PD Smith

Twit­ter can be seri­ous­ly dis­tract­ing, espe­cial­ly when the Min­is­ter of Sci­ence keeps send­ing you tweets.

Yes­ter­day I saw a com­ment from sci­ence writer and broad­cast­er Col­in Stu­art (@skyponderer on Twit­ter):

“Any­one else wor­ried that sci­ence and defence are now inex­tri­ca­bly polit­i­cal­ly linked? with @lorddrayson doing both jobs!?”

Yes (I thought) that does sound wor­ry­ing and I tweet­ed it on my page too. With­in forty min­utes Lord Paul Drayson him­self replied (to me, note, not Col­in — per­haps the Sci­ence Min­is­ter does­n’t quite get Twit­ter?).

“What are you wor­ried about?” he asked me.

I have to admit I was sur­prised. Actu­al­ly that’s a seri­ous under­state­ment. I sat in front of the screen for a few min­utes won­der­ing if I was see­ing things. Don’t Her Majesty’s min­is­ters of state have more urgent mat­ters to attend to than deal­ing with com­ments on Twit­ter by authors? Per­haps it was a prac­ti­cal joke? A fake Lord per­haps?

But no, it real­ly was Lord Drayson — Twit­ter bio “Father of 5, Min­is­ter For Sci­ence and Inno­va­tion, Labour peer, car nut: http://www.draysonracing.com/”. Yes, that’s him.

So I replied: “You shd ask @skyponderer — but his­to­ry shows we shd all be con­cerned abt links between sci & defence.” (Excuse the abbre­vi­a­tions but you only get 140 char­ac­ters on Twit­ter.)

Then Col­in joined in (no doubt jus­ti­fi­ably peev­ed that the min­is­ter was ignor­ing him): “I agree with @PD_Smith, but I am also dis­ap­point­ed that sci­ence is under­val­ued enough not to need a full time min­is­ter…”.

At the same time, oth­er peo­ple began to con­tribute equal­ly use­ful com­ments — @DrLucyRogers, @dr_david_w, @joergheber, @imascientist etc. But there­after, silence — at least until this after­noon, when the Min­is­ter replied. Except he’s not just “one” min­is­ter, but two.

Lord Drayson is now (thanks to Gor­don Brown’s lat­est Cab­i­net reshuf­fle) two min­is­ters in one — he is both Sci­ence Min­is­ter and (revert­ing to a for­mer role) Min­is­ter for Defence Pro­cure­ment. Hence Col­in’s con­ster­na­tion, which I share.

This after­noon the two-in-one Min­is­ter again asked what was wor­ry­ing us. I got my response in first (I should have been writ­ing a review but was Twit­ter­ing instead):

@PD_Smith: “1. why does Sci­ence not deserve its own min­is­ter? 2. Are there not eth­i­cal issues re uni­fy­ing sci + mil­i­tary under 1 min­is­ter?”

This time @lorddrayson answered imme­di­ate­ly: “In my view the more the sci min­is­ter is con­nect­ed to wider roles in govt the more influ­ence sci­ence has to the whole agen­da.”

@PD_Smith (two tweets in a row this time): “The log­ic of that is that you’ll soon be tak­ing on more port­fo­lios? Sounds to me like a reduc­tion in the import of sci. And what about com­bin­ing sci + defence pro­cure­ment? Does it send out the right mes­sage in an age of nuclear pro­lif­er­a­tion?”

In reply, the Noble Lord fired off five tweets in quick suc­ces­sion: “Sci­ence deserves a min­is­ter at the cab­i­net table. Thats key. Tick. Sci desrves a cab­i­net com­mit­tee. Thats key too. Tick.”

“But, many min­is­ters have dual roles.. it real­ly helps depart­ments work togeth­er bet­ter. Silos in white­hall are not help­ful.”

“Many sci­ence issues are cross-depart­men­tal. Take GMES as an exam­ple. MOD / DECC / BERR / DIUS all had a view on earth obser­va­tion”

“Re eth­i­cal issues. You have a point. I have to be absolute­ly clear on the sep­a­ra­tion between the 2 roles. Civ­il ser­vice r key.”

I was pleased to have got him to at least con­cede that there was an eth­i­cal issue involved here (although also slight­ly con­fused by the idea that there might be silos in White­hall. Nuclear bunkers I’d heard about, but mis­sile silos?).

@PD_Smith: “I’m v glad to hear you accept there has to be sep­a­ra­tion. But I still say it sends out a mixed mes­sage to the rest of the world.”

Side-step­ping that, @lorddrayson con­tin­ued: “How­ev­er, many sci­ence break­throughs orig­i­nat­ed in defence research: ultra­sound, radar to men­tion 2”.

