PD Smith

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.

Alom Shaha has set up an excellent website that seeks to answer the question: Why is science important?

There are many interesting replies here from the likes of Jim Al-Khalili, Simon Singh, and Marcus Chown. He's kindly asked me to add my own answer - you can read it here.

My own favourite is by Maya Hawes. She's twelve years old.

Winter has arrived in Hampshire.
I haven't seen this much snow since I lived in Munich...