after 9/11):

To label people as death-deserving enemies because of disagreements about real-world politics is bad enough. To do the same for disagreements about a delusional world inhabited by by archangels, demons, and imaginary friends is ludicrously tragic.
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April 22, 2003

Why to go into bioinformatics

I enjoyed this blog by Mark Johnson, especially the following bit:

I've chosen bioinformatics primarily because I think the genomics and biology revolution is going to make the so-called "computer revolution" into an historical footnote. It's the renassiance science of our age, and I can't bear not to be involved.

which I think captures well the excitement of those few who appreciate what bioinformatics might become one day.

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Was Einstein wrong?

Er, no.

At least, it's far too soon to claim so. But that doesn't stop João Magueijo from trying. I haven't read his book (and, realistically, probably won't ever get around to it) but I've been following with mild amusement the obvious irritation that he engenders in many reviewers.

Now the excellent Paul Davis has come up with the most measured review I've seen so far. But even he seems to dislike Magueijo's purile pot-shots at the scientific establishment. And since Magueijo described one of my bosses (and a great guy) as a first-class moron, I'm certainly not going to stand up for him.

One day Einstein will be proved wrong and the new 'right' answer will be wonderous to behold. But I do hope the discovery will be made by someone in whom we can have more respect as a human being.

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