Wednesday, September 9, 1998
Your Netsurf Science....EXCELLENT.
Al
Okay, I like NSS even better than NSD. I keep a list of Web sites to explore stored in my favorites and I use them when I need to relax my mind during working hours. Your stuff goes in there more often than you might believe.
RE: your comment on gambling and statistics [in Letters to the Editor NSS 1.03]....
Have you seen the Dilbert where Dogbert sells yesterday's lottery tickets for half price? They're a deal because the odds of winning are only 1 in 32 million less than when they were new. Also, I took an intro to stats class in college (UNC-CH) and the first day the professor got up on stage in front of 250 people and flipped a coin: heads. He then dismissed everybody who believed the probability of getting heads on the next flip was P(.5). He continued flipping, questioning, explaining, and dismissing for an hour. At the end of the hour he had 20+ students left. They all got extra tutoring before the next class.
Keep up the good work.
Cliff
This is a fantastic publication. Many thanks.
John
Of those few things on the internet that have the ability to grab my attention and keep it, yours is tops! If I had kids we would belly up to a copy of Netsurfer together and get smart. Knowledge is power, as they say. Yours is a really fine publication. Keep it coming!
Jay Kloss
By surfing across the Web I occasionally have visited your site. What a wonderful stuff you have there! Thanks.
Gregory Gromov, Editor
View from Internet Valley
I just informed the educational group AASSA, which is a group of 40 American schools in South America, about you.
Richard
Thank you, All. Richard, we take it that informing the schools was a good thing, right? Judi
I rather liked it. All too many of the "science" newszines are dedicated to medicine and psychology or are military with other soft sciences added. I could have really used this in school 40 years ago. I like it as is with an emphasis on the hard sciences and humor.
As an aside, you might suggest to the Webmeister to either mute the background from white to light gray or off white or to specify the text colours so that people with a browser set on light text with a dark background ( I have one ) do not wind up trying to read light green or yellow on white.
Jim
It's a standard of design that black print on a white background offers the greatest clarity and is consistently the easiest combination of background and text to read. However, we appreciate knowledgeable design as much as the next surfer, and we understand that there are other, valid reasons for choosing different looks, especially when design itself carries mood or message. Speaking as mistress of the word for NSS, I'd say clarity is part of our mission. Arthur is the design meister, though. Arthur? Judi
"Dammit Judi, I'm an engineer, not an artist!" ... and apparently I've watched way too many Star Trek episodes. But back to the subject at hand. To some extent we have to pander to the masses in our look and feel. The vast majority of users never change the default settings for their browser, so we give them a nice black on white experience in the body of the e-zine. In fact we went to some trouble not to force specific fonts and font sizes on our readers in order to avoid certain endemic problems (e.g. unreadably small fonts on high resolution monitors). Alas, we can't do anything about readers who do override our settings in their browsers. It's the usual struggle to please the largest number of users with the least number of problems and a technology which was never designed for more then crude page layout. - AB
I am 82 with no science background but a keen interest in the universe and participate in a weekly discussion / lecture group on science and technology. I find your publication (is that the right word) very stimulating and it hits the right level for us. Thank you. Incidentally you may have worked out that I am not exactly a computer whiz kid and I have managed to delete your latest issue. Any chance of sending me another copy?
John Braham
"Publication" is a fine word, John. Thank you. Unfortunately, re-sending single issues is a considerable headache for the warm bodies that toil at Netsurfer World Headquarters. However, every issue of both NSS and its older cousin NSD is archived for you. Choose "Back Issues" from the list at the left on the NSS and NSD cover pages. You might also want to take advantage of the "Search" feature to find specific issues or subjects. Judi
I just subscribed to be on your mailing list. I would appreciate it if you not add my name to any mailing lists you sell or give to any other organization. Thanks.
Dr. Mini Pathria, MD
UCSD Medical Center
Have no fear. Netsurfer's mailing lists are Netsurfer's mailing lists. They are never sold, rented or loaned to anyone. As a subscriber to Netsurfer Digest of nearly two years' standing, I've not once received unsolicited communications of any sort from another organization that could in any way be linked to my NSD subscription. Judi
Good info, but the cutesy titles to your write-ups are annoying; I want "just the facts", not cutesy titles. Please make titles short and informative.
