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<2Computerised flights of fancy>2
AFTER the razzmatazz of Information
Technology year comes the sober
assessment of how Britain can
remain a force in this discipline. Over the
coming weeks the government will make
up its mind on a programme of computing
research that could cost #350 million. This
R&D effort was proposed by a group of
electronics experts, headed by John Alvey,
technology director at British Telecom.
More important than the cash itself,
which would be spent over five years, with
the taxpayer providing two thirds, is the
suggestion that within the Department of
Industry (DoI) there should be a small
commercially-minded unit to run the
project. The unit would supervise research
contracts in academia and industry--but
especially in the latter, thus breaking
important new ground in the way Britain
conducts its R&D. As the House of Lords
Select Committee on Science and Tech-
nology points out this week (p 634), the
amount of money spent by government on
R&D . . .
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<2Researching the researchers>2
EXPERIENCED practitioners of the
arcane "science" of "research
evaluation" revealed this week yet
another shortcoming in Britain's machin-
ery of science policy. The Science Policy
Research Unit at Sussex University says
that a substantial part of the science-policy
machine--the part that operates under the
auspices of the Department of Education
and Science--relies on peer review and
"informed prejudice". Not for our policy
makers the quantitative techniques--such
as citation indexes and patent records--that
have made inroads into the US's science
policy system.
Should British researchers hold up their
hands in horror at this further shameful
symptom of the failure of the United King-
dom to innovate? Or should they be grate-
ful that Britain's science machine is too
poor and backward to buy a computer to
take its decisions for it?
Certainly Britain lags other counties in
its use of quantitative method of assessing
research output. . . .
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<2Painfull exprience>2
DRUGS ARE not quite as "scientific"
as the pharmaceuticals industry
would like us to believe. For
example, it is not possible to develop
"tailor-made" painkillers with predictable
effects. This is partly because people, and
their pains, do not respond equally to a
particular drug. That is why the production
of analgesics is almost as much an art as it
is a science. For this reason, we should not
be surprised when new pharmaceutical
preparations produce untoward side
effects. This means that Britain's watchdog
on pharmaceuticals--the Committee on
Safety of Medicines (CSM)--needs to be
somewhat more alert and responsive to the
hazards than appears to have been the case.
Painkillers are by far the most common
drugs prescribed by doctors in Britain.
Minor analgesics and preparations
dispensed to make rheumatism less
unbearable accounted for more than 33
million prescriptions on the National
Health Service ( 11 per cent of the total) i . . .
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<2Remedial lessons for physics>2
ITs official--physics in a bad way. That
is, if you exclude from "physics" the
glamour areas of astronomy and particle
physics, leaving the substantial but hard-to-
define area that includes our knowledge of
solids, liquids and gasses, interactions
between atoms and electrons, magnetism,
instruments and techniques. The word is
that morale is at a low ebb among univer-
sity researchers in "mainstream physics".
The reason is largely that younger
researchers are unwilling or unable to
embark on a career in this kind of research.
Those who are brave enough to hope for
one of the few lectureships around tend to
go for the astronomy or nuclear physics.
Elsewhere there is a preponderance of older
lecturers who have heavy teaching loads, a
discouraging success rate for grant applica-
tions, and a shortage of people actually to
carry out the research, so physics
departments have to be very determined
indeed to maintain a t . . .
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<2Moving with the times>2
THERE is, as you may have noticed,
something different about <1New>1
<1Scienttst>1 this week. It doesn't look
quite the same. This is the first issue for a
decade or so that has been typeset with the
aid of a computer and phototypesetting.
No longer are these words turned into a
metal block, and no longer does the cre-
ation of that block require the same soph-
isticated skills as those built up over many
years by typesetters. The computer has
taken over. This isn't the place to go into
the details of the technology--turn to page
237 for the sordid facts--but it may be
worth saying that the computer brings a
new flexibility to the typesetting. We have,
therefore, changed the design slightly to
take advantage of that new freedom.
The computer has dealt what will prove
to be a mortal blow to the "priesthood" of
printing--those who have spent many years
gaining the skills needed to turn a type-
script into a printed page. Many oth . . .
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<2Dreadful communications>2
BRITAIN has unveiled its plan for
World Communications Year
(WCY), a month after the year began
and with the maximum of waffle and mini-
mum of hard fact. As a result the valuable
industrial opportunities for export created
by WCY may be wasted. Ironically, the
government's policy in another area, grants
for foreign students in Britain, is likely to
prove a handicap to whatever plans do
come to fruition.
