The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 272 No 7297 p552
1 May 2004

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Remembering an early contributor to The Journal more
Energy going to waste more
Doubts about the desirability of devices for detecting deceit more

Remembering an early contributor to The Journal

One century ago, on 6 May 1904, the chemist Alexander William Williamson died at his retirement home at High Pitfold, Shottermill, Haslemere.

Alexander Williamson was born on 1 May 1824 in Wandsworth, his father being a clerk for the East India Co. Shortly after his birth the family moved to Kensington, where one of their neighbours, the philosopher John Stuart Mill, had a considerable influence on the boy’s way of thinking. Although he started school in Kensington, his father retired and moved to France, where Williamson was privately educated in Dijon.

In 1840 he entered Heidelberg University with the intention of studying medicine, but decided to abandon that and study chemistry. This he did under the guidance of Liebig at Giessen. He also studied physiology and went to Paris for three years to study mathematics under Auguste Comte.

In 1849 Williamson was appointed professor in University College, London, occupying that chair for 38 years. He became noted for tutoring a small group of Japanese students from 1863. He published a relatively small number of research papers, but they were of great importance to chemistry. The main contributions he made between 1844 and 1859 concerned the action of chlorine on oxides and salts, ozone, and the blue iron compounds of cyanogen. In 1949 Alexander began his celebrated research into the theory of etherification and catalysis. It is intriguing to note that he contributed a series of papers on fermentation to The Pharmaceutical Journal in 1870 and 1871.

Williamson received many accolades recognising his work. He was elected to the Chemical Society in 1848 and to the Royal Society in June 1855, where he became its foreign secretary. He presