As a family physician, who sees a lot of teenagers with acne as well as the other problems of adolescence, such as depression and self image issues, I am very worried that by banning this drug, we would be denying these people a very good drug. In 80% of cases it will cure the acne (especially the nasty scarring kind). It is however imperative to explain the entire risk profile of the drug and closely monitor the patient for the three or four months that the treatment lasts. I hope your program doesn't frighten off appropriate candidates for an extremely useful drug.

Johann Kriegler
Saskatoon, Sask.

Today's Forum was excellent -- a good start,but only a start. We need to look at the whole issue of the relationship between a for-profit system and our decisions about what to research. That last speaker, the one talking about the tropical diseases, hit the nail on the head, I think. Who decides what the important issues are? What are their interests and agendae? We must confront these concerns.

I would like to tell you a story and follow up with a suggestion for a futher program.

About 30 years ago I was involved in a drug trial for an antiasthma drug. One of the conditions to which I had to agree was that I would do a certain amount of exercise each day. I chose to ride a bike daily. At the beginning of the trial I could not ride my bike around the block without an asthma attack. Three months later I was able to ride my bike for 15k without any asthma symptoms.

Whatever the impact of the drug, my health must have improved significantly. More exercise would have meant improved lung capacity, better blood gases, etc. And, of course, I could have fun riding my bike, going places and doing things that had hitherto been inaccessible.

This was a reputable study -- double-blind, etc. The researcher decided that the drug was not likely to be particularly useful for me. More about that later.

I had a question which I was too young and foolish to ask at the time. It was this: if my life had been so dramatically improved by simply doing a little more exercise each day, why had nobody ever suggested this to me?

I subsequently became aware of similar situations with respect to people with cancer. Research shows that support groups and exercise have dramatic effects on longevity -- never mind quality of life. Yet there are still many oncologists who never mention these matters to their patients.

Subsequently I worked for the researcher who was testing the antiasthma drug. He was very reputable, and had a very good reputation. (I liked the man and think he did his best.) However, working in his office I was able to see what happened on a day-to-day basis: these guys would come in with their black bags. From these bags they would take out the drug samples. Needless to say, nobody ever came by peddling exercise. In this context it didn't make money for anyone! In the same way support groups and exercise programs are more likely to require funding than to generate profit for medical establishments.

Back to why the drug didn't work for me. Several years later, after spending some time overseas, I moved to another province. I asked my doctor to refer me to the best allergist available. At my first visit I decided this specialist was mad. He suggested that I go on an elimination diet to find out if there were foods that were contributing to my allergy. (Bear in mind that I had typed LOTS of research papers about allergies and asthma.) He wasn't suggesting that I was one of those people who would die if I thought about shrimps or nuts.

So I went home and began the tedious process of finding out that I was, indeed, sensitive to many foods. I found out that my allergies improved dramatically when these foods were eliminated or reduced. I believe that the reason the inhaled anti-asthma drug would not work for me was that it had no impact on my immune system's response to ingested irritants.

Once again, the question raised itself. Why did nobody evere suggest this before? As I have said, the first specialist was well-known on the academic/conference circuit. Yet he did not even consider the issue of food sensitivities. And once again, there is not a lot of profit to be made from telling people to change their diets. And there are no salesmen for this line of "therapy".

Now I knew that much of the researcher's money came from drug companies. And I know that he had investments in said drug companies......I rest my case.

Hilary Craig
Regina, Saskatchewa

In regard to your show of Jan 5, 2001, I found it rather bizarre to hear your guests talking about academic freedom in our universities. Regardless of whether university research is corporate funded (which is a *really* bad idea, by the way), there's still the issue that academic freedom and the pursuit of truth has all but disappeared from our institutions of higher education.

The hold of the iron rule of political correctness pretty much determines what `research' will be done, and what the findings of that research will be. Research that doesn't return the `correct' results will be fixed, either by exaggerating some findings, ignoring others, or both.

How people `feel' about the research has become more important than the actual dispassionate quest for truth. This is not science.

I've read stories and heard personal anecdotes of scientists at our former bastions of truth and free speech being muzzled and allowed to express only `approved' opinions; everyone walking on eggs for fear of offending the ruling mandarins.

Welcome to our Brave New World of science and research.

Robert Alexander

Good Show.

I have included an article that addesses an important aspect that was not addressed during the show.

Public Money, Private Code by Jeffrey Benner
The Drive to license academic research for profit is stifling the spread of software that could be of universal benefit.

The other aspect that was not addressed is the attempt to profit, at all levels of government, through the sale or exclusive licencing of public data. It is not just Universities. For instance in the US detailed geographic elevation data essential to presenting geographiclly related social economic etc. information is freely available through the internet. In Canada equivalent information can cost 1.4 million dollars or thousands of dollars per localize chart area. One of the result of blinked thinking has been a net reduction in innovation in this area across the country. Multiple this effect throughout many federal and provincial govenment deportments and the results are the same.

As an entreprenure who has taught at various universities I would like to see public accessablity to the results publicly funded research what ever their form. I believe that the net increase in community wealth would make it worth while. It is a little like the napster issue. Is the exposure you recieve worth the free access to what you produce.

On Equilibrium, by John Rolston Saul addresses the issues which underlay the change which is driving this issue.

Scott Bleackley
Sunshine Coast, BC

As a professional in the field of university technology transfer, I found your show on corporate funding of university research interesting, although frustrating.

There seemed to be an implicit assumption that it is the universities who are chasing corporate research funding. Universities certainly chase corporations for endowments and gifts, but the quest for corporate research funding is principally carried out by university PROFESSORS, with the administrations only in a supporting role. Trust me, university administrations have next to no influence in making university professors do anything they don’t already want to do. In fact, administrators are often put in a position of being pitted against our own faculty members who don’t want us to worry about the fine print in research agreements and just want us to sign off so they can get their funding. Dr. Nancy Olivieri’s name is happily bandied about as the poster child for academic freedom, while everyone seems to deliberately neglect the rather critical detail that neither the hospital nor the university approved the confidentiality terms she signed which led to the well-publicized conflict.

Of course, the reasons that professors chase corporate funding is because they want to do world-class research, and that requires high levels of funding. The current research funding mechanisms in Canada are massively weighted to programs which provide only a portion of the funding to projects, requiring a “match” from other sources, which in most cases has to be corporate funding. So the drive for partnerships is an intentional government policy decision, and university administrators are doing our best to protect the mission of the universities from potential negative influences of corporate funding. That said, the back-and-forth transfer of knowledge within corporate research partnerships can be extremely beneficial to graduate students and the university in general, and is in most cases works well for both parties. Moreover, the potential for economic impact from research results is vastly greater when companies are participants in the research, and there is nothing inherently bad about that!

One final point: the words “public domain” were used quite ambiguously by most of the speakers. As far as I am aware, no Canadian universities knowingly permit “secret” research unless it is done under private consulting agreements over which we have no control. All university research can be published, although we typically allow for delays of a few months to file patents. If research is patented and published, even if the commercial rights are owned by a company, it is still in the public domain! This is the whole basis of the patent system, that worldwide knowledge will increase fastest if people disclose their inventions but are allowed a time-limited monopoly on their inventions as compensation for disclosing them to the world. Whether or not the patent system truly accomplishes this goal would be a topic for another (potentially interesting) forum.

Mike Szarka
Toronto, ON

I have enjoyed your program "Quirks & Quarks" immensely both for its technical content and its ethical and philosophical content. Your recent program asking the question "Is corporate funding good for science?" which aired this past Saturday, Jan. 5th in Montreal was excellent. Kudos to you.

Your program gave added arguments to my own concerns which I expressed in my book "Food, Consumers, and the Food Industry: Catastrophe or Opportunity?" (pages 201 to 218).

Dr. Gordon Fuller

I am not entirely convinced by your expert's answer to the question of what would happen to the hypothetical jogger in the "2001-type" space station if that jogger jumped "up" towards the axis of the spinning cylinder. To simplify things, let's assume the astronaut stops jogging and jumps from a standstill. It seems to me that as soon as both feet left the spinning surface the astronaut's new trajectory would be a combination of forces in two directions -- one towards the centre ("up") and one in the direction that the floor was moving as he lost contact with it ("forward"). Once off the surface, he will not change direction, but the spot that he left on the floor of the cylinder will. Relative to his body it will come "up" and, depending on how "high" he jumps will tilt towards him. Also, even though he aims at the axis of the cylinder the motion of the floor will deflect him from his target, and his path will not intersect with it. I suspect that if Hal were watching, he would see the astronaut get closer to the axis, apparenlty going "up" towards it, then as he shot past his target, move away and apparently come "down," tilting forward slightly, and landing somewhere just behind the point of takeoff. I expect that Hal would see him flailing his arms and legs in an effort to regain his 90 degree position relative to the floor and prevent himself from falling flat on his face. (I am not confident of this latter point -- he might actually be "launched" with sufficient "backspin" to keep him apparently upright.)

I am no physicist, so tell me if I have made a wrong assumption here.

Rod Bantjes
Antigonish, NS

The answer given was basically correct, but I believe had an error by omission and/or the interpretation of "jumping up". The person who asked the question wanted to know if the jumper would "come back down" or "float" if they jumped straight up. If you jump towards the hub then it is true that the answer is NO. BUT in order to jump straight up (ie have all your speed directed to the center of the space lab) you would have to overcome the speed you are naturally going, that is, jump "backwards and up" BUT this is not really the way one would normally jump straight up.

Consider....what if you didn't know you were in a rotating spacecraft (This is reminiscent of Einstein's Gedanken (sp?) experiments!) then you would simply jump up (not up AND backward). In this case you would retain speed in the direction of the spacecraft's rotation and your motion would NOT be towards the center of the hub. This would be similar to the case of jumping on a moving walkway (ie in an airport)...if you jump straight up you land on the same spot of the walkway, however you have moved with respect to the rest of the airport. If you jump up and backward (aka jump towards the hub) then you would land elsewhere on the walkway, but in the same spot relative to the rest of the airport!

So, what this means is that if you simply jump up (not up and back) you would retain some speed in the direction of rotation. Thus you would infact move toward the side of the spacecraft, and you would "land". (For the mathematically inclined the path you would take is called a "chord" of the circle formed by the space station). As viewed from outside the station you would travel in a straight line, while the curved wall of the spacecraft would rotate to meet you! More importantly though, from YOUR point of view it would appear as if you were going "up" and then "down" with respect to the space lab floor - even though no force is actually acting on you!

Now, as to whether you would land in the same spot as where you jumped (as is the case here on earth if you jump up)...that depends on the details of the space lab and your jumping speed, but in general the answer would be NO you would not "land" in the same spot!

Mark Paetkau
Instructor of Physics and Astronomy
Keyano College
Fort McMurray, Alta.

