Rocket renaissance

ALMOST two years ago, SpaceShipOne became the first privately-built vehicle to travel into space. Although the X-15 did something similar four decades earlier, the simple, safe design and low cost of SpaceShipOne was significant—for the first time the cost of a spacecraft fell within the price range of companies and wealthy individuals, rather than just governments. That’s one reason why today at least half a dozen private spaceships at various stages of design and construction. Today, rocketry is going through a renaissance.

Stalking through the corridors of the International Space Development Conference (ISDC) in Los Angeles this year, are the men who are going to build a new generation of spaceships. While promises about cheap space travel for the masses have been made before, this time things seem different. Besides the birth of SpaceShipOne, there has been a recent shift in US legislation to encourage personal spaceflight by simplifying government licensing requirements, straightening uncertainties over liability issues and allowing paying customers to fly at their own risk in novel craft that might be dangerous.

Most importantly, though, there is money. Lots of it. More than $1 billion has been committed on ships and infrastructure. The state of New Mexico, for example, has recently started work on a purpose-built $225m spaceport, of which the state has committed $135m to funding, even though it has nothing yet to fly. The spaceport is intended to provide a launch pad for commercial operations of the second-generation suborbital vehicle SpaceShipTwo—currently being designed in Mojave, California and which may start test flights as early as next year. The commercial development of this vehicle, in itself, is costing its financial backers, Virgin Galactic based in London, $240m. One study suggests that after five years of operation, New Mexico spaceports will have led to $1 billion of spending within the state.

Meanwhile, in Dubai, another new spaceport costing $265m was recently announced by space tourism company Space Adventures, based in Arlington, Virginia. Of this sum, $30m has been committed. (Space Adventures itself, in the last five years, has made $120m in orbital spaceflight sales—taking wealthy businessmen such as Dennis Tito, to the International Space Station with the help of the Russians.) Many other spaceports, too, are being planned around the world for an anticipated new generation of tourist vehicles, some of which are still on the drawing board or have only recently come off it. But overall, the signs lead many to suspect that a lot of money is being spent on rocketry and infrastructure that has not yet been revealed.

All this enthusiasm is being generated by plans by individuals and private companies to build a variety of suborbital spaceships--craft that travel just to the edge of space and back again. Which one, though, is best and who will succeed? This is the topic of a two-page article in this week's Economist. There is also a useful chart comparing all of the main designs.

I've been researching this piece for some time and a large array of overmatter has accumulated. I'd like to thank Charles Lurio, a space consultant, and Roger Launius, a curator at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, for their help as their comments were left on the cutting room floor. Charles is particularly knowledgeable about hybrids and solids. He also reckons that the Space Adventures vehicle, still in design, is a solid-based rocket.


___________________________________________
Rocket renaissance
The Economist
May 11th 2006 | LOS ANGELES
The era of private spaceflight is about to dawn

TWO years ago next month space travel underwent its Wright-brothers moment with the first flight of SpaceShipOne. The roles of Orville and Wilbur were played by Burt Rutan, who designed the craft, and Mike Melvill, who flew it—although they were ably assisted by Paul Allen, one of the founders of Microsoft, who paid for it. Of course, history never repeats itself exactly. Unlike the brothers Wright, who were heirs to a series of heroic failures when it came to powered heavier-than-air flight, Messrs Rutan and Melvill knew that manned spaceflight was possible. What they showed was that it is not just a game for governments. Private individuals can play, too. (more...)

___________________________________________

Overmatter:

XCOR on why it chose an air-launched suborbital
Jeff Greason, president of XCOR Aerospace, a small aerospace company based in Mojave, California, is developing a two-person, ground-launched suborbital rocketplane. Ground launch, he says, is technically more difficult but has significantly lower unit operating costs. “We are doing it this way because our engineering tradeoffs lead us to believe it is optimum for us for our market, resources, for the skills we have. Does that mean everybody else’s idea is bad? Of course not.” The XCOR vehicle, which will be a derivative of a previous design called the Xerus. As of last October, the company has money from private investors to start work.

