monster of the deep
TRANSCRIPT
Editorial–
A THREATENING creature creeps stealthily about the globe, sucking the life out of every place it reaches. It would make a classic plot for a horror B-movie, yet the real-life parallel gets few gasps. The protagonist is hypoxia, a low-oxygen condition that is becoming increasingly common – albeit out of sight for most of us – on the floor of coastal waters and estuaries. The results are horrifying. Hypoxia kills or drives out all but the most primitive life forms, and the resulting dead zones now number about 200 – and they are just the ones we know about (see page 38).
Few people would disagree that there is cause to worry when swathes of seafloor larger than small countries are completely stripped of life. Even conservative politicians have acknowledged that dead zones are a problem and that pollution is the main cause, but that has not necessarily translated into action to solve the problem. This would require measures such as reducing fertiliser-laden run-off from farms and improving sewage treatment, all of which can be expensive and are sometimes unpopular with industry.
We should not be too surprised, then, that such efforts have often been characterised by feeble political commitment and, in some cases, attempts to discredit the underlying science. The northern Gulf of Mexico, site of
one of the world’s largest dead zones, is a good example. No fewer than 30 US states have contributed to the problem. There is an action plan for addressing it, yet despite years of work the dead zone remains.
What is needed for the Gulf and elsewhere is the political will to give action plans proper funding and real teeth that can if necessary be used to force industries to take action, instead of relying largely on voluntary measures, as is the case now. The US could look to Europe, where there is also reluctance to foot the bill but more political momentum to do something about the problem. The European Union has a number of directives in place or pending that will make a positive start.
There are parallels here with global warming. Both issues are about environmental problems that cannot immediately be seen – global warming because its effects will be most strongly felt in the future, dead zones because they are below the ocean surface. This lack of visibility has made it possible for the US Environmental Protection Agency to avoid taking action on greenhouse gas emissions (see page 22). There must be no excuses for inaction on dead zones, especially as there is now strong evidence that once one appears, an ecosystem may never return to its former state. ●
TIME was when all scientists were outsiders. Self-funded or backed by a rich benefactor, they pursued their often wild ideas in home-built labs with no one to answer to but themselves. From Nicolaus Copernicus to Charles Darwin, they were so successful that it’s hard to imagine what modern science would be like without them.
Their isolated, largely unaccountable ways now seem the antithesis of modern science, with consensus and peer review at its very heart. Yet the “outsider” tradition persists. Think of Alfred Wegener, the father of plate tectonics and, more controversially, of Gaia theorist James Lovelock. Both pursued their theories in the face of strong opposition from their peers.
Such mavericks can be crucial to progress (see Lone Voices, page 44), but are they a
dying breed? Beyond young disciplines such as neurobiology, where the territory is largely uncharted, or esoteric areas like quantum theory, where it’s hard to prove anything, the consensual nature of science can make it hard for lone voices to thrive.
This may be inevitable. Peer review is inherently conservative, and increasingly only proposals that fit the research framework get funding. The sheer number of ideas in circulation means we need tough, sometimes crude ways of sorting geniuses from crackpots.
The principle that new ideas should be verified and reinforced by an intellectual community is one of the pillars of scientific endeavour, but it comes at a cost. We shouldn’t allow it to freeze out individuals who are courageous, brilliant or foolhardy enough to go it alone. ●
It pays to keep a little craziness
www.newscientist.com 9 December 2006 | NewScientist | 5
Monster of the deepOur oceans are in peril, yet we hardly seem to notice
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