Back in the 1920's J. B. Bernal described an inhabitable rotating sphere which rotated so that the effective gravity at the equator, on the interior surface, would be earthlike. It was about 486 m across, and needed to rotate about once in 30 seconds to have an effective gravity of the earth at its equator. I can use such a sphere for illustration of the gravity-like effects.

If you drop something in such a sphere, at the equator, then what happens? Imagine yourself looking into the sphere from the outside. An object held by someone has a velocity at right angles to a radius from the sphere center to the person just as the person inside the sphere does. The speeds are a little different, the object about to be released has a smaller speed than the feet of someone at the inner surface. When the object is released, the person on the inner surface of the sphere rotates with the sphere and the released object travels along a straight line until it hits the inner surface of the sphere. For an object released at 2 meters above the surface one finds that the dropped object lands about 16 cm behind the the point above which it is dropped.

For a high jumper who jumps vertically at 6 m/s (this would take you up 2 meters on earth but takes you up only 1.8 m on the sphere) the jumper actually lands about 65 cm ahead of his or her take off location. Rules for track meets on such a sphere would be very interesting.

The bigger the sphere the smaller the discrepancies. On a sphere with a 2000 m radius the dropped object would land 6 cm from the original vertical and the high jumper would land 21 cm from the takeoff location.

John Black
Physics Dept., Brock University

A sufficiently large rotating wheel (100 ft. radius or more) gives a virtually exact simulation of gravity, without the requirement of contact with the wheel. Even if you jump in the air your linear velocity brings you down again, exactly as if you were falling. Furthermore your angular momentum rotates your body so you always fall on your feet, exactly as on Earth.

If you were to stand on a chair in such a simulator and you simply stepped off it you would fall to the floor in exactly the same way as in real gravity.

As the rotating wheel is made smaller differences from real gravity begin to appear. But there is still no question of floating up and hitting your head on the ceiling. In fact the reverse is true - the height of the same jump is LESS in the simulator.

To take a specific example a 25 ft radius simulator has a peripheral speed of 28.3 ft per sec, and a jump which normally takes you 2 ft in the air requires a take off speed of 11.3 ft per second. This gives you a take off angle of 21.8 degrees and a total speed of 30.5 ft per sec. From geometry the greatest height attained is about 21 inches. On landing your body is misaligned from the vertical by about 4 degrees.

Richard Freeman
Ottawa, Ont.

I'm glad to have been taught physics by someone other than the University of Calgary professor who answered the end of show question on the subject date. He seems to have forgotten the basic laws of motion. When the person jumps up from the rotating surface of the space station, in addition to the upward component of velocity. he still has a linear component of velocity in the direction of rotation so will quickly collide with the curved surface of the space station again. As it is moving in the same direction and at the same speed as he is, he will land on the spot that he jumped from.

Gary Schaupmeyer

I was quite disappointed with the question part of today's show, or more specifically the answer given.

Your answer person did not give a very good description of the dynamics that are involved and the resulting motions.

He said that if you jumped up the centrifugal force is no longer operating on you and you would continue to travel in a straight line. This is sort of right, but it doesn't describe how it would seem to someone in the spacecraft. From the perspective of the person in the spacecraft gravity would appear quite similar to what you would expect of real gravity when you jumped.

The easiest way to think about this is what would happen if you were standing in the spacecraft and dropped a ball. What would happen to the ball would be very similar as if you were spinning the ball around your head on a string and let go. It would continue to move in its tangential direction in a straight line. Meanwhile at the same time you would continue to rotate in the same direction and if the cylinder was quit large it would appear to fall close to straight down. It would actually be not quite straight down though as it would continue to move at the tangential velocity of your hand rather than the velocity that your feet are moving, so it would actually have a slight parabolic movement. But for landing and taking off in the same place this difference in velocity wouldn't be a factor.

Therefore, If you were to jump it you would continue along at the vector of the tangent velocity of the "floor" plus the velocity of your jump and at the same time the cylinder would continue to rotate underneath you. As the required velocity to create an artificial gravity is quite high, that would be the dominant velocity vector and you would continue in a straight line with the cyclinder rotating underneath you until the cyclinder came up and hit the bottom of your feet in its rotation and you would come back to land in the exact same place from where you jumped off. Interestingly you would continue to be in the same orientation that you took off unless you twisted yourself in the air, so it was a very small cyclinder (or you were similating a very light gravity so you were able to jump quite high) you could end up landing on your face or at least quite a bit off balance. However, it it was a reasonably large cylinder then it would feel just like jumping on earth.

If you could run fast enough you could actually get to zero gravity, but this would be quite difficult to do as you got faster the effective force could decrease and your feet would spend less time touching the ground and it would get difficult to accelerate. If you were riding a bike this wouldn't be as much of a problem, but it would still be difficult, as when the force decreased the friction between the wheels and the floor would also decrease.

I hope you revisit the problem to clear up what would really happen.

James Blake

Your answers were wrong: If you ran opposite the direction of rotation at the linear speed of the running surface and then jumped you'd float. Otherwise you'd reconnect with the surface (apparently falling).

Dover Bruce

I was disappointed in the response to the question about artificial gravity on your Oct 13 program. The question was about what happens if an astronaut jumps inside a spinning cylinder like the one depicted in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Your expert's answer was not clear to me, although it sounded right, but when the host asked if the astronaut would float to the other side and hit his head, the response was "That's right."

