Dilithium, Naqadah and our chemical future

Science fiction has evolved since the days of Jules Verne and HG Wells and now there are many different genres and sub-genres of sci-fi. One of the basic tenets of hard sci-fi genres has been the imagination of technology which does not yet exist. In more popular sci-fi franchises such as Star Trek and Stargate this feature has been manifest through the creation of fictional materials and chemical elements. This has been seen most recently in the Star Trek reboot where "red matter" is a key plot device. For the moment I'm going to forget that red matter is actually a bad rip-off of an idea from Alias (another JJ Abrams crapfest). The important thing here is that these fictional materials and elements are quite literally the building blocks of science fiction. 

Quite often the more advanced technology described in sci-fi is based on some fictional material. The hyperdrive engines and cloaking devices in Stargate for example, rely on naqadah as a fuel source. Similarly the basic strucutre of the ringworlds in Larry Niven's titular novel are made from a material called scrith which is described as having a tensile strength similar to the force bonding atomic nuclei.

Imagining advanced technology is a wonderful thought exercise and the lifeblood of science fiction and for the moment there is thankfully, enough of the universe which we do not understand to allow these technologies to seem plausible. The same cannot be said for chemical elements though.

When I was first introduced to the periodic table by an illustrated dictionary of science book that my parents bought me when I was 8, there were 103 known chemical elements. Now there are 112 named elements and another 6 elements with temporary symbols. So the burning question is whether any of the currently discovered elements are likely to power hyperdrive elements or facilitate time travel. The answer it seems is probably not. 

The oldest of the newly discovered elements is Rutherfordium. It has an atomic number of 112 and a melting point of 2100C. More importantly though, it is a synthetic radioactive element with a half-life of 1.3 hours. It's the same story with the other element too. All of these new super-heavy elements up to ununoctium have been generated in nuclear and particle accelerator experiments and are radioactive and unstable. So far there's nothing with an unprecedented tensile strength or the ability to contact the dead. As with everything in science though, there's no predicting the future, unless you've got a premium rate phone line. It is possible that in future some element like maclarium from Stargate with an atomic number in excess of 200 may exist with magical properties. 

The only problem with creating new elements is that the newest elements we have managed to synthesise have been created in particle acceleration experiments. The Large Hadron Collider constructed beneath the CERN facility in Geneva is one of the most impressive scientific undertakings in history but at a cost of €7.5bn it is also the most expensive. If we do manage to create some element in fifty years time with an atomic number of 150 and a tensile strength in teranewtons, it's going to be so expensive that to make a nail out of it will probably make gold or platinum seem free by comparison.

I hope Scott Adams is right.

In his book "The Dilbert Future", Scott Adams attempts to predict the future of technology and office relations. Some of his predictions are downright creepy such as the prediction that large companies such as telephone companies would form confusopolies to intentionally confuse customers rather than compete on price. It's true, just try picking through the range of price plans from O2. Other predictions though are, for the moment, just for entertainment value. My favourite chapter is, naturally, "Life will not be like Star Trek". Of course Adams is right. If the future really were like Star Trek then "nobody would be able to convince me that I should be anywhere other than on the holodeck getting a hot oil massage from Cindy Crawford and her simulated twin sister". 

Having sat through Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith for the second time in a week, I can't help but think that life in the future will not be like Star Wars either. It's not for the obvious reason of living with some "hokey" religion but rather the unbelieveable way in which techonology seems to have evolved in the Star Wars universe.

I have to give credit where it's due and fair play to George Lucas, the opening battle scene in Revenge of the Sith is incredibly impressive but it demonstrates an unrealistic projection of our current technological state. Lucas' vision of the future is one which seems to be influenced by one too many bad WWII movies. He's not alone in this, Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers suffers the same problem, although Heinlein at least has the excuse that Starship Troopers was written in 1959.

The reason why neither of these two visions will come to pass stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of evolution in general and technological evolution in particular. In Revenge of the Sith Lucas depicts massive battle fleets of reasonably equally matched cruisers. Lucas seems to think that advances in technology will suddenly stop at some point in the future and worlds will just start building more and more of everything. The six movies span almost forty years and yet the Death Star is the only major technological or strategic development in that time. You only have to look at the evolution of military technology during a similar war-ridden period on Earth to see why Lucas got it so wrong. 