Space Adventures on its vehicle plans
Of the six most prominent vehicles being developed (see chart), two are launched from the air. SpaceShipTwo will launch on a purpose-built high altitude aircraft known as Eve, built by aviation designer Burt Rutan. And although plans for the Explorer have not been fully disclosed, Eric Anderson, president and CEO of Space Adventures, says it will launch from the top of a high-altitude Russian research plane the M-55X. The project, he says, will be fully funded by a venture capital group belonging to wealthy, space-enthusiast and entrepreneurial Ansari family. The Myasishchev Design Bureau, an experienced Russian aerospace organization based near Moscow, with oversight from the Russian Space agency, will build it.

Rocketplane on the stability of its XP
At first sight, the notion of converting a Learjet to a suborbital vehicle fills some with horror. However, as Charles Lauer explains, there is actually very little left of it except the fuselage. “Starting with the existing Lear gave us a frame of reference to be able to build from and saved us a year in terms of schedule,” he says. It has a new delta wing, a new v-tail, and wind tunnel studies show it has “natural stability” on re-entering the atmosphere says Mr Lauer. SpaceShipOne solved the problem of stability on re-entry with a revolutionary technique of flipping its wings in half—something called the feather. Mr Lauer says the XP has this but “without having to reconfigure our airplane twice in the course of a flight profile and that’s a more sensible way to fly”.

George Whittinghill, chief technologist for Virgin Galactic, responds, "SpaceShipTwo can re-enter in any attitude, even upside down. The feather acts like a shuttlecock, and will right the ship as soon as it hits air, without any action from the pilot. I seriously doubt that the Rocketplane can re-enter in any attitude, hands-off, righting itself. Its attitude control jets will have to position the ship just right, or it will get into trouble later on during the entry.

Dennis Tito on liquid fuels
Dennis Tito, an entrepreneur and the world’s first space tourist, says ultimately liquid fuel will make a suborbital more reusable because it is possible to “gas and go”. In other words, operations can be more aeroplane-like and this will lower costs. XCOR’s ship seems quite likely to be the smallest, and cheapest, of all the new suborbital ships. Although no timeline has been announced, one potential customer reckons that they could fly within a year and a half. The ship is also intended to fly four flights per day.

Charles Lurio on rocket design
With their premixed fuel and oxidizer, solid propellant systems have always raised safety questions. They’re tricky systems to master, as evidenced by the literally explosive difficulties that the then-Soviets had in developing them for ICBMs. As a result the USSR retained primarily liquid fueled missiles long after they were minimal parts of the US arsenal. NASA, driven by the desire to get the Space Shuttle program funded, convinced itself that solid boosters (with a lower upfront development price) were acceptable despite long-standing anxiety about the safety of putting people atop them. Of course, ‘turning off’ a solid in an abort condition - let alone restarting it in flight - is essentially impossible. Hybrids do appear to have a higher safety potential, not merely by separating fuel from oxidizer but because they can be shut off by cutting off the flow of oxidizer. As with solids, however, they have much larger combustion chambers than do liquid motors. That volume effectively ‘stores’ combustion energy, which, as one person dryly put it, “can go somewhere inappropriate in a failure [condition].” But the greatest unease that I and others have with the hybrid results from the relatively miniscule amount of existing experience in building and operating them compared to either solids or liquids. As I’ve noted, Brian Binnie had to cope with significant accelerations and vibrations while SpaceShipOne’s motor was firing (see page 60 of the February 6th Aviation Week). There are design and flight adjustments that likely would ameliorate those effects for commercial passengers. By contrast, while a solid’s acceleration can also be moderated (though not in real-time) it essentially unavoidably produces what’s not-so-fondly referred to as the ‘paint shaker effect.’ Of course, reentry forces (Mr. Binnie experienced 5.5g’s) are not directly dependent on the ascent propulsion system, and are malleable with aerodynamic design and chosen flight paths.Some of the initial passengers on the suborbital flights will want to primarily liquid fueled missiles long after they were minimal parts of the US arsenal. NASA, driven by the desire to get the Space Shuttle program funded, convinced itself that solid boosters (with a lower upfront development price) were acceptable despite long-standing anxiety about the safety of putting people atop them. Of course, ‘turning off’ a solid in an abort condition - let alone restarting it in flight - is essentially impossible.