It should be obvious, since the astronaut sticks to the floor (wall of the cylinder) while the floor exerts a force toward the centre, that he will fall back to the floor (in his estimation) if he jumps up, and that the jogging depicted in the movie would not be possible if this were not true.

According to the principle of equivalence, a uniform inertial force is indistinguishable (locally) from a uniform gravitational force. [The particular inertial force in the frame of a spinning drum can be distinguished from earth's gravity because of the difference in the detailed shape of the two fields, one being cylindrical directed away from the axis, the other spherical directed toward the centre, but these effects are small so long as the radius is large compared to the distances considered.] As such, from the astronaut's point of view, the centrifugal force will cause him to return to the the same location on the floor when he jumps straight "up" (except for a small deviation due to the Coriolis force).

How does this fit with what an external observer in an inertial frame sees, since centrifugal forces don't exist in inertial frames?

This is more easily understood by thinking of dropping a tennis ball. At the moment of release, there is zero force on the ball so it moves in a straight line with constant velocity. Since it was previously moving in a circle, it will move off on the tangent to that circle. If you draw a tangent just inside a circle, it intersects the circle not far away, so the tennis ball hits the floor. Of course the ship continues to rotate the same way, with the result that the ball hits the floor almost at the point that was radially out from (below) its release point. So, what appears as uniform tangential motion to the external observer, looks like radial acceleration to the internal observer. To the external observer, the small deviation is because the path of the point on the floor is curved.

The jumping astronaut adds a small radial component (inward) to the tangential motion. His path would be like a chord of a circle, the distance from the circle (floor) first increasing, then decreasing, just like on earth ... almost.

Werner Ens
Physics, University of Manitoba

I wanted to respond to your September discussion with Dr. Bjorn Lomborg.

The book, as I will discuss below, is full of egregious distortions, errors of interpretation, a super selective inclusion of data, and the whole thing underlines how little Lomborg knows or understands of much about which he writes, even though he does so as if he is an authority.

He imagines that the ecosystems of the world exist solely to satisfy human desires and that humanity can calculate best how to regulate natural systems of unimaginable complexity, arguments which not only reflect a staggering contempt of the natural world and our place in it, but also a staggering naievete and ignorance of systems we are only beginning to understand. Much of the book has an undergraduate quality to it, but is this surprising considering that ecology is the most complex of sciences and that Lomborg has never done a shred of work in the field? He has shown a profound contempt for the comments of his peers and has repeatedly ignored comments from people with experience in environmental science who just so happen to think that many, if not most of his arguments are either not original, or are plainly wrong.

Lomborg views ecosystems as nothing more than direct economic assets, so that an old growth forest is only useful in providing timber and a coral reef in generating tourist revenue. But the indirect value of preserving many of these ecosystems is clearly way over his head - as when he makes the ludicrous remark that protection of upland forests in China mitigating flooding has everything to do with economics and nothing to do with ecology.

It is hardly news that some environmental indicators have shown an improvement over time, but what Lomborg and his ilk have constantly ignored is the deteriorating conditions of ecosystems underlying these indicators. Thus, Lomborg ignores the wealth of data which shows the fraying nature of foodwebs and ecosystems, as demonstrated by the loss of coral reefs, wetlands, and eutrophication of aquatic ecosystems, while overlooking the effects of habitat fragmentation and invasive species on the health and functioning of ecosystems. I honestly believe that Lomborg just does not understand the processes embodied by the term "ecosystem services" so he glosses over them. However, in doing so his entire book is undermined - and what we get is a quantitative quagmire of "how much of this" and "how much of that" without much in the way qualitiative analyses.

Lomborg is also super-selective in the way he handles data. Thus, where global trends support his arguments, he highlights them, whereas when these are less favourable, he switches to regional trends. This is clearly evident with regards to food production and the per capita yield of certain crops.

Lomborg's book was not peer reviewed by life-scientists and he had the luxury of avoiding this criticism; thus, he sets about "proving" that climate change will "probably" be moderate, based on not a shred of scientific evidence. He constantly makes subjective judgments as if they are absolute, and this garbage is presented as sound science in his book. For instance, Lomborg cites several papers which project lower rates of temperature increase even though some of them suggest that their models are no more accurate than studies projecting higher temperatures (which he fails to disclose, proving that his view of the world is decidedly elliptical). He also fails to include papers which argue that IPCC doesn't go far enough in its projections. If Lomborg was the "hard-headed skeptic" he claims to be, he would have spared us a book filled with distortions but would instead have presented both sides in equal measure. However, although there is plenty of contrarian nonsense out there, he ignores this and focusses his jaded book on undermining environmental exaggerations.

On extinction rates, he is just plainly wrong. I won't go on at length except to say that Loborg's figure of 0.7% per 50 years is obtained by juxtaposing the known numbers of extinct and endangered species against those for which we have no information at all (which may represent 90% of all extant species, since more than 10 million species may exist). This estimate totally contradicts the 10-40% of well-known species that are already on the brink of extinction, and is 15-40 times less than the predictions of scientists who study them. For example: 12.5% of plants, 11% or birds, 34% of fish and 25% of mammals are currently threatened or endangered.

The scientific community is almost unanimously filled with indignation because Lomborg's shallow book has done considerable harm to the public's perception of environmental issues. The political right loves the book because it implies that there are no limits to material growth, but in reality Lomborg has failed to examine the deteriorating condition of ecological systems which provide the infrastructure for this continued growth. The book is a polemic and will end up on the scrap heap of history like its predecessors, but the damage it has done to credible science is hard to calculate, although it is likely to be significant.