@PD_Smith: “That’s unde­ni­able. But sci­ence should, and can be, about so much more than mil­i­tary hard­ware.”

“I agree,” @lorddrayson replied. “Defence is but a small part of the whole. “Sci­ence so what; So everything”.…will con­tin­ue from BIS… @sciencesowhat”.

And with this rather hand-wav­ing allu­sion to the grandeur of sci­ence and a website, @lorddrayson moved on to deal with oth­er peo­ple’s ques­tions on this issue. As an exer­cise in gov­ern­ment engag­ing with the pub­lic I give him full marks. Indeed, let’s have more of it. But it did­n’t real­ly cast much light on the ques­tion as to why this gov­ern­ment thinks a full-time sci­ence min­is­ter is not need­ed, let alone deal with the eth­i­cal issues raised by lump­ing sci­ence and defence togeth­er under one min­is­ter. Maybe he will dis­cuss these mat­ters in more detail in the opin­ion piece the Times High­er Edu­ca­tion Sup­ple­ment offered him after­wards.

I have to say, chat­ting with the Min­is­ter for Sci­ence & Defence Pro­cure­ment is one of the most intrigu­ing Twit­ter expe­ri­ences I have had to date. But I hope it does­n’t hap­pen every day. It’s very dis­tract­ing. And I have work to do.

I have been very lax recent­ly about post­ing blogs and updates — sor­ry. My excuse is that I’ve been busy with my new book, a cul­tur­al his­to­ry of cities to be pub­lished by Blooms­bury in the UK (more on that lat­er), and review­ing. I’ve also dis­cov­ered Twit­ter and would def­i­nite­ly rec­om­mend it — but with a warn­ing: it is addic­tive! So come and say hel­lo @PD_Smith !

One of the great new con­tacts I’ve made on Twit­ter is Dr Tim Jones (@physicus) who is cur­rent­ly on a career break study­ing for an MSc in Sci­ence Com­mu­ni­ca­tion at Impe­r­i­al Col­lege. He co-presents a show called Mis­sion Impos­si­ble on Impe­r­i­al Col­lege Radio and he invit­ed me on to talk about Dooms­day Men. You can stream the pro­gram here. (The inter­view is about 40 min­utes into the show.)

As I say, there are lots of fas­ci­nat­ing peo­ple to meet on Twit­ter — one of my favourite authors William Gib­son is there, dis­guised as @GreatDismal, as well as many oth­er great writ­ers, like Clare Dud­man, Fiona Macken­zie, and Thomas Lev­en­son, author of Ein­stein in Berlin, blog­gers like John Self, pub­lish­ers and agents, such as my own, Peter Tal­lack.

To quote one of my oth­er favourite authors, Nick Hark­away, Twit­ter is like a “giant pub”. So order a drink and join the big con­ver­sa­tion…

The Guardian has just print­ed my review of three book­s on the way sci­ence has used and some­times mis­used ani­mals and insects: Pavlov’s Dogs and Schrödinger’s Cat: Scenes from the Liv­ing Lab­o­ra­to­ry, by Rom Har­ré; The Lives of Ants, by Lau­rent Keller and Élisabeth Gor­don (trans­lat­ed by James Grieve); Six-Legged Sol­diers: Using Insects as Weapons of War, by Jef­frey A Lock­wood. All pub­lished by Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty Press and all are well worth read­ing.

“The thing before you is no longer an ani­mal, a fel­low-crea­ture, but a prob­lem,” says HG Well­s’s mad vivi­sec­tor Dr More­au, attempt­ing to jus­ti­fy his grotesque ani­mal exper­i­ments. In Pavlov’s Dogs and Schrödinger’s Cat, the philoso­pher and psy­chol­o­gist Rom Har­ré explores the his­to­ry of sci­en­tists who have used plants and ani­mals — the “liv­ing lab­o­ra­to­ry” — to test hypothe­ses and col­lect data. But Harré‘s orig­i­nal and thought­ful study is not explic­it­ly about the ethics of ani­mal exper­i­men­ta­tion. Instead, he wants to show how the instru­men­tar­i­um of sci­ence is not restrict­ed to beakers and Bun­sen burn­ers, but has always includ­ed organ­ic appa­ra­tus, from Gal­vani’s frog’s legs twitch­ing with elec­tric­i­ty, to Mendel’s pea plants, to thought exper­i­ments such as Schrödinger’s cat, poised eter­nal­ly (and inhu­mane­ly) between life and death. Indeed, the liv­ing lab­o­ra­to­ry is at the very heart of sci­ence, he argues: “ani­mals and plants become devices we research with rather than some­thing we research on”.

Read the rest here.