Dan Snyder
A constant problem, Dan. Somewhere in my early mail, there's a note from someone who likes the titles and tag lines. We try to strike a balance between informative content and entertaining reading that doesn't compromise the content. Some measures are different. Judi
"The massive neutrino announcement on June 5th blew current particle physics theory to bits [NSS 1.04]."
Actually, it didn't. The Standard Model treats neutrino masses no differently than other lepton and quark masses: through a matrix containing empirically determined coupling constants. The only consequence of a finite neutrino mass is that some of these constants have to be turned up a notch from exactly zero to some small value.
Not only is the Standard Model unchanged by this; it's arguably strengthened. In fundamental physics, exact zeros are the telltale sign of exact conservation laws. For instance, exact conservation of energy (energy before - energy afterwards = 0) follows from invariance of a system under time translation; exact conservation of angular momentum follows from invariance under rotation; and the zero mass of the photon follows from invariance of the electromagnetic field equations under a (mathematically) closely related rotation of the electric and the magnetic field components into each other (the simplest case of so-called gauge invariance). But for neutrinos there is no known invariance that would cause their mass to be exactly zero. The vanishing neutrino mass was simply an experimental observation without a theoretical foundation. Eventually, either some small value had to turn up, or some new theoretical development had to make it exactly zero.
The latter alternative is what would actually have threatened current theory, including the attempts to derive the disturbingly plentiful empirical quantities in the Standard Model from more profound models (supersymmetry and superstrings). Therefore, although experimental physicists facing dwindling funding are trying hard to present the evidence for finite neutrino masses as a major breakthrough, it's actually quite the opposite: it's yet another confirmation of the strength of the old Standard Model, and the loss of the perhaps most important degree of freedom for theoreticians trying to find a crack in its wall.
Tommy Anderberg
We count ourselves lucky to have readers keeping us
honest. Your letter regarding the massive neutrino and its implications to
current theory was fascinating. We gather then that experienced physicists were
waiting for someone to identify the correct massive neutrino constant to plug
into current theory. And that those who are truly interested in pushing beyond
the status quo will regard this discovery as important, but not exciting. So,
the headline: "You Didn't Actually Fall for that Old Massless Sub-atomic
Particle Gag, Did You?" may have been more apt than we thought.
We, too, were swept away, perhaps, by the mighty media hype. Your observation
about how the funding game encourages frothing among the laity - and the
appropriations committees - really hit home. When Claude Levi-Strauss wrote:
"There is nothing which can be conceived of or understood short of the basic
demands of its structure," They might as well have been saying, "It takes a lot of
headlines to fund a 50,000 ton underground water tank for experiments only a
select few make a living on."
In NSS 1.07 you say, "Any rabid environmentalists considering cremation can rest assured that the modern process produces virtually no pollution." Not so! I guess you missed the Readers' Digest article "Don't Live Near a Crematorium". When the bodies are burned, the mercury in the fillings of the teeth (amalgam) is released into the atmosphere as a most poisonous gas. Mortality rates of those living near crematoria are higher than the general population, according to the Readers' Digest.
Harold Greenberg
Well, first I'll say that the reviewer didn't promise that
the process is entirely pollution-free. However, no, we haven't read the
Reader's Digest article, and I haven't been able to find it. However, I'm more
than a little skeptical that anyone has done a controlled study that would
confirm higher mortality rates that can be attributed to proximity to a
crematorium. A Web search turned up no studies or reports of studies, controlled
or otherwise. In terms of noxious residue from cremation, I found references to
the by-products of casket hardware and the deceased's clothing, with particular
emphasis on rubber-soled shoes. A Canadian study also recommended protective
gear for crematorium workers based on their generalized exposure to dust and
respirable particulates.
A conference report on radiation medicine estimated the extent to which funeral
workers might be at risk from having handled the remains of people who had
recently undergone radiation therapy and evaluated the general public's
exposure. In both instances, the exposure was negligible, even if patients had
retained triple the standard amount of radiation. There were suggestions that
physicians should notify funeral workers who would handle corpses in the very
rare instances that a patient's retention rate had exceeded the likely maximums.