By the way, I am a Canadian citizen (born in Toronto), and hope that I am doing my part in protecting the integrity of science, something Lomborg would clearly not understand.

Yours sincerely,

Dr. Jeffrey A. Harvey,
Senior Scientist,
Department of Multitrophic Interactions,
Netherlands institute of Ecology,
Centre for Terrestrial Ecology,
Heteren, The Netherlands

The professor seems to be a well spoken gentleman with a fairly non-passionate perspective on things where people are concerned. This, however, is the biggest problem I have with his views. They are all from the point of view, and toward the benefit of, human beings.

He completely separates us from the rest of species on the planet with the wave of the pen by saying that despite the growing population of the planet, things will be alright because we'll grow more food. One mouth has two hands which can do more work. As long as the humans can figure something out with knowledge and technology, things will be as they should.

This line of thinking burns me up to no end. Our educated minds look at things entirely from a point of view that separates humans from the rest of the mix because "we know what's best."

Terry Tufts
Fitzroy Harbour, Ont.

Your Danish statistician of this morning can eat crow. Whether his stats prove him right or not, I don't want a world with pop densities as found in China or most of Europe.

As for the rich not having kids, why not look into places in India , Borneo, or the Arab world, where some of the unpleasantly rich, as a celebrated recent one, have children to boot and not an ounce of care for their environment?

My view is that we should already start depopulating large aress of Europe, for instance, and reintroduce some "pristineness."

PR Venne
Quebec

I'm a little concerned about the way that the stats have been quoted. .07% of all species is trivial. Consider that there are only a few hundred mammalian species vs over a million insect species.

Taking this stat without examination would lead one to believe that we could easily eliminate all species of animals except insects and bacteria, and still not have had a significant impact on the environment.

A lot of the environment would carry on quite happily without any reptiles, mammals, fish or fowl, but I don't think I want to live in that world.

Julian Sammy
Toronto, Ont.

In my opinion, Lomborg presented a thoughtful and balanced view of today's environmental issues, and his findings are worthy of intelligent debate.

It speaks volumes that the best response the "environmentalists" could come up with was an ad-hominem attack on Lomborg and a decline to debate his views.

I suggest to you that environmentalists are nothing more than pseudo-scientist- "chicken littles" that function as a propaganda arm of the socialist left.

N. Fortugno

The scientists who refused to comment because they didn't want to lend credence to this idea should understand that they are doing the wrong thing. We had that happen with scientists failed to speak up against the Univ. of Western Ontario professor who claimed that intelligence is correlated with race.

The purpose of knowledgeable scientists, much like knowledgable engineers in their area of specialization, is to speak from highest mountain and, publicly, tear falsehoods to shreads. When that happened I was in university and we were looking for information but we only ever heard one side of the story. Data is data and stats never lie right?

Eric Praetzel
Ontario

Great interview. A small piece of realism which has finally been allowed to breach the surface. The stats have for years shown that most - BUT NOT ALL - environmental measures have been getting better. Lomberg's message of focussing on the important versus the trendy is badly needed.

Regarding the gentlemen who refused your offer to comment on the program - and the one who did. Their arrogant "I wouldn't wish to lend credence to his views.." and "he's an unknown statistician from a lowly university..." do not hide the fact that they did not attempt to refute even ONE of his assertions. Shame on these so called men of science who are more interested in debate societies and political points than on the advancement of knowledge.

Gary Bunio
Calgary, Alta.

Perhaps it was not the intention of Quirks & Quarks to portray the views of the mainstream environmentalists versus those of Dr. Lomborg in an unbalanced fashion, but unbalanced it was (because of questions of where to focus in a limited time?).

For example, however right or wrong his arguments may be, Dr. Lomborg presented them clearly and logically, using numbers to back them up. In contrast, the mainstream scientists like Drs. Brown and Ehrlich merely stuck their heads in the sand by not commenting.

Dr. Birks(sp?) did little better, because he did not stick to the scientific issues and only made pathetic personal attacks on the reputation of Dr. Lomborg. I hope Q&Q decides to present a full and rational debate on this very important topic in the near future.

Bill Wall
Cuautlancingo, Mexico

I did enjoy Saturday's show....BUT as a high school science teacher I would have a hard time selling your guest's rather optimistic view of the future to my students.

I do believe in the idea that the earth as a whole has the ability to heal itself, given a chance. What I do tell my students is for each of us to take responsibility for ourselves, for the waste or abuse of our own environments.

Chris Giles
Truro, Nova Scotia

I find the refusal of Erlich and other critics of Bjorn Lomborg profoundly unscientific. Perhaps not unexpected -- I remember my geology professor stompting into my class in 1955 and proclaiming that "You may hear stupid theories that the continents move but don't believe it for a moment" and there are lots of other examples.

Lomborg's statistics may be wrong -- or his interpretation of the statistics may be wrong. Surely the response is not to say "I don't want to dignify Lomborg's theories by responding to them." So, let us hear from these "peer reviewed scientists" just which it is. It is simply not good enough to talk about "obscure Danish statisticians".

Don Thom
Ottawa , Ont.

I was very interested in your interview with the author of The Skeptical Environmentalist, not that I can judge his book without reading it and investigating its claims.