At the end of WWII, the North American P-51 Mustang was the pinnacle of battlefield technology. It had a top speed of 703km/hr and a range of 2.755 km. Forty years later, the B1-B Lancer was in service with a top speed of 1340km/hr and a range of 11,998 km. It's the same story with tanks, compare the M4 Sherman with the M1 Abrams. 

It's not just the technology that has evolved in the last 65 years since WWII, it's also the way we fight. The development of the cruise missile, stealth aircraft, the airborne laser, the Aegis weapons system, UAVs and UCAVs have all served to change the face of modern combat. To really see the difference watch a WWII movie, anyone will do and then read "The Bear and the Dragon" by Tom Clancy or play Modern Warfare. The difference is amazing. Nowadays we fight smart, not hard and research programmes such as the Future Force Warrior programme shows that this trend is in no danger of stopping. We have moved from trench warfare to small unit tactics and now we're beginning to see the early stages of one man armies. If you want a reasonable prediction of the future of modern combat, don't watch Star Wars, watch Universal Soldier instead.

As I've already said, this prognostication predicament is suffered by Robert Heinlein as well, although in the case of Starship Troopers it's excusable. Released in 1959, Starship Troopers imagines a massive future war between humanity and an arachnoid species referred to only as "The Bugs". Told through the eyes of Juan "Johnnie" Rico, the story is practically a war novel with the veneer of science fiction. There are imaginations of futuristic technology such as power armour but the tactics are no different to those found in the Korean War. It has to be said that technology prediction was not Heinlein's strong suit. In one of his other novels, Stranger in a Strange Land, Heinlein envisions a wonderfully detailed vision of a future earth with just one minor drawback, the most advanced communications technology of the time is essentially a telex machine. 

Predicting the future, at least in a science-fiction context, is possible, just read any of Arthur C. Clarke's novels or better yet the revised edition of "Profiles of the Future" where Clarke revisits technological predictions made in the sixties to see where they are now. Still though, if you're going to spend any considerable time predicting what technology or warfare will be like in the future, you should start by looking at where it is now and how it got there.

P.S. For the record, my favourite future warfare sci-fi and for my money, the one that is bang on for where we'll be is the HALO universe, particularly the novels.

Gender bias or just perspective bias?

Yesterday RTE carried a story in which Fine Gael MEP Mairead McGuinness called for the establishment of gender quotas in the Dail to tackle the issue of gender equality. She said that Ireland has one of the lowest percentages of female political representatives and that unless decisive action is taken, it could take as much as 20 years to redress the balance. There are however, two key problems with her argument, firstly her numbers don't add up and secondly she falls into the trap of faulty cause and effect.

First off, let's look at the actual numbers. One of the "facts" quoted by Ms. McGuinness is that a woman's chances of being elected are about 72% that of a man. In the 30th Dail elections in 2007 there were 471 candidates in total. The gender split of these candidates is 391 men and 80 women. This represents 83% and 17% of the total respectively. When we then analyse the candidates and extract those who are current or former members of the house, we that the number of male candidates who have held political office is  164 which is 41.94% of all men or 34.82%  of all candidates. The number of females who have held political office is 33 which is 41.25% of all women or 7% of all candidates. Therefore, when we look at the electoral success rates of men and women, we see that it depends on how you look at it. 

The overall chance of a man being elected is five times that of a woman. When you examine the weighted percentages though, this bias disappears and you see a strikingly similar success rate: 41.94% vs. 41.25%. The reasonable conclusion to draw from this information then is that it is not electoral success that is the issue for female candidates but rather the number of female candidates who choose to put themselves forward. There is an important caveat here, however. The internal machinations of political parties when it comes to selecting candidates for election is not an easily accessible matter of public record and so it is unknown how many men or women put their name down at local level but are unsuccessful in obtaining their party's nomination. In this event, however, it is unwise to make conclusions about gender bias either way.

