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An unusual chain letter is going the rounds of the academic e-mail circuit.
At the bottom of the letter are three citations (the first of which is:
‘Miller, J. (1982). Postmodern neo-cubism and the wave theory of light.
Journal of Cognitive Artifacts, vol 8, pp 113-117′).

The letter instructs those who receive it to do the following: ‘Include
in your next journal article the citations below; remove the first citation
from the list and add a citation to your journal article at the bottom;
make 10 copies and send them to colleagues.

‘Within one year, you will be cited up to 10 000 times! This will amaze
your fellow faculty, assure your promotion and improve your sex life. In
addition, you will bring joy to many colleagues.’

This amusing prank isn’t even spoilt by the traditional threats for
noncompliance at the end: ‘Dr H. received this letter and within a year
of passing it on she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences .
. . Prof. K. failed to pass on the letter and in a budget cutback his entire
department was eliminated. This could happen to you if you break the chain
of citations.’

The letter originates from Patrick Crispen at the University of Alabama,
and you can find it on .

* * *

When Feedback speaks, governments tremble. Do you remember our item
last year (9 October) pointing out the statistical sleights of hand deployed
by the Office of Science and Technology in its Annual Review of R&D?
The OST managed to create charts showing government spending on science
going up when it was actually going down.

That item provoked a call to this column from the Central Statistical
Office, ever anxious to maintain the integrity of government statistics.

Now the Annual Review’s successor, the Forward Look has appeared. This
time, the statistics are contained in a separate supplement – compiled by
the CSO.

Feedback was glad to have been of assistance in this matter, so our
embarrassment can be imagined when we discovered a howling error in these
very statistics. On page 55 of Forward Look’s statistical supplement we
find that in 1992 Britain produced an astonishing 777 000 PhDs in chemistry,
out of a total of more than 7 million doctorates.

We wonder who will compile the annual review’s statistics next year.

* * *

What do you think of when you look at these curious blobs? A Rorschach
ink test? Six hairy tennis balls thrown up in the air? A group of amoebas
on ecstasy?

Wrong. What you should be thinking of is ‘strength and expertise in
the biological and related sciences and how these feed through technology
interaction into wealth creation by the biology-based industries’. Or, more
specifically, you should be thinking about ‘the myriad molecular interactions
of living systems; the Sun – the ultimate provider of all energy for living
processes on Earth; and how biological systems may be used in process engineering
to create environmentally sensitive and sustainable technologies for industry’.

The blurb from which these quotes are taken goes on to explain that
this pregnantly meaningful design was created by Giant, a graphic consultancy
based in London. Coordination with Giant was implemented by a working group
of four science administrators, all named in the blurb, who were in turn
advised by 14 others, all of whom are also named.

And that, readers, is how a logo, or ‘visual identity’, was created
for our trendy new friend the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research
Council (BBSRC).

We wonder how much it cost.

* * *

Nigel Sitwell has come up with a good suggestion to resolve BT’s dilemma
of how to recycle its annual crop of 22 million telephone directories (see
In Brief, 26 March). On the outskirts of Da Nang in central Vietnam there
are a host of small family businesses making firecrackers. These are obviously
wrapped in paper with printing on it. Where does the paper come from?

Sitwell was told that with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the
consequent end of Russian influence in the area, the entrepreneurial Vietnamese
quickly spotted a use for the many thousands of Russian-Vietnamese dictionaries
that are now surplus to requirement. The pages are ripped out to provide
the wrapping for firecrackers, thus giving a great deal more pleasure to
local people than they did before.

Perhaps BT should make inquiries of firework manufacturers Paines and
Brocks. Alternatively, it might investigate the possibilities of an aid-through-trade
deal with the Vietnamese.

* * *

Feedback has often thought, when dealing with banks, railways and the
like, of the number of people who have been replaced by computers – but
had never imagined that such a fate could befall science journalists.

Last week we discovered a software program called SportsWriter, put
out by a tiny American firm called Zybrainics. SportsWriter, simply put,
writes sports stories, and its market is small-town weeklies in the US which
don’t have human sports writers.

The developer explains that it is really ‘an expert system’ that prompts
an editor for the teams’ names, the score, the performance of the outstanding
players on each side, the location of the match – then writes the story
for you.

Many of the eighty papers which have bought the program have to cover
dozens of high-school basketball games each weekend, yet have no one to
do the work. After a phone call to each school for this data, anyone can
– with SportsWriter – do the rest. Each story reads a tad different from
the one before.

Taking a glance at New Å®ÉúСÊÓƵ’s news pages, Feedback suddenly had
a ghastly premonition: ‘ŮÉúСÊÓƵs have long dreamed of being able to .
. . Now researchers at . . . Universities say they have developed a . .
. that . . . As a bonus, the new . . . is only . . . , thinner than a human
³ó²¹¾±°ù.’

Oh dear. Is this the writing on the wall?

* * *

It should seem a perfectly innocent statement but, given the conduct
of certain members of the government over the past year, Feedback couldn’t
help raising an eyebrow on receiving a press release from the Department
of Health headlined: ‘Schoolgirls invited to discuss healthy lifestyles
with government ministers’.