However, I was shocked at the telephone interview which followed with a British environmentalist named, I think, Birch. His refutation of the book in question seemed to be that it was by an "obscure" Danish statistician, and the weight of peer-reviewed scientific opinion was against him!

SO WHAT?! The weight of scientific opinion was against Galileo, Semmelwise, and many, many others through the history of science, especially if they were "obscure." To simply dismiss the author in question because he is "obscure" and goes against the mainstream is a very weak argument indeed. I hope you will point that out to listeners, most of whom I'm sure immediately realized the weakness of the "argument." Weight of scientific opinion indeed!

Lloyd Knight

It is often said that statistics can be made to prove anything. Now we have a shining example of that truism from the Danish statistician's conclusions on environmental degradation.

There really isn't that much, he says. He implies that special interests like scientists and environmentalists have invented most of it while his statistical results are non-political. After all it's must numbers. The Fraser Institute the notorious mouthpiece of interests like MacMillan Bloedell, will undoubtedly be quoting these trumped up "results" ad nauseam in days to come.

Results like this can only be achieved by ignoring what is plain to be seen by anyone with half an eye in favour of some kind of skewed numbers scheme. You have to wonder if there was any friendly encouragement given to the author of this piece of nonsense from that quarter.

Ruth Cohen
Toronto, Ont.

It was very disappointing to hear that two experts in the field refused to comment as they did not want to lend credibility to Lomborg's arguements. It strikes me they could have destroyed Lomborg's credibility by carefully deconstructing his arguements. Instead, their refusal detracted from their own credibility.

My disappointment was compounded when the scientist who did rebut Lomborg attacked his status and not his work. All three of the responses lacked intellectual integrity. Right or wrong, at least Bjorn Lomborg represented himself within the context of a valid debate.

Eric Nielsen
Halifax, Nova Scotia

Your discussion with Dr. Bjorn Lomborg gave me new hope, not so much for the environment, but for science itself.

The cool, rational, tolerant and genuinely scientific approach was a marked contrast to the bombastic certitudes of the environmental theologians who eschew scholarly discourse because they "know they are right". They claim to represent the majority of scientists, which is very doubtful, but even if that bit of propogana is true, since when are scientific truths determined by majority vote?

As a retired scientist and lifelong conservationist, I often despair at the widespread politicization of science and the anti-intellectual biases of the popular media. Elementary logic and the scientific method disappeared from the general educational system a few decades ago and the public no longer has the tools to "cut through the b.s."

Lee Morrison
Eastend, Sask.

Dr. Lomborg may have a few good points, in that we are certainly cleaning up our act in some areas. But it is obvious that he is not a biologist.

Concerning his remarks on the rate of extinction. We simply do not know the number of species currently living on Earth, because we have not yet seen or described a large proportion of them - for example, we have described about 100,000 fungi, but credible estimates put the total worldwide figure at well over a million.

Similar situations exist in many other groups. Since it is also extremely difficult to prove that a species has become extinct, unless it is large and conspicuous, all figures given for rates of extinction are essentially meaningless, and I think we should observe the precautionary principle, which means restraining ourselves from destroying habitat.

Bryce Kendrick
Sidney-by-the-Sea, BC

One of the first lessons I learned as a journalism student is that statistics lie. Instead of asking environmentalists to respond to his opinion, you should have asked other statistician. Statisticians with their own statistics. It would have been a clear way of actually presenting the other side of the story.

The late Martin Dorrell, my journalism teacher, would have written, "you're fired," in very big letters across the transcript of this segment. And for good reason.

Sensationalism, the big lie, is the lowest form of journalism and statistics are dubious science at best. I have to wonder about agendas when I see them combined.

Janet McLeod

I just listened to your "Skeptical Envionmentalist" story. It was great. I listen to and enjoy all of your shows (almost exclusively via MP3), but this story stands out for me.

I was really impressed by Dr. Lomborg. Also, Bob asked a good set of questions, drawing out a lot of the most interesting points in a short space of time.

Finally, I was glad that you provided a dissenting opinion at the end, because it was so darned tempting to just accept everything Dr. Lomborg said as gospel.

Thanks for a great story, and keep those MP3 files coming - I love 'em.

Brian Dusting

Paul Ehrlich was wise to refuse to comment on Lomborg's assertions.

Facts frequently get in Ehrlichs's way, such as when in 1968 he said that in the 1970s the world will undergo famines and hundreds of millions of people including Americans are going to starve to death.

In the next year he predicted that smog disasters in 1973 might kill 200,000 people in New York and Los Angeles, and in 1976 he predicted the doom which I somehow failed to notice: "Before 1985 mankind will enter a genuine age of scarcity . . . in which the accessible supplies of many key minerals will be facing depletion."

Robert W. McDowell
Newport, Vermont

As a former Mathematics teacher, I was amused that the person commenting on the state of the environment was a statistician.

Numbers don't lie in normal mathematics, until you enter statistics. Everything depends on how you frame the question & what constitutes your number sample. So while listening to his views, I kept that in mind.

Granted, the main point of his argument seemed to be the time frame of the predicted events. As a member of the humane race, I find that it is too easy to put things off until later if there doesn't seem to be any urgency. If we weren't taking the steps to clean up the environment or to conserve fuel, we would suffer from pollution as would other species. I don't think people in general, would do this if there wasn't some worry of depletion or extinction.

At least it was an upbeat version of the state of the world.

C. O'Connor
Western New York

As a statistics professor myself, I can confirm that Lomborg has indeed got it right. His critics cannot counter his arguments, so they try to dismiss him personally - as "relatively unpublished, obscure." for example. What smug twits.