The issue of gender equality like most things life is complicated. There is more often than not, in gender bias debates, an assumption that the root cause of gender bias in a particular industry is because of current or historical oppression of women. Take truck driving for example. In 1995 there were 130,000 female truck drivers in America. Ten years later there were 155,000. There may now be as many as 200,000 female truckers in America. Yet female drivers represent just 15% of the total workforce. Some would argue that this is because women are only now being allowed to be truck drivers and societal norms would have forbidden such activity previously. It can also be argued however, that women before were simply not interested in becoming truck drivers. With changing economic conditions and an industry which suffers huge shortages in qualified drivers, more women would be tempted into careers as truck drivers.

The fact of the matter is that men and women have always had different roles in society. Difference does not equal inequality, however. When we examine the earliest human civilisations and modern primitive cultures, we see vastly different roles for men and women. In hunter-gatherer societies men would leave the village in a group for days on end, stalking some large predator. The women on the other hand, would care for all the children communally while gathering fire wood, berries, nuts and other food items as a group. This led to the development of different character traits in men and women. Women are more sociable, are better judges of character and do better on verbal reasoning and memory tests. Men on the other hand are more solitary and more competitive than women and do better on spatial reasoning and mathematical reasoning tests. These traits are deeply embedded in modern humans, and it is unwise to reason that we will be capable of adjusting over 100,000 years of hunter-gatherer lifestyle in just twenty or fifty or a hundred years. That's not to say that we shouldn't try to change things, just that we should be more realistic in how long it's going to change things.

This is where Mairead McGuinness has made a fundamental flaw in her logic. It's not the parliamentary system, that's broken, clearly female candidates are just as attractive to the voting public as male candidates. Rather, it's society that needs changing and we need to find ways to engage women on taking personal responsibility for bringing about such change. A quota system is not the answer and will lead to an even more broken Dail than the one we saw disintegrate before our eyes this week. 

We should cut Ms. McGuinness some slack though. It's easy to see how the lone female candidate losing her seat in a constituency with eleven male candidates could perceive that there is a gender bias in the country at large. Unfortunately, for most of our politicians, reality is a strange and disturbing place.

When hypocrisy demands recognition

Earlier this week, news agencies around the world carried the story of a gay couple who received £3600 in compensation because they were refused a room in a B&B by the Christian couple who own it. The judge found that despite the deeply and sincerely held beliefs of the owners, they had in fact directly discriminated against the couple on the basis of sexual orientation.

The interesting thing about this case was the claim from the owners that their policy on double rooms was based on their views on marriage and that it is applied consistently to all unmarried couples. The gay couple in this case were in a civil partnership, however, and this fact started off a thought process in my head which goes like this.

Q: The couple in this case were in a civil partnership but were still refused a room. Why?

A: The owners must not consider civil partnership to be marriage.

Q: The only reason that there is civil partnership in the UK instead of full marriage is because of Christian oppostion so why is that?

A: Because they consider homosexuality to be sinful.

Q: Why?

A: Because the bible says so.

Q: Where does it say that in the bible?

A: Leviticus 18:22 (Thou shalt not lie with mankind as you lie with womankind; it is an abomination)

Q: What else does Leviticus prohibit?

A: Tattoos, astrology, eating fat or blood, eating pork, eating seafood that lacks fins or scales, working on the sabbath, eating leavened bread on the sabbath.

Q: So why don't Christians call for laws against these things or even practice them privately.

A: Because they're all HYPOCRITES.

Neither hypocrisy nor some dusty commandment pulled out of some Jew's ass deserves legal recognition. We can and should tolerate disparate beliefs but discrimination is crossing the line.

The pinnacle of bad science

So it has turned out that bad science has plumbed new depths with the publication of Brian Deer's investigation of Andrew Wakefield's shameful MMR-Autism study. I'm not going to go into the minutiae of the debacle but suffice to say that even in light of the fraud perpetrated by Wakefield in the publication of this paper, there are still conspiracy nuts out there who maintain that Wakefield is a patsy who has been targeted by major pharmaceutical companies for his courageous stance against a dangerous drug. To set the record straight, I have gathered together a brief synopsis of the story.


Original Paper:

Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitis, and pervasive developmental disorder in children

(Note: You will need to register with the Lancet to view the full text of the article but it's free)


Retraction Notice:

The Lancet, February 2010


GMC Ruling:

Fitness to practise hearing – 28 January 2010


Contradictory Studies:

• No effect of MMR withdrawal on the incidence of autism: a total population study
• Vaccines for measles, mumps and rubella in children
• Absence of detectable measles virus genome sequence in blood of autistic children who have had their MMR vaccine during the routine childhood immunisation schedule of UK
• No evidence for a new variant of measles-mumps-rubella-induced autism
• No evidence of persisting measles virus in peripheral blood mononuclear cells from children with autism spectrum disorder
• Vaccines and autism: a tale of shifting hypotheses
• Unintended events following immunisation with MMR: a systematic review

(Note: The second and last articles are both review articles, containing a synopsis of 31 and 22 different study papers respectively)


There are some general conclusions to be drawn from this whole sorry scandal which are pretty evident when you examine all the available information.

• This is not a scam by "Big Pharma" for the purposes of pushing a new product on the general public. The MMR vaccine like most others, is one which you only receive once or twice in your lifetime. No pharmaceutical company is going to make major cash with a phoney vaccine. 

• The use of mercury as a preservative in the MMR vaccine is not the cause of autism. At the time when mercury was used in the MMR vaccine it was also used in other vaccines and yet there has been no claims in relation to autism being caused by any other vaccine. In addition, mercury has been removed from vaccines since 2001 and yet autism cases continue to increase. Also, when the MMR vaccine was removed from use in Japan in 1993, the number of autism cases continued to increase. 

• Correlation is not causation. Part of the bad science problem that pervades society today is that someone notices one event following another and suddenly proclaims that one caused the other. This is a well understood principle referred to as: post hoc ergo propter hoc (after it therefore because of it). Fifty years ago, the most common example of this fallacy was cures for warts. There were almost as many cures for warts as there were people who suffered from them. Now it's causes for cancer. Almost every other day you hear some new cause for cancer: fried food, popcorn, sunlight etc. Even last year a "doctor" appeared on tv saying that Irish women should drink more soya milk because Chinese women drink twice as much soya milk as Irish women and have a rate of cervical cancer only a third of Irish women. I'm sure that Chinese women cycle more than Irish women as well but nobody is going to suggest that cycling prevents cancer. 

• The scientific method is a powerful tool. This story has had a beneficial effect, it has shown the world the scientific method in operation and shown how simple and elegant it is. If you publish results of an experiment in a paper then it releases that information into the scientific community where any interested scientist can reproduce your experiment to see if they get the same results. And thus the downfall of Wakefield was forged as one scientist after another repeated the experiment but could not reproduce Wakefield's results.

An expert in immunology, Paul Offit, has written an excellent rebuttal of the anti-vaxers called Deadly Choices. It's well worth reading as it covers not just the modern MMR controversy but the opposition experienced by vaccination pioneers all the way back to Jenner. In fact the only problem I have with the book is the conclusion Offit reaches about the motivation of the anti-vaxers. He suggests that these nutters like Jenny McCarthy suffer from Jack D. Ripper syndrome. They are repulsed that their precious bodily fluids would be contaminated by a foreign substance like a vaccine. Think Howard Hughes only worse, and you're getting there.


I think that there is a far more plausible explanation to be found if you study the world of conspiracy theorists. The MMR vaccine controversy is essentially a conspiracy theory. Anti-vaxers contend that MMR is causing autism and apart from Andrew Wakefield, there is a massive conspiracy among major pharmaceutical companies to suppress this information to which the CDC, the government and any other agency which takes their fancy is party. This behaviour is common to all conspiracy theorists and it stems from an overriding desire to have an explanation for the world. These people cannot bring themselves to accept the idea that their child has contracted autism due to genetics or chance or something outside perhaps not their control but somebody's control. They would like to believe that there was always a system, a tangible cause for their child's condition.


At the end of all this tragedy, we must now face the realisation that we will not see the full effect of the anti-vaxers shameful efforts for at least a generation. While some children will become sick now and suffer immediate adverse effects, those who don't will grow up not having been vaccinated and have children who are even more vulnerable to disease because children rely on their mother's immune system for the first six months of their life. It is then that we'll see really horrible diseases like SSPE (sub-sclerosing pan-encephalitis) rear its ugly head and the legacy of one man's fraud is known.