Hybrids do appear to have a higher safety potential, not merely by separating fuel from oxidizer but because they can be shut off by cutting off the flow of oxidizer. As with solids, however, they have much larger combustion chambers than do liquid motors. That volume effectively ‘stores’ combustion energy, which, as one person dryly put it, “can go somewhere inappropriate in a failure.” But the greatest unease that I and others have with the hybrid results from the relatively miniscule amount of existing experience in building and operating them compared to either solids or liquids.

Reefer madness

Is marijuana medically useful? Many people, from patients to doctors and scientists think so. The US Food and Drug Administration appears to disagree. These ideas are in line with what the Whitehouse, Drug Enforcement Administration, and some vocal congressmen think. However, in eleven states around America compassion hasn't taken a back-seat to politics and laws allowing medical marijuana have been passed. More on this subject in this week's Economist...

Reefer madness
Apr 27th 2006
Marijuana is medically useful, whether politicians like it or not

IF CANNABIS were unknown, and bioprospectors were suddenly to find it in some remote mountain crevice, its discovery would no doubt be hailed as a medical breakthrough. Scientists would praise its potential for treating everything from pain to cancer, and marvel at its rich pharmacopoeia—many of whose chemicals mimic vital molecules in the human body. In reality, cannabis has been with humanity for thousands of years and is considered by many governments (notably America's) to be a dangerous drug without utility. Any suggestion that the plant might be medically useful is politically controversial, whatever the science says. It is in this context that, on April 20th, America's Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a statement saying that smoked marijuana has no accepted medical use in treatment in the United States. (more...)

________________________________________________
Update (12th May)
In response to this article, we have received a letter from John P. Walters, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy--also known as the "Drug Czar". I would expect The Economist would publish this on its letter's page in the near future.

Commentary & comments from other blogs:
This article has inspired a lot of commentary, some of it useful.

One commentator here discusses the FDA's existing programme to supply cannabis medicinally. (more...)

From the Democratic Daily (here...)

Overview of the debate, Politics and Pot.

A critique of the Reefer Madness (here...)

More commentary, and my reply to one critique of the piece (more..)

Overview of the debate, Politics and Pot.

And a few more comments (here..)

________________________________________________

References

Nicoll, Roger & Alger, Bradley, 2004. The brain's own marijuana. Scientific American. December 2004.

Wilson, Clare, 2005. Miracle Weed, New Scientist, vol 185, issue 2485, p38.

Neuroprotection by delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, the main active compound in marijuana, against ouabain-induced in vivo excitotoxicity. The Journal of Neuroscience, 2001, 21 (17): 6475-6479.

Inter-agency advisory regarding claims that smoked marijuana is a medicine. FDA, April 20, 2006.

Medical Marijuana. American Medical Association, June 2001.

Marijuana and medicine: assessing the science base. 1999. Institute of Medicine.


Press releases
Doctor suggested cannabis for pain relief, says one in six medicinal users in the UK. Press release from McGill University.

Cannabis-based medicine relieves the pain of rheumatoid arthritis and suppresses the disease. Press release from Journal of Rheumatology, Oxford University Press.

Cannabis extract reduces pain in multiple sclerosis patients. Press release from British Medical Journal.

UK trial results on value of cannabis for multiple sclerosis patients. Press Release from the Medical Research Council.

Brain’s own cannabis compound protects against inflammation. Press release from journal Cell.

Hebrew University scientists develop prototype drug to prevent osteoporosis. Press release from Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Cannabis-based drugs could offer new hope for inflammatory bowel disease patients. Press release from University of Bath.

Groups

Food and Drug Administration

Drug Enforcement Administration

Office of National Drug Control Policy

The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws

Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies

Medical Marijuana ProCon.org

American Civil Liberties Union

GW Pharmaceuticals

Marinol

The magic of nano

At the end of March, a new bathroom cleaning product called MagicNano was released onto the German market. Within only a few days, almost 80 people had suffered respiratory complaints and six people had been hospitalised with fluid on their lungs.

Nano-watchers were quick to raise the question of whether this is the first example of a harmful nanotechnology product. This time, at least, it does not appear that nanotechnology is to blame. MagicNano was released in two versions: a pump spray and an aerosol spray. While the product inside the packaging was identical, only the aerosol spray caused respiratory problems. So it seems likely that the problem is down to the propellant in the aerosol.