A book published by Cambridge University Press (who published Lomborg's book) has better credentials than much of what the doomsters publish. But even more importnt, the alarmist predictions of Ehrlich and others have been proven wrong so many times I've lost count.

If only they would look at the whole truth, they might undergo the same conversion that Lomborg and I have experienced. But that would require a certain degree of open-mindedness and humility wouldn't it?

Tom Wonnacott
London, Ontario

I found Bjorn's arguments to be reasonable and compelling and weather his specific arguments are right or wrong there needs to be some rational evaluation of the issues surrounding the costs of what we are doing both environmentally and economically.

I found the rebuttal interview interesting. I got the impression from the other gentleman that he had not at that, point read the book by Mr. Lomborg. I also found the rebuttal web site just as interesting in that is seemed to be as much a personal slight as anything else. If you disagree with his arguments then proceed to refute the arguments by airing an opposing argument. If I read both arguments that are complete and thought out then I have the opportunity to make up my own mind. Making the arguments emotional and personal takes the opportunity for rational decision making away and at the end of the day that offends me.

Alvin Starr

As an astrophysicist I enjoy listening to your usually-well put together program each Saturday. Last week you interviewed a Danish statistician who claims that there is no environmental crisis nor a population problem. Phooey! This chap ended up doing what most economists do: he looks at productivity statistics and ignores the broader picture. Why didn't you also interviewed one or two competent environmentalist to refute this statistical nonsense?

Please tell your guest statistician to get out in the world. Look at the enormous degradation of our forests through clear-cut lumbering, consider the dying fishing industry, a product of over fishing and destructive fishing techniques, ask why many large wild mammals are nearing extinction. Maybe he should drive through any big city and look at the teaming congestion, exhaust fumes choking us and people wasting hours per day just coming and going to work. Why does he think our ground water is becoming poisoned in many areas? Does over-intensive livestock operations ring a bell? But of course, so he says, there will be no problem in feeding the growing population. Balogna, enormous problems are already upon us and rapidly growing worse.

I certainly believe in free inquiry and freedom of speech. Your Danish guest should have his say, but *not* without competent rebuttal to knock him into the proverbial cockhat!

David F. Gray

The idea that the solution to improving the human condition is through increasing human wealth and technological prowess we believe to be only half of the solution. How we perceive and frame a problem is indicative of how we will respond to it. If we believe that we can solve many of humanities current and future problems primarily by advancing technology and increasing wealth, that premise will initiate a whole range of human activities. Expanding this one sided approach too far may actually increase imbalance and chaos in the eco systems. This one sided focus may actually exacerbate many current problems and could end up being a key component in leading humanity into dire straits.

Dan Herrington

The widely accessible media outlets have a habit of glomming on to anomalies, anecdotes, the exotic and the quirky. Perhaps this is the best way to stir up the public's interest whose senses have been numbed by the mundane and the middle of the road.

Applying this habit to view scientific research and thought is dangerous however. The accessible press has a habit of picking up obscure scientific theories which have not gone through the peer review process and presenting them vis-a-vis the ones which have been fully tested. The enthusiasm which accompanies the upstart obfuscates our current state of knowledge by obscuring the most probable, i.e., the one which has withstood the peer review process. Perhaps science will proceed more smoothly if ego driven scientists stop circumventing the peer-reivew process by publishing accessible books and stick to the programme of writing for those boring scientific journals (the inaccessible press).

It is true that scientific revolutions are born from quirky scientific theory. However, most quirky scientific theories do not bear scientifc revolutions, though we may have a penchant for them.

Edward Ing

Why is it that humans have such a hard time erring on the side of caution? We need to be very wary of the bean counters of the world because a slant can be put on any statistical outcome. No one can put their finger on the future in exact terms but we would rather live and have our children and all creatures live in a world created by environmentalists, if indeed they are found to be wrong, than survive in a world created by this statistician and his ilk if they were proved wrong!

Responsible, cautious reactions are what parents and teachers try to instill in our young to face the challenges of life; perhaps we adults need a refresher course!

Susan & Robert Hook
Caribou, Maine

I was somewhat dismayed at some of your listeners comments concerning the ideas voiced by Bjorn Lomborg. I am, however, not entirely surprised. People are apparently not aware of the large body of work that has been done by graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and many obscure and undistinguished researchers that clearly shows humans are damaging the environment. Perhaps it is too difficult and time consuming to examine all of the data available. If environmental researchers had wanted to dismantle his statements you would have had to devote a whole program to them alone. That would be unreasonable.

This appears to be a situation in which Lomborg has stepped out of the field of his expertise to judge the work of others. This man is a statistician, not a research scientist. He has a hypothesis, statistically generated, that differs from that of other environmentalists and so should now proceed to test his ideas experimentally. I remember someone once statistically correlated the appearance of apples on the market in Britain with the migration of storks there. A simple experiment could show that storks did not bring the apples. If Bjorn Lomborg had to do the work needed to test his ideas we would probably never hear of him again. The sad part is that some people now have an apparent authority to quote in support of their lack of concern for and continued abuse of the natural world

Bob Hudek

I'd just like to point out that Dr Lomberg had a considerably more impressive kick at the can than did Mr. Burke, and consequently I don't feel like both points of view actually got a full hearing.