In November 1981, the United Nations
proclaimed 1983 World Communications
Year. The official aim is for all countries to
take a critical look at their own communi-
cations policies and to help the developing
nations improve theirs. Today 75 per cent
of all telephones in the world are in fewer
than 10 countries. Astute businessmen see
WCY as a golden opportunity to sell more
communications hardware to the Third
World. A lynchpin of this policy is the offer
of technical training to foreign telecom-
munications engineers, because . . .
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<2Graduate employment>2
EMPLOYMENT is a tragedy,
whoever it hits. It is especially
disturbing when the victims are
young people who have never worked.
When the young unemployed include
graduates with valuable knowledge, it is
even more depressing.
While no one has any right to walk
straight into a well-paid job for life, it isn't
just the out-of-work graduates that suffer.
Many students can tell of months of frus-
tration and many dozens of letters written
in search of gainful employment. (Many of
those letters go unanswered by the person-
nel departments of large companies who
would be horrified by such discourtesy in
would-be employees.) It is not that today's
graduates have especially high expecta-
tions, they just want work.
Gone are the days when organisations
automatically recruited new graduates
irrespective of their degree topic on the
basis that three years at university show
that someone has the intelligence and
application needed to hold down a job. But
that does not e . . .
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<2Drop the big one>2
IT IS becoming increasingly difficult to
take seriously claims that the civil side
of nuclear power has nothing to do
with nuclear weapons. The United states
has done a great deal to blur the barrier
between the bomb and the watt. Britain has
been an accomplice in this. It has sent plu-
tonium across the Atlantic, and it has shut
its eyes to the consequences.
So far, no one has explained satisfactorily
why the US needed plutonium from
Britain if it was not to make weapons. Nu-
clear power does not have to mean nuclear
weapons; but who will believe this when
these two countries appear to have blurred
the distinction?
Where did all that plutonium go? For the
stated uses, the US needed grams. Britain
sent kilograms, if not tonnes. There are few
peaceful uses for plutonium. You can put it
into fast-breeder reactors--the US has few
of these--or you can convert it into isotopes
for medical uses. The extent of the trade far
exceeds the US's needs fo . . .
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<2C O M M E N T>2
<2Free the campus entrepreneurs>2
BREATHLESS PHONE calls first thing in the morning; indecipherable
typescripts bristling with spidery illustrations; wild-eyed magnetic
levitationists turning up at reception--<1New Scientist>1 has dealt with the
British inventor in his most extreme forms. Lone inventors are by no means
all nutters, but we can sympathise with anyone who has to deal with them
all the time. That is one of the jobs of the British Technology Group (BTG),
which the government created in 1980 by merging the National Enterprise
Board with the National Research Development Corporation. The BTG's job,
according to its latest annual report, is "to promote the development of
technology throughout British industry and to advance the use of British
technology throughout the world". To achieve this goal, the MTG has a price-
less asset a "first bite" at the patent rights and marke . . .
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<2Early holidays at Sizewell>2
BY NOW Sir Frank Layfield QC will be well aware of the task that is
before him. It is nearly a year and a half since David Howell, the then
Secretary of State for Energy, announced that Sir Frank would be the
inspector at the public inquiry into the plans of the Central Electricity
Generating Board to build a pressurised-water reactor (PWR) at Sizewell in
Suffolk, and there has been a veritable deluge of documentation from all
sides in the past 18 months, giving Sir Frank more than enough preliminary
reading.
There are various theories as to how long the inquiry will last, ranging
from four months to nine months, or even longer. The shorter estimate comes
from one or two "optimists" within the electricity supply industry who believe
that the opponents to the plans to build the Sizewell PWR will prove less
persistent than they were at the inquiry into the plans to expand the nuclear
fuel plant at Windscale in Cumbria. The longer timescale comes from . . .
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<2C O M M E N T>2
-------------------------------------------------------------------
A year best forgotten?
NINETEEN EIGHTY-TWO just might go down as a memorable year in
the history of Britain, if not the rest of the world. After all, the
country does not go to war all that often, even if it is with a second-rate
corned-beef republic. That "event" had little to do with science although it
did provide us with one or two technological tales, albeit mostly grim ones.
And scientists interested in Antarctic research have reason to thank the
Argentinians--the need to maintain a presence in those cold southern waters,
and one that is not too openly military, has coaxed the government into
setting aside more money for the British Antarctic Survey.
