The Best Australian Science Writing 2012 (9 page)

Most of Feynman's students probably didn't follow his proof either, but he knew he could expect their applause and he ended his lecture with a flourish, like the showman he was. When he had found that he couldn't understand Newton's proof Feynman could have abandoned his idea for the lecture, since no one knew he was planning to give it. But he could not let the challenge go, and it is evident from his notes that he derived a tremendous amount of pleasure from his ‘ride in a buggy'. For a man who would soon be granted the highest honour in science, it was a DIY triumph whose primary value was the pride and joy that derive from being able to say ‘I did it!'

Feynman apparently devoted a fair bit of time to the ‘buggy' exercise, yet when all is said and done he was a man on his way to a Nobel Prize, and at the end of his lecture he made a remark that very likely resonated with his Caltech audience: ‘One should not ride in a buggy all the time,' he told the class. ‘One has the fun of it and then gets out.' The question that stands at the heart of
this
essay is: What happens if one doesn't have the option of getting out of the buggy? To extend Feynman's metaphor, what happens if a buggy is the only form of transportation available to you? For Richard Feynman, a highly trained theoretician with an exceptional gift for mathematical abstraction, a joyride in ‘a buggy' was a pleasurable diversion; while he manifestly enjoyed the experience, he did not have to rely on a handmade vehicle for his serious travel needs. He also had access to the Ferrari of quantum field theory. We may go even further: Feynman and his fellow theoretical insiders had access to an entire fleet of fancy
automobiles outfitted with all the brilliant black-box controls that 20th century physics has been able to deliver. These indeed are the men and woman who design the black boxes of contemporary science.

As a Nobel Prize-winning theoretician Feynman had the keys to the scientific equivalent of the executive garage. But what if one doesn't have the keys to that garage? What if one doesn't have access to any of the ‘fancy automobiles'? Metaphorically speaking, with respect to theoretical physics, that is the position of the majority of people on Earth. From the perspective of a contemporary theoretical physics insider, what the rest of us understand about the workings of the universe is the equivalent of riding a bike. That is what so many popular physics books keep telling us:
that the majority of what we believe about our world is wrong.
While the rest of us saunter along in a kind of bucolic ignorance, academic theoretical physicists have been putting in place a network of freeways on which they cruise their ever-more-complicated Ferraris and Lamborghinis. It is a vast and deeply impressive network that provides the infrastructure for the delivery of all kinds of services that we rely on in our lives, but it is a network that few us can ever hope to ‘travel' on ourselves. What unites Jim Carter and other theoretical outsiders is their belief that the freeways of fundamental physics are a public resource. Not only do these men want access to those roads; they insist that the vehicles they build themselves are just as legitimate as any of the insiders' fancy automobiles.

Outsiders

Beating gravity

The ill-effects of quackery v scientific evidence

Cassandra Wilkinson

Following the untimely death of Steve Jobs there has been continuing speculation about the extent to which his treatment was critically delayed by early efforts to employ alternative medicine.

Fortune
magazine reported that the Apple founder had tried to treat his condition with alternative therapies for nine months. When these efforts proved futile, he had a Whipple procedure, a liver transplant and surgery to remove a tumour. Walter Isaacson, who wrote Jobs's authorised biography, has said publicly that Jobs understood at the end that he had made a mistake.

It's not clear from second-hand reports exactly what Jobs was doing, but it appears to have required at one point that meals be prepared without pans. This may sound like the kind of eccentricity we expect from genius but, disturbingly, a large number of mainstream Australians are putting their faith in unproven health treatments.

Vitamin company Blackmores courted controversy with its launch of a pharmacy-only range of what it described as ‘complementary treatments', which it proposed would be recommended by pharmacists in conjunction with prescription medication. The company claimed the treatments were ‘products that are backed
by scientific evidence'. Facing criticism that these products had no proof of efficacy, Marcus Blackmore argued: ‘Any criticism of their potential benefit highlights the need for further healthcare professional education.' Which basically means anyone who doesn't agree with him needs to be educated on how to agree with him.

Blackmore went on to say: ‘Consumers are well protected by one of the strictest regulatory systems in the world under which every manufacturer must hold the evidence to support the claims they make.'

This claim is certainly true of companies that make actual medicine. It's far less true of companies that sell ‘alternative therapies' and ‘complementary medicine'. Under Australian law, complementary medicines are not assessed for efficacy but companies must certify to the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) that they hold evidence of their claims.

Carol Bennett, chief executive of Consumers Health Forum, points out that the National Prescribing Service has reported that most producers fail to meet compliance requirements, 33 per cent have had their listing cancelled by the TGA and 15 per cent of products have been withdrawn when informed that TGA was investigating their claims. She wrote in
Crikey
: ‘A large number of these products are little more than placebos. Almost all complementary medicines are able to obtain the [TGA's] Australian label, whether they work or not.'

Ken Harvey, of La Trobe University's school of public health, writing in
Australian Prescriber
, summed up the problem as ‘a proliferation of products of dubious efficacy, with promotional claims that cannot be substantiated'.