Your website has a link to Burke's reply to Lomberg, which goes into much more detail and is a considerably more impressive rebuttal (although not without problems of its own). I'd recommend either that you invite another speaker to respond more specifically to Dr Lomberg, or that you at least direct your listeners to Mr Burke's reply.

In that reply Mr Burke acknowledges that some environmentalists have been prone to exaggeration or distortion; however he also makes the salient point that Dr Lomberg is attacking environmentalist positions which were published twenty years ago or more, and he goes on to say that no major environmentalist organization today holds many of the positions derided by Dr Lomberg.

On balance I'd have to say I tend to agree with Mr Burke, that Dr Lomberg's analysis seems highly selective of data and contains assumptions which are unproven or even naieve. Nevertheless I found his presentation interesting and worthy of a detailed, focussed examination.

I think it doesn't serve environmentalists to attack him "ad hominem" as one of your listeners described it; rather we should try to understand the difficulties around getting a clear picture of what is actually going on, and attempt to account for the actual information rather than blaming one another for being mouthpieces of multinational corporations or stooges for evil environmenta groups.

E Peach

I think you folks gave into the temptation for a provocative topic that'd encourage people like me to protest. I mean, Ehrlich et al were right- to give the guy airtime is about as apt as giving the last Flat Earth Society member attention. If he had brought forth his own figures to counter the official ones, i'd be intrigued. But he didn't. Oh, pardon me, he claimed recent species extinction is [exactly!] .07, but DIDN'T supply a source. Recall the old saw "Exceptional claims require exceptional evidence."? He didn't supply such. The core of his argument: some environmentalists sometimes exaggerate. Well duh.

Either he didn't have any evidence [my suspicion!] or your interviewer failed to bring it out. Either way you blew it.

M. Lutz

Some of your listeners may be interested to know that the issues posed by many other writers of Bjorn Lomborg's inclinations have been treated at length by Paul and Anne Ehrlich in their 1996 book, Betrayal of Science and Reason (Island Press paperback edition 1998). While their book was written before Dr Lomborg's and does not specifically address Dr. Lomborg's conclusions, they do deal with many of the general environmental positions attacked by Dr. Lomborg.

I realize that you were unsuccessful in convincing credible environmental scientists to respond to Dr. Lomborg's assertions. I urge you to continue trying. Most scientists (apparently including Dr. Ehrlich) are reluctant to deal with such wholesale assaults on reasonably well-established science in such a wide range of disciplines from one individual with limited credibility in those fields. Like the attacks themselves (commonly called shit-blizzards, or baloney-blizzards), the responses by necessity tend to be a mile wide and an inch deep. It is just exasperatingly time-consuming to sort out the (usually) small bits of useful truth from the useless matrix. Perhaps if you approached specialists to comment on Lomborg's conclusions on specific environmental problems you might have better luck.

David Mayhood

In response to your feature interview of Sept. 29, I would like to point out our relationship with nature is a philosophical one, not a statistical one. A person should take NO COMFORT from the fact that they have a full tank of gas while locked in a garage with a running car. Our need to improve our technologies should be driven by a goal of increase efficiency, to create the smallest environmental footprint possible, of increasing our degrees of freedom so that we are not dependent on any one technology. These goals should be fundamental and not dependent on an impending crisis.

Wade Stout
Calgary, Atla.

In the course of your feature on Bjorn Lomborg's book I believe that you mentioned that Paul Ehrlich had declined to comment on the book because he didn't want to give it any credibility.

I recently came across a column by Thomas Sowell written on the occasion of the death of Julian Simon. I thought you might be interested in a part of that column.

Sowell writes " Professor Simon made a famous bet with the leading hysteria-monger of our time, Paul Ehrlich of Stanford University. Simon had offered to bet anybody that any set of natural resources which they claimed were running low would in fact be cheaper in the future than today. Professor Ehrlich took him up on it. Simon allowed Ehrlich to pick which resources and which period of time Ehrlich and his fellow hysterics chose a bundle of 10 natural resources and a period of 10 years. At the end of the decade, not only was the real cost of that bundle lower than at the beginning, every single natural resource that the Ehrlic camp had picked had a lower real cost than when the decade began. If we were really running low on these resources, they would be getting progressively more expensive, instaed of progressively cheaper. This is elementary supply-and-demand economics. But those addicted to overpopulation hysteria are no more interested in economics than they are in evidence."

Nor in stastical analysis, it would appear.

Paul Smith

I'm sorry I had to listen to this show. A friend was taken in by Lomborg's glib attitude and proclamation that there is not that much to worry about and asked me for my response.

This guy is preposterous. Take his biodiversity argument. When he says the "professional" opinion is, and cites UN documents as he does, (in his Guardian articles), duh, he can't take a position that no one in the field agrees with and back it up by saying a lot of people agree with him on it, or that he found out what he knows by reviewing the research of others. Which others? He didn't name one researcher when you asked him where he gets his numbers. Its just logic, no one has to know anything about species extinction to wonder how this clown was deemed worthy to be on your show, other than his reputation for causing a lot of controversy.

David Lewis

I find it disturbing that a show about science would give that sort of an audience to somebody whose views are clearly in the scientific minority. You could have gotten exactly the opposite viewpoint-that we are facing formidable environmental challenges-by interviewing any one of the thousands of scientists (comprising over half of the living Nobel laureates) who belongs to the Union of Concerned Scientists. Had you asked any of the over 500 scientists from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, you would have heard about the overwhelming evidence that climate change is happening, and the discernible human influence on that change.

Dale Marshall
Vancouver, BC

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