This finding will not give much comfort to anyone. Companies making products that include nanoparticulates would very much like firm guidance from governments as to what tests they need to perform to demonstrate their product is safe. Governments, meanwhile, seem to be waiting for advice from scientists.

Has all the magic gone?
Apr 12th 2006
A nanotechnology product is recalled in Germany after health concerns (more...)

The drug trial that went wrong

This important story about a drug trial that went wrong in London has almost been buried by the alarm over a single case of H5N1 in a swan in Scotland. In the middle of last month, six people were taken seriously ill--with multiple organ failure--after taking part in a small clinical trial of an antibody treatment called TGN1412.

The mishap was so serious that Britain's Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), a government body, swiftly launched a full inquiry. On Wednesday of this week it announced interim findings. The trial had been run correctly, doses were given as they were supposed to, and there was no mistake in manufacturing. In other words, there was something unexpected about the drug itself, despite testing on animals and human-cell cultures, and despite the fact the doses given to humans were only 1/500th of what had been given to animals.

This is a difficult result for the drug business because it raises questions about the right way of testing medicines of this kind. TGN1412 is unusual in that it is an antibody. And it is an unusual antibody as well. Unlike all other antibody drugs it is what is called a “superagonistic” antibody, designed to increase the numbers of a type of immune cell known as regulatory T-cells.

Reduced numbers, or impaired function, of regulatory T-cells has been implicated in a number of illnesses, such as type 1 diabetes, multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis. Boosting the pool of these antibodies seemed like a good treatment strategy. Unfortunately, that strategy fell disastrously to pieces and it will take a little longer to find out why.

The result highlights concerns raised in a paper just published by the Academy of Medical Sciences, a group of experts based in London. It says there are special risks associated with novel antibody therapies. For example, their chemical specificity means that they might not bind to their targets in humans as they do in other species.

The MHRA has decided that a working group of experts is now needed to decide how trials of this sort of drug can be handled more safely. Its main concern is how to test protein molecules that have novel modes of action--particularly in the immune system. While this expert group is working (it could take around three months) the MHRA will authorise further trials of compounds of this kind only after taking advice.

Tales of the unexpected
Apr 6th 2006
Why a drug trial went so badly wrong
IN ANY sort of test, not least a drugs trial, one should expect the unexpected. Even so, on March 13th, six volunteers taking part in a small clinical trial of a treatment known as TGN1412 got far more than they bargained for. All ended up seriously ill, with multiple organ failure, soon after being injected with the drug at a special testing unit at Northwick Park Hospital in London, run by a company called Parexel. One man remains ill in hospital.
(more.. subscription required)

Battle of Britannica

In this week’s science section we follow the fight between the journal Nature and the encyclopedia Britannica. The argument is about a comparison that Nature did between two encyclopedias: Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica[1].

I don’t intend to weigh in either way on the debate about whether an open-source encyclopedia can approach the accuracy of an edited one. I'm not an information scientist. But as a science journalist, I'm interested in two issues: one is whether Britannica really is as error-laden as the Nature study seems to suggest; the other is whether Britannica really is only 30% more accurate than Wikipedia.

This has been a fractious debate, so let me set out my stall. That way it is clear where I’m coming from and anyone who suspects I have an axe to grind in either direction will at least have some facts to base their conclusions on. Firstly, I think Wikipedia and Britannica are both great. Very different. But wonderful resources.

At the outset, I also ought to declare that I worked at Nature as a news journalist in 2000. So I have a lot of respect for the idea that led to this study, and the efforts that were taken to make it happen. It’s a fascinating question that none of us had thought to ask before: how accurate are science articles in Wikipedia when compared to their equivalents in the gold-standard Britannica?

Unfortunately, answering this question is not as straightforward as it may seem. And while experts may have been involved in the reviews, the methodology was designed, and the data collated, by journalists, not scientists. The results may have been published in Nature, but they were published in its front half as a news story—not the back half where the original science is published. So the first thing to emphasise is that the study is not a scientific one in the sense that one would normally expect of a “study in Nature”.