Notwithstanding this, and despite criticism by the Australian Medical Association, most private health insurers cover complementary medicines including, for instance, homeopathy. Leaked reports recently suggested that the National Health and
Medical Research Council was considering declaring homeopathy baseless and unethical ‘for the reason that homeopathy (as a medicine or procedure) has been shown not to be efficacious'. Homeopathy is based on the principles of ‘like cures like' and ‘ultra-dilutions'. Which, in plain speaking, means you are treated with more of what's making you sick, but in doses too small to have any possible impact. So it's poison – which would be mad – but in microscopic quantities, so there's no chance of you getting sick … or, for that matter, better.

A 2010 evaluation of homeopathy by the British House of Commons Science and Technology Committee declared it ‘scientifically implausible'. Not surprising, when the journal
Spectrum of Homeopathy
cites the use of cheetah's blood for multiple sclerosis and tiger's blood for depression. If people want relaxation services, good luck to them, but when such ‘treatments' risk displacing real medicine, it presents a serious problem for public health. There are countless tragic cases of people delaying or denying medical treatment in favour of quackery. Jobs is only a high-profile example of a growing problem.

Several industry bodies have recommended tighter regulation.
Choice
has proposed an independent evaluation on an optin, cost-recovery basis where approved products could get a mark of approval similar to the National Heart Foundation's ‘tick' for healthy food.

The National Prescribing Service has supported the tighter regulation of alternative therapies, saying in a media release: ‘All health professionals have a responsibility to ensure these products are used safely.'

But the argument for greater regulation is flawed and dangerous. With public hospitals taking up about one-third of state government budgets, we do not have unlimited funds for public health.

Each dollar diverted from efficacious, proven treatment into
what can at best be called nutritional supplements is a dollar less for drugs that have been proven to extend life for people with serious conditions.

Regulating products with no evidence base risks giving them a false credibility. Fifty-four per cent of people surveyed about alternative medicines think products listed by the TGA have been tested.

The simpler, cheaper, more honest solution would be to discontinue listing and regulating these products and confirm under the Act that they are not medicine. Alternative medicine is an oxymoron; in the words of Australia's leading sceptic pianist Tim Minchin, alternative medicines that have been proven to work are just called medicine.

Pseudoscience

Debate

A hero's legend and a stolen skull rustle up a DNA drama

Christine Kenneally

Even with the best scientific techniques, you can't always get what you want. But if you try, as the Rolling Stones put it, sometimes you get what you need.

Consider the case of Ned Kelly's skull.

In Australia, Kelly needs no introduction; for Americans, it may help to think of him as Jesse James, Thomas Paine and John F. Kennedy rolled into one.

Born about 1854 to an Irish convict exiled to Australia, Kelly became a folk hero as a very young man. He took up arms against a corrupt British constabulary, robbed banks and wrote an explosive manifesto. He was shot and arrested in a shootout in which he wore homemade metal armour, and in 1880 he was hanged by the Anglo-Irish establishment he despised.

As with any semi-mythical hero, Kelly's public has always hungered to get closer to the legend. His armour, cartridge bag, boots and a bloody sash became state treasures.

But perhaps the most priceless among them is his missing skull – the subject of a tangled forensic drama that was finally resolved in September 2011, at least in part, after decades of
investigation, debate, tantalising leads, stalemates, false starts and what can only be called skulduggery.

After his execution, Ned Kelly was buried in a mass grave at the Melbourne Gaol. There his remains might have quietly and invisibly decomposed but for a mistake by 19th century gravediggers: they used a type of lime that slowed decomposition instead of hastening it.

So when the grounds were dug up for development in 1929, startled workers found the site full of skeletons. Officials began to move the remains to another prison. But in a scene of chaos that became a local scandal, a crowd of schoolboys and other onlookers ran amok among the coffins, seizing bones – including, it was thought, the skulls of Ned Kelly and Frederick Bailey Deeming, the notorious British serial killer who may have been Jack the Ripper.

The remaining bones were reburied at Pentridge prison, and the skulls were recovered soon after being stolen. They then embarked on a separate, winding journey through the back doors of a number of institutions.

In the 1970s, one skull was put on display in a jail museum alongside Kelly's death mask, a plaster cast impression made shortly after his execution. (It is unknown whether that mask was the original or a copy.)

But in 1978 the skull was stolen again, and a man named Tom Baxter told journalists that he had it.

Mr Baxter held onto the skull for over three decades, promising to return it if the government gave Kelly a Christian burial. The government did not respond, and the stalemate continued until 2008, when yet another excavation uncovered more prisoners' remains. At least 3000 bone fragments were exhumed and sent to the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine. It was thought that Ned Kelly's bones might be among them.

Shortly after that, Mr Baxter handed over a fragile, sun-bleached skull to the authorities.

The forensic institute conducted a 21 month investigation of the skull, mixing historical detective work with an array of innovative scientific analyses.