No one in Britain's universities will forget 1982 in a hurry. For although
the chairman of the University Grants Committee, Edward Parkes, may have . . .
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<2Science is a good thing>2
IF <1New Scientist>1 has a wish for 1983 that is in theory achievable it is that
the two cultures C. P. Snow described a generation ago should again
become one. Perhaps for historical reasons, or because it was necessary
to keep the brain tidy when so many powerful thoughts were in their
infancy, a separation was necessary; but now the schism is not only sad but
philistine, anachronistic and shameful.
When did the schism begin? Not at first sight by the 19th century, which
has John Keats reading medicine, Samuel Taylor Coleridge playing with
chemistry, and Mary Shelley writing science fiction. Yet schism was
already there. By the beginning of the 19th century science seemed already
to be ineluctably yoked with technology, and technology with industry; and
though industry could be equated with men of culture and vision (such as
Josiah Wedgwood and sons) it is remembered in practice, by those who later
"read" t . . .
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<2Test--tube cases>2
SUING people especially doctors, is a
great national pastime in America, and
negligence suits against the medical
profession are becoming more common in
Britain. In such an environment, an
academic speciality known as "legal
medicine" flourishes. Its practitioners have
now started to explore the legal hornet's
nest likely to be stirred up by <1in vitro>1 fertil
isation. What will happen. they ask, when
the first defective test-tube baby is horn?
The world's first test-tube baby, Louise
Brown, was born in England on July 24,
1978, and since then scores of other child-
ren around the world have been conceived
in the laboratory test tube. This week news
comes from Australia that this technique
has been taken a stage further (p 271). So
far, thankfully, there is no sign that the
technique makes it any more likely that a
child will be born with congenital defects.
But the procedure does introduce novel
hazards. Natural "screening" processes
which may wed out defectiv . . .
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<2C0MMENT>2
--------------
<2Tropical downpour>2
F/[]/
N0 DOUBT every university, college and school throughout the land
thinks, when a government wields its axe, that it is a special case, All
of them, of course, are special in one way or another, either through
their history, their location, or their local connections. Some have developed
lusty connections with industries of one sort or another, and some have
developed special international relationships. But a few are more of a special
case than others, and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
is one.
Yet, what, one might ask, is a <1tropical>1 institute doing in central London
in the 1980s when Britain's influence and claims in those climes are largely
reduced to a few dots on the global map? Likewise, wasn't hygiene some-
thing Lord Lister and others sorted out in the 19th century? Isn't the school
just an anachronism?
The "London School of Hygiene and Tropical M . . .
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<2COMMENT>2
<2Do robots produce redundancies?>2
CONGRATULATIONS TO the 600 Group on the official opening of SCAMP
--Six Hundred's Computer Aided Manufacturing Project. We've waited
at least five years to see the project. It's good to know that a British
firm (in this case the largest producers of centre lathes in the world) will be
able to supply the technology needed to build automatic production lines
(this issue, p 632). And, like it or not, Britain will eventually have to
automate its manufacturing. The 600 Group made, or commissioned British
firms to make, all the equipment in SCAMP. Admittedly the Fanuc robots
are Japanese, but in future they will be made under licence and sold under
the name "600 Fanuc".
If the Department of Industry had not made a direct grant to the
company it is unlikely that SCAMP would exist. Flexible manufacturing
systems (production lines--combining microelectronics and mechanical
engin . . .
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<2Here we go again>2
MRS THATCHER has cunningly
provoked the Labour party and the
media into pushing her into holding
a general election at the best time for the
Conservative party. From the number of
lengthy interviews she has given in recent
weeks, it seems pretty obvious that the
opposition has been playing the Prime
Minister's game--she clearly intended to
hold an election next month. In those inter-
views, Margaret Thatcher has made much
of science and technology. Not since
Harold Wilson prattled on about the white
heat of the technological revolution--or
some similar meaningless platitude--and
launched Concorde, has there been so
much talk about innovation and our intel-
lectual heritage.
Mrs Thatcher has made much of
Britain's scientific brilliance and innova-
tive poverty. She has almost certainly over-
estimated both factors; but in general she is
correct in saying that Britain comes up with
good ideas and often ends up importing the
products that st . . .
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<2Save our wastelands>2
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
There have been some spectacular successes in land
reclamation (see page 138 of this issue, for example). And in
many countries new mining activities have to restore land to
its original state when the underground resource is
exhausted, But that may not always be the most appropriate
response
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
John Gordon
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
FOR DECADES, professional and
amateur politicians, encouraged by a
vociferous band of scientists and
engineers, have relentlessly pursued the
reclamation of land for which the distant
eye sees no use. The approach is as persis-
tent and tenacious as it is conventional and
unimaginative. Pits have been filled in and
tips levelled to form the ubiquitous British,
urban, f . . .
