Letters to the Editor
factician
Published Letters: 36 Editor's Choice: 14
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consumers?
[Read the article: Greece: Beware of biotech companies bearing GMOs]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]A consumer decision doesn't have to be based on verifiable science.
That's absolutely true. A consumer's decision can be based on astrology (and I suspect more consumers make their choices based on astrology than on verifiable science). But this isn't a consumer's decision. This is a decision by a government to ban an entire technology. Consumer's should be able to choose GM-free crops if they want (in the form of organic food). But what about consumers who will want to buy cheaper, GM-food that doesn't have pesticides on it? Or consumers who couldn't give a rolling-O about any of it?
Don't be fooled, this isn't about consumer choice. It's about knee-jerk visceral reactions against an entire technology.
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oy.
[Read the article: How safe is the HPV vaccine?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]If you give 1200 people a glass of water, the following day some of them will report nausea, or headaches or any number of symptoms. People get sick every day, and a clinical safety trial has to take that into account.
As long as the number of people who had an illness after receiving the vaccine doesn't exceed the folks who got sick who *didn't* get the vaccine, the vaccine isn't the cause of the illness. In the case of the HPV vaccine, the same number of people reported side effects who received the placebo. On the scale that folks have looked, this vaccine is safe.
However, it remains to be seen if the HPV vaccine is safe on the scale of the hundreds of thousands who will receive the vaccine now that it is being used more widely.
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LED lightbulbs
[Read the article: Roll over, Thomas Edison]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Are these commercially available in the U.S. yet? Can someone post a website where I can purchase some, I'd love to replace *every* lightbulb in my house with them...
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I confess
[Read the article: The psychology of $4 a gallon gasoline]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]My driving habits are changed very little by the price of gas. I drive a small car, and would like to get a hybrid (when our current car dies). My wife and I drive to work together, which is only a few miles away. But really, shopping and going to work necessitate getting in the car. I don't live in a city with good public transport.
I like to hope that high priced gasoline encourages long-term changes that might not show up for a while. Decisions about where to live, and what car to drive, that only months and years of high-priced gasoline will cause. But I think most people are like me in that the vast majority of their driving is non-elective. We don't take many vacations. We don't go out "to the country" for a drive. I simply don't have any other way to get through my day, and it would be exceedingly difficult to decrease my driving.
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crusade?
[Read the article: The latest word on GM crops and honeybees]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]But if a campaign against GM crops is going to be based on the evidence, then so far, the disappearance of the world's honeybees might not be the best fodder for the crusade.
Crusades generally don't go hand in hand with evidence. They go hand in hand with belief, and it's pretty hard to change a true believers mind.
In fact, deciding to campaign against GM crops hasn't ever been evidence based. But again, crusading against something and then looking for evidence for your cause is putting the cart before the horse. Look at the evidence, and then decide what should be done. And all the evidence thus far is that GM crops are safe.
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Not just oil...
[Read the article: African oil: The real heart of darkness]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Look at what diamonds did to Sierra Leone. The difference in African lifestyles between countries that have resources and those that don't is mostly just the level of violence.
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childseat
[Read the article: Extreme childbirth]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Freebirthing seems about like driving around with your child without a childseat. Sure, more than likely you won't be in an accident and your child won't be killed. But if you are in an accident, won't you wish that you had her in a childseat? If there's a complication in your pregnancy, won't you wish there was a doctor nearby?
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Many molecular biology patents are ridiculous
[Read the article: Monsanto takes a punch to the gut]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Take patenting a gene, for example. Merely discovering a gene has been sufficient for patent rights in the past two decades. It seems rather like patenting the liver, if you ask me. Sure, if you have a technique that will fix disease in the liver, patent that. But patenting basic science discoveries? These can only slow down progress in the field.
The other issue is the hassle of it all. I have a technique that I developed that is commercially useless (but very useful in the hands of basic scientists). Nonetheless, the major medical school where I work has made it very difficult for me to share this tool with other universities. Many of the investigators who have requested this tool have given up, simply because the paperwork is too onerous. And for what? I and my institution will never see a dime for this invention. But we are "protecting the school's intellectual property portfolio" --- whatever that means.
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Peer review is not in danger...
[Read the article: Academic reputation, alien news service, slain by World Wide Web]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]... for the simple reason that it delivers the goods. Sure, peer review isn't perfect, but given that a scientist will never be able to independently evaluate each and every paper that s/he reads, we *need* peer review to separate the wheat from the chaff. (And there is a lot of chaff out there - I personally reject nearly half of the manuscripts that I review).
To suggest that the public at large can carry this role in highly technical subjects is simply mistaken. Take a simple thing like evolution. The vast majority of Americans think that the theory of evolution isn't true. The vast majority of biologists think it is true. And science trundles on. Peer review keeps the mistaken, commonly-held prejudices out of the scientific literature. Quite simply, it works.
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I can just imagine...
[Read the article: The most dangerous metaphor]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Angstroms! I'm no physicist, but it seems to me that when we begin measuring distances in angstroms we are approaching some rather serious physical limits.
I can just imagine a journalist discussing transistors in the 1950s saying a similar thing... "Millimeters! I'm no physicist, but..."
Sure angstroms are small, but when you start looking at the possibilities in quantum computing, angstroms will start to seem positively huge...