I expect it's not necessary to tell you what kind of sites dominate the results
in a search for crematoria. One included an analysis of the cyanide content in
the ruined walls of crematoria at Auschwitz and Birkenau, but had nothing to say
about effluents.
We had a handful of mail, mostly from addresses at a single domain, that objected to our recommendation of an evolution site. The letters were really not such that they leant themselves to publication as letters to the editor. They referred us to a site and authors that support creation science. NSS relies on science that relies on evidence. Gaps in the fossil record, competing theories and developing theories are to be expected in the circumstance. Belief in the complete absence of evidence - in fact, in the face of entirely contradictory evidence - is the definition of faith. NSS may take some things on faith, some things on their evidence. Creation science does not fall into either category. Judi
I just wanted to lodge a quick complaint against your inclusion of the quackwatch site in your latest issue. I am a student at the National College of Chiropractic and, as such, am being trained in many of the alternative therapies this site claims to debunk. I agree with the author of this site that there are very many questionable and some outright fraudulent treatments being sold to the public. However, curiously, none of the ones I am aware of, were to be found at this site. Instead, I found a great deal of misinformation and even a few outright lies, regarding several treatments for various diseases, that do not involve drugs or surgery (i.e. that are not allopathic in nature). Several of these are well researched in the peer-reviewed medical literature. I was not pleased to see this and was rather disappointed to see it carelessly added as a link in your fine publication, to which I subscribe.
Michael Karl
I've been enjoying your newsletter until I ran into Quackwatch. Have you really checked out Stephen Barrett's science or are you just a rubber stamping his campaign against alternative medicine? I know he must suit your world view but at least research rather than propagandize your readers.
Kevin Kunz
First, Quackwatch wasn't carelessly added as a link and
you'd be surprised by the research we do. Now, as far as science goes, we'll
start with the scientific underpinnings of chiropractic. At the core,
chiropractic is based on the belief that subluxations cause most medical
problems. A subluxation, in chiropractic terms, is a misalignment of the spine
that interferes with nerve signals from the brain. Chiropractic says that
adjusting the misalignments restores the nerve signals and cures health
problems. Scientific studies offer little support for the theory, with most of
the evidence being offered in the form of anecdotal testimonials from people
with back pain who report that chiropractic helped them. The supposed source of
the relief - that is, the unblocking of nerves - is not supported by empirical
evidence.
In case there's any doubt, let's be clear here. Science doesn't necessarily
dispute that people suffering back and neck pain, even chronic headache pain,
may find some relief as a result of chiropractic manipulation. Whether it's the
preferred or more effective therapy is another question, 'though we applaud its
choice where it is effective without resort to drugs or surgery. It's the matter
of subluxation that science doesn't confirm. Subluxation, proposed by
chiropractic as a physical mechanism, should be testable but - despite more than
a century of chiropractic - studies can find no evidence of subluxation's
existence. More than that, subluxation is also presumed to be at the root of
other diseases - diseases of the liver, stomach and other of the soft tissues -
and is sometimes offered by its practitioners as the preferred therapy in those
cases. But, the recommendation for chiropractic therapy is based on belief in
subluxation, for which no proof exists, and rejection of germ theory, for which
there is substantial evidence.
Our reviewer searched articles from approximately the past year, and even in its
own publications, there was no clear evidence of the benefits of chiropractic
over conventional therapy, and certainly no evidence of the existence of
subluxation.
Conventional medicine has a lot to answer for, yes, in the distance it's placed
between itself and its patients. But, to reject effective therapy out of hand?
In the crassest terms, does anyone think that if there's a buck to be made in an
effective therapy, MDs would turn their backs on it?
Yes, chiropractic and other alternative therapies are widely trusted or gaining
adherents, earning a lot of attention in government offices and the media. But,
belief in its efficacy, and political and media savvy, supported by weak science
literacy, do not make any therapy sound therapy.
Publisher: Arthur Bebak
Editor: Judith David
Address your letters to
sci-editor@netsurf.com.
Letters and signatures edited for clarity and brevity.