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<2Leading question>2
THE DAYS of lead in petrol seem to be
numbered. This is not because of any
sudden blinding scientific revelation
proving that lead--added to petrol to make
cars' engines run more smoothly--dissolves
children's brains. If anything recent
research suggests that lead isn't as horrid in
its effects as the extremists in the anti-lead
movement claim.
Any research on something as complex
as intelligence or the biological effects of
very low levels of a substance is bound to be
difficult, not least because so many factors
are involved. Does the lead cause the lower
"IQ"? Or are those with lower IQs more
likely to be exposed to lead because of
social factors? Indeed, how you measure
something as sensitive as intelligence poses
problems. The very people who are
campaigning against lead in petrol might
normally be asscciated with moves to
stamp out "elitist" IQ tests.
Correlations between behaviour and
exposure are ope . . .
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<2A season of protest>2
THANKS TO the orbit of the Moon,
Easter came early this year, bringing
also an early start to the anti-nuclear
season. We can expect the protesters to
continue with more vigour than usual this
year, and to exhibit renewed enthusiasm
when cruise hunting starts. Thus we are in
for a prolonged battle to win over public
opinion.
Mrs Thatcher sees the problem of
convincing those in the middle ground as
one of understanding and propaganda. One
reason why she brought Michael Heseltine
in as Secretary of State for Defence is said
to be his ability as a public-relations man.
Mr Heseltine has been given the task of
selling the government's strategy on
nuclear weapons. As the best PR people try
to understand their audience before they
try to sell something, we must assume that
Mr Heseltine is even now reading up on
anti-nuclear propaganda.
Unfortunately, there is precious little
evidence that the government is trying to
understand the protestors. It needs . . .
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<2Storm over weather Statellites>2
IF YOU were an American government
official named John McElroy, you
would be feeling confused, not to say
schizoid. McElroy is in charge of the
National Environmental Satellite, Data
and Information Service. This is the body
that runs the American remote-sensing and
weather satellites.
The first reason for McElroy's unease is
that President Reagan has just told him to
prepare a brief for doing away with his own
job--and that of most of the other 1100
people on the administrator's staff. All
this is being done in the name of free enter-
prise. President Reagan and his advisers
want to loosen the government's hold on
satellites; hence the instructions to
McElroy to solicit tenders from companies
to take over the craft that his organisation
now operates.
McElroy's confusion will hardly be
reduced by the preparations for his forth-
coming trip to Westem Europe. During
this, he will talk to the British and French
governments about the . . .
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<2Action now for Scientific literacy>2
WHILE MANY PEOPLE disagree
violently about accommodating
Cruise missiles, subsidising British
Leyland, and membership of the European
Community, there can be few who would
argue about the value of providing high-
quality science education in schools.
Report after report issued under the aegis
of British governments and parliaments of
all flavours, as well as weighty learned
institutions, have stressed that the balanced
education of the future would put more
emphasis on the numerate skills. These
underlie an appreciation of scientific and
technological issues, such as those needed
by civil servants and industrial managers as
well as scientists and engineers.
The Royal Society has now come up
with some concrete recommendations for
broader-based science education and post-
ponement of specialisation. All fourth and
fifth year pupils in maintained schools
would have nine weekly science lessons,
three each in physics. chemistr . . .
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<2Cruise to destruction>2
FOR ONCE the Easter demonstrations
organised by the Campaign for
Nuclear Disarmament have some-
thing concrete and immediate to oppose.
The protests will focus on NATO's plans to
site 160 cruise missiles in Britain. The
weapons will start to arrive in December;
they are supposed to match the arms build
up by the Soviet Union. If tens of
thousands of people are prepared to take to
the streets and to camp outside obscure
air-force bases for months on end, what
will they do when cruise becomes a
reality?
The key political point about cruise is its
high visibility. Until now nuclear weapons,
in the West at least, have remained hidden
from the public gaze, in closely guarded
silos or inside aircraft and submarines. The
cruise missile is very different. In a real war
the missiles would leave their bases for
launch sites in wooded areas of the coun-
tryside (see p 878). The bases are at Green-
ham Common in Berkshire, and Moles-
worth in Cambridgeshire. Ea . . .