In the same issue are two of my reg­u­lar short paper­back reviews, this time on an urban theme. The first is on that unique­ly Eng­lish phe­nom­e­non: the sea­side town — Design­ing the Sea­side: Archi­tec­ture, Soci­ety and Nature, by Fred Gray. The sec­ond is anthro­pol­o­gist Marc Augé‘s haunt­ing analy­sis of mod­ern urban spaces, Non-Places: An Intro­duc­tion to Super­moder­ni­ty, reis­sued with a new intro­duc­tion by Ver­so.

As a post­script to yes­ter­day’s piece about our nuclear future, it was announced last night that the Min­istry of Defence’s plans to mod­ernise the Alder­mas­ton Atom­ic Weapons Estab­lish­ment (AWE), at Burgh­field in Berk­shire, have been giv­en the go-ahead, despite the fact that it’s in an area at risk of flood­ing.

The AWE facil­i­ty is where Britain’s nuclear war­heads are pro­duced. Last month it was revealed that the US mil­i­tary has been using Britain’s atom­ic weapons fac­to­ry to car­ry out research into its own war­head pro­gramme, accord­ing to evi­dence seen by the Guardian.

The Min­istry of Defence has admit­ted it is work­ing with the US on the UK’s “exist­ing nuclear war­head stock­pile and the range of replace­ment options that might be avail­able” but has declined to give any fur­ther infor­ma­tion.

Although Con­gress halt­ed the Bush admin­is­tra­tion’s plans for a new gen­er­a­tion of nuclear war­head known as the Reli­able Replace­ment War­head (RRW), it seems the US mil­i­tary may have used facil­i­ties in the UK to get around the restric­tions at home.

At a time of glob­al reces­sion, with job loss­es being report­ed every day, there is a sil­ver lin­ing to this sto­ry: appar­ent­ly the nuclear arms indus­try is flour­ish­ing and indeed expand­ing in the UK. One web­site I found has two pages of cur­rent jobs on offer at AWE.

At the end of Jan­u­ary, Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can post­ed two won­der­ful comics from the nuclear age on their site: The Atom­ic Rev­o­lu­tion (1957; also here) and Pow­er for Progress from 1971 (also here). I was struck by the con­trast between their opti­mism and a news sto­ry that appeared about the same time. 

Lawyers rep­re­sent­ing 1,000 ex-ser­vice­men in Britain are going to court to try and win com­pen­sa­tion for ill­ness­es, includ­ing can­cer, skin defects and fer­til­i­ty prob­lems, they claim are the result of expo­sure to radi­a­tion dur­ing 1950s nuclear bomb tests in the South Pacif­ic. As the BBC report­ed, tests were 70 times more pow­er­ful than antic­i­pat­ed and on one occa­sion, a group of men were so bad­ly con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed by the pen­e­trat­ing radi­a­tion that they pro­duced radioac­tive urine.

A few weeks lat­er, two nuclear mis­sile sub­marines — one British, one French — armed with a like­ly total of well over 100 ther­monu­clear war­heads col­lid­ed under the Atlantic Ocean. BBC radio had recent­ly been allowed access to Britain’s nuclear weapons infra­struc­ture in order to con­sid­er whether it real­ly is (to use that infa­mous Cold War phrase) fail-safe.

“One of Britain’s four Tri­dent sub­marines is always out there,” they report­ed, “some­where under the Atlantic, car­ry­ing more destruc­tive pow­er than was unleashed in the entire cam­paign of World War II.“  But they did­n’t con­sid­er the pos­si­bil­i­ty that a British sub might col­lide with anoth­er nuclear armed sub. His­to­ry sug­gests that noth­ing can ever be tru­ly fail-safe.

The nuclear issue has rather reced­ed from the head­lines in recent years, but as this inci­dent shows the dan­ger is still very real. As a New York Times edi­to­r­i­al said, the elec­tion of Barack Oba­ma to the White House pro­vides an ide­al oppor­tu­ni­ty for real progress on nuclear weapons. Of course, there is no short­age of peo­ple ready to offer the new pres­i­dent advice, includ­ing Strangelov­ian fig­ures from the Cold War like Hen­ry Kissinger. Indeed, it’s report­ed that Oba­ma qui­et­ly sent Kissinger to Moscow in Jan­u­ary to test the waters regard­ing cuts in nuclear war­heads.

The need for cuts is clear and urgent. Oba­ma faces oppo­si­tion with­in his own admin­is­tra­tion, indeed (accord­ing to Time) from his Defense Sec­re­tary, Robert Gates, no less. And as ever, events — such as Iran’s nuclear ambi­tions — will con­spire to throw him off course. But let’s hope he can do it.