What's New Friday, 19 Jun 09 Washington, DC

WHAT'S NEW   Robert L. Park   Friday, 19 Jun 09   Washington, DC

1.  THE COPENHAGEN CONSPIRACY: IS QUANTUM MECHANICS WRONG? 
Today's issue of Science has a NewsFocus article about physicist Anthony 
Valentini of Imperial College London and his attempt to straighten out the 
mess left by Bohr and Heisenberg 80 years ago.  Valentini is co-author with 
Guido Bacciagaluppi of "Quantum Theory at the Crossroads," to be published 
later this year.  It continues a debate that has gone unresolved.  It was 
put on hold because scientists were just too busy using quantum mechanics, 
to worry about why it works.  Measured by the incredible range of phenomena 
it permits us to calculate and the technologies it has spawned, quantum 
mechanics must surely be the most successful scientific theory in history.  
It is, unfortunately, also wrong.  Valentini's theory could spawn a 
revolution in physics. 

2.  PEOPLE: ALMOST 7 BILLION IS ALREADY WAY TOO MANY.
When was it that the media stopped mentioning “population”?  We read almost 
daily headlines about global warming from CO2 in the atmosphere.  It's our 
own fault, we’re told; we caused it by burning fossil fuels; we should have 
been driving fuel-efficient automobiles, living closer to work, and using 
nuclear and solar power generation.  That's all true, but it won't help if 
we just let the population grow.  Name a single world problem that isn't 
made worse by population growth.  Biologist Paul Ehrlich shook us awake in 
1968 with "The Population Bomb," but in 1980 he lost a public wager with 
University of Maryland economist and libertarian Julian Simon over the 
price of minerals. Ehrlich lost. Today, although population has risen to 
double that in 1968, the media avoids even mentioning it.   The June issue 
of Scientific American, however, has "Population and Sustainability" by 
Robert Engelman of Worldwatch.  Everyone should read it.

3.  HUNGER: MORE THAN A BILLION PEOPLE ARE MALNOURISHED. 
Most of them are in Africa.  A review of "Enough", a book by Roger Thurow 
and Scott Kilman, in Sunday's Financial Times, blames the problem on 
agriculture.  It’s clear from the numbers, however, that the real culprit 
is uncontrolled growth of population, which has led to proliferation of 
small, unproductive shambas.

4.  ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE: $2.5 BILLION LATER, STILL NO CURE.
More than a third of all Americans use some form of alternative health 
remedies. This week, Associated Press reporter Marilynn Marchione has 
written a series of articles on the failure of alternative remedies from 
herbals to acupuncture to demonstrate any measurable efficacy in placebo-
controlled double-blind studies conducted for NIH.  The possible exception 
is ginger capsules to treat nausea from chemotherapy.  WN strongly opposed 
the creation of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative 
Medicine at NIH when it was created in 2000, on the grounds that it would 
be seen as evidence that the medical world was taking alternative and 
complementary medicine seriously.  It was.  Nevertheless, when asked later 
to serve as the lone physicist on the steering committee, I agreed.  The 
Problem had simply become too large to ignore. The director Stephen E. 
Straus was both rigorous and fair, and although half the steering committee 
members were from the alternative world, there was a consensus on most 
issues.  Tragically, Stephen Straus died of brain cancer in 2007.  That 
desperate people still fall for these sham cures is also tragic.

THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND.
Opinions are the author's and not necessarily shared by the
University of Maryland, but they should be.
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