For anyone interested in the minutiae of the debate, it is worth looking at Britannica’s 20-page review of the Nature study[2]. Ignore the moans about the availability of study data and misleading headlines, and go straight to the Appendix. Here you will find that Britannica has taken issue with 58 of the “errors” that reviewers reported finding in their tome. Reading these it is difficult to avoid concluding that about half of the errors Nature reviewers have flagged up are actually points of legitimate debate rather than mistakes. This is important because if 47% of the "errors" in Britannica can actually be ignored, then rather than having 123 errors in 42 articles (about 3 per article), it has only 65 (about 1.5 per article). A big difference for Britannica’s reputation.

Nature has a good answer to this[3,4]. Look, they say, we were not trying to count the actual number of mistakes but compare the relative accuracy of each encyclopedia. Sure, reviewers will have noted lots of mistakes, that we counted as errors, but which are in fact correct or debatable. But because each reviewer was not told which article came from which encyclopedia they would have been just as likely to make the same kind of mistakes (and the same number) when reviewing Wikipedia articles. In other words, because the study was done “blind”, there is no evidence of systematic bias that would alter the conclusion that Britannica was 30% more accurate.

The next question is whether the study was done in a way that would not introduce any systematic bias. Here, I had a few concerns. One of the first things that bothered me about the study was that some data, by necessity, had to be thrown away. That data was when reviewers declared that an article was badly written. My worry is that one of the things that was being counted was misleading statements. What I wondered was whether there was a point at which a lot of misleading statements simply became a badly written article and therefore unmeasurable? Wikipedia articles are often badly written, so I wondered if it was simply easier to count misleading statements in Britannica's better written articles. I don't know the answer to this, so I raise it only to flag the point that making these comparisons is not straightforward.

Britannica’s disputes 58 errors[5]. At The Economist, myself and a researcher counted roughly 20 errors of omission[5]. Although Nature says they took articles of "comparable" length, this would not have always been possible. Articles on the Thyroid Gland, Prion and Haber Process are all simply shorter in Britannica. Yet in all of these subjects the reviewer cited an error of critical omission something they would have noticed when comparing the longer Wikipedia article side-by-side with the Britannica article. In another case, Paul Dirac, Britannica claim that reviewers were sent an 825 word article. If true, this would have been compared with a 1,500 word article in Wikipedia--yet Britannica is given another error for not mentioning the monopole in its 825 word article. In Wikipedia this gets a 44 word mention in an article of twice the length. This doesn't seem fair. However, I can't replicate this finding, because as of writing, both the articles available online on both sites at the moment are 1,500 words and mention the monopole.

A reviewer is faced with two articles, one which is slightly longer, a bit more rambling, where facts have been bolted in over the years with no eye for comprehension. The other is edited for style and readability, and streamlined to include the facts that are vital in an article of that length. The problem is that when these two articles are compared side-by-side, it will be hard for a reviewer not to notice that one article has a fact or a citation in the rambling one that the more concise one doesn't. What makes this more problematic is that there is no control for this test. We don't know if a reviewer would have actually even noticed that this "critical fact" was missing had it not been in the Wikipedia article. So my concern is that in the Nature study Britannica is more liable to be unfairly criticised for errors of omission--simply because of the different nature of the information sources.

This kind of error is important because it would have an impact on the relative accuracy of each encyclopedia. For example, assuming for the sake of argument that all Britannica's errors of omission were the product of a systematic bias this would mean that Britannica was 50% more accurate, not 30%. Warning: this is an example, not my estimation of the true difference between the two encyclopedias.

Another concern is in the way the data were compiled. Nature’s journalists were not always able to find identical subject entries in both encyclopedias. When that happened, they did an online search on the subject at both websites and, if necessary, bolted together bits from several articles. (Britannica complains that in some cases they used paragraphs from a children’s encyclopedia, and a Yearbook article).

Unfortunately, this collation of data was not done blind. When Nature’s journalists compiled the material, they knew which encyclopedia it came from and could well have introduced an unconscious but systematic bias while collating the material. In addition, because Wikipedia has 1m entries and Britannica has only 124,000 [6], it is possible that reviewers were more often sent complete Wikipedia articles to compare with cobbled-together Britannica articles than the other way round. This might be particularly important when counting omissions in articles. How do we know that the omissions are truly the mistakes made by Britannica or ones made by the journalists?

Finally, it is important to note that this isn’t, technically, a comparison of encyclopedias but rather a comparison of what the average user would find if they searched for a subject online at Wikipedia or Britannica. (This is actually only made clear in the supplementary information that was published a week after the initial article.) It may be true that the average online user is just looking for information, but it is also true that we rate that information according to where we found it. If I downloaded something from a children’s encyclopedia or a Yearbook article I’d know to judge it in that context. The reviewers were not aware of this distinction, so there is no way of knowing how it might have affected their judgement.

In conclusion, I’d say that I don’t think the Nature study has proven, to my satisfaction at least, that Wikipedia is 30% less accurate than Britannica. I was also left with the impression that the study was trying to compare apples with oranges.

I have great respect for the fine editors and journalists at Nature, and I don’t think for one minute that they deliberately fixed or cooked the results[7]. I just think the study doesn't quite demonstrate what it says it does.

Nor is this a critique on the fine work of the Wikipedians. I’ll continue to read it, and cite it[8]--but I’ll also continue to check everything I use. The Economist article, free only to subscribers, is available here.

References
1. Internet encyclopedias go head to head. Jim Giles, Nature 438, 900-901. December 15, 2005.
2. Fatally flawed. Refuting the recent study on encyclopedic accuracy by the journal Nature.
3. Encyclopedia Britannica and Nature: a response. March 23, 2006.
4. Britannica attacks… and we respond. Nature, Vol 440. March 30 2006.
5. March 2006. 58 debated errors, about 20 errors of omission
In total, myself and a researcher at the Economist counted (independently of each other) in the Britannica report, 58 examples of “errors” which Nature reviewers identified and that Britannica contest. We also looked at each of these 58 errors and counted the number of errors of different kinds (factual, misleading and omissions). This is an inexact science. The crucial figure was how many were errors of omission were found—as this is one of the things I identify as a source of potential bias in the study. I counted 17 errors of omission. The Economist researcher (who is far better at this sort of thing than I am), counted 21. We decided to say, about 20 were errors of omission. The point is not to give an exact figure—because neither of us are qualified to say whether these were really errors of omission or not—but to give readers an idea of how a small but arguable systematic bias could have a big impact on the comparison.
6. 124,000 articles in Britannica
Tom Panelas “Our big online sites have about 124,000 articles in total, but that includes all of the reference sources, including our student encyclopedia, elementary encyclopedia, and archived yearbook articles. The electronic version of the Encyclopaedia Britannica proper has about 72,000 articles. The print set has about 65,000.”
7. Nature mag cooked Wikipedia study. Andrew Orlowski, The Register. March 23, 2006.
8. Small wonders. Natasha Loder, The Economist. December 29th, 2004.

Other further reading:
Supplementary information to accompany Nature news article “Internet encyclopaedias go head to head (Nature 438, 900-901; 2005)

In a war of words, famed encyclopedia defends its turf—At Britannica, Comparisons to an online upstart are a bad work of ‘Nature’. Sarah Ellison. March 24, 2006.
Encyclopedia Britannica, Wikipedia.
Encyclopaedia Britannica." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2006. Encyclopædia Britannica Premium Service. 24 Mar. 2006 (no sub required)
Wikipedia, Wikipedia.

On the cutting-room floor: quotes from sources

Nature only wanted to respond on the record in writing to queries, so I have a much shorter collection of quotes from reporter Jim Giles. Ted Pappas agreed to be interviewed on the record, and we spent a lively 45-minutes talking about the study and the nature of information.

Jim Giles, senior reporter, Nature
"Britannica is complaining that we combined material from more than one Britannica article and sent it to reviewers. This was deliberate and was clearly acknowledged in material published alongside our original story. In a small number of cases, Britannica's search engine returned two links to substantive amounts of material on the subject we wanted to review. In these cases, we sent reviews the relevant information from both links. This could, of course, make the combined article sound disjointed. But we asked reviewers to look only for errors, not issues of style. When reviewers commented on style problems, we ignored those comments. More importantly, we feel that if the review identified an error, it is irrelevant whether that error came from a single article or the combination of two entries."

When we combined Britannica articles, the point was to more fairly represent what it offered. Lets imagine you search on "plastic" and get two Britannica articles: "plastic" and "uses of plastic". But Wikipedia covers both aspects of this topics in a single entry. In that case, it is fairer to combine the two Britannica entries when making a comparison with Wikipedia. When we combined the entries we were careful to provide what we thought was a fair representation of what Britannica had to offer on a topic. This actually reduced the chance of generating errors of omission, not increased it.

Britannica’s executive editor, Ted Pappas.
“The premise is that Wikipedia and Britannica can be compared. Wikipedia has shown that if you let people contribute they will. But all to often they contribute their bias, opinions and outright falsehoods. Too often Wikipedia is a forum that launches into character defamation, these are the sorts of fundamental publishing vices that no vetted publication would fall prey to which is why it is so absurd to lump gross offenses in publishing to typos in Britannica articles. They are fundamentally different.”

“Comparing articles from children’s products to Wikipedia, and taking Yearbook articles, something written about a 12-month period, to a Wikipedia article is absurd. There is also this ludicrous attempt to justify this by saying that Nature was doing a comparison of websites. Nothing in their study intimates it was a study of websites."

“The idea of excepting a 350-word intro to a 6,000 word article [on lipids] and sending only this is absurd. And to allow reviewers to criticise us for not finding these omission in an article because they have only been given a 350-word introduction is a major flaw in the methodology. Who chooses the excerpts? Nature’s editors had no right to change these, and pass these off as Britannica articles. Anyone who had to write 350 words on lipids would approach this very differently to someone having to write 6,000”.

“We’ll never know if they were biased from the beginning. Everything from day one, their refusal to give us the data through the heights of criticism, to the pro-Wikipedia material that accompanied the release, gives us reason to suspect there was bias from the beginning.

“I’m sure there will a continuing discussion about nature and the future of knowledge and how it should be codified and consumed. There is room in this world for many sources of information, and we are confident about our place in that world and know we are not the only source, and never have been”.

The cutting edge

As most people will have noticed razors seem to be acquiring ever greater numbers of blades these days. The razor manufacturers, in particular Gillette, seem to like adding new blades to their razors. The latest arrival is the Gillette Fusion, which has a whopping 5 blades (6 if you count the single blade on the back of the Fusion, for 'tricky' areas).

This is, of course, largely about marketing. There isn't any real consumer demand for more blades on product, any more than there is a demand for antibacterial plastic or tounge scrapers on toothbrushes.

Nevertheless, the rate of of introduction of new blades (plotted above) does make one wonder whether there is a link with the rate at which materials technology progresses. More blades, means lighter and stronger materials have to be used. So do we have a Moore's Law for razor blades?

Various bits of analysis on this curve suggest we'll go into blade hyperdrive anytime in the next few years or so. More conservatively, by 2100, the 14-bladed razor will have arrived--whether we want it or not. Anyone care to bet that that five isn't the end of the road? With Gillette's latest arrival it has trademarked the term 'Shaving surface'. Nano blades anyone?

The cutting edge
Mar 16th 2006
A Moore's law for razor blades? (more...)
The Economist

For a hilarious take on this story, written long before Gillette announced its five-bladed razor, see The Onion, F*ck everything we're doing five blades (more...)

Something wrong with taxonomy

In many areas of life we are used to the idea that productivity tends to increase, as new technologies make things more efficient. So this is one of the things that makes the graph to the left quite surprising. It shows the number of new species described every year, and was based on data compiled by the journal Zoological Record*. Zoological Record scours the published literature and makes an index of all new names they find--the journal estimates it collects about 95% of what is published.

Part of the explanation is, no doubt, that in the last decade there have been large cuts to taxonomy funding. Although this hasn't occurred everywhere in the world. Plus, the numbers of species described every year in 2005, really isn't that different from the late 70s, an era where many would agree was much better for taxonomy support.

So this graph suggests is that taxonomy remains an area that really isn't making any productivity gains of the kind that one would expect in modern science. While DNA is sequenced and stitched together at ever-faster rates, and data analysed, graphed and published at rates inconceivable 15 years ago, taxonomists appear to be doing things at the same rates they always have. Time for change? Some would suggest a renaissance is needed, and that is why a group of scientists met at London Zoo on the 1st March to discuss the modernisation of taxonomy.

*The data were kindly supplied by Nigel Robinson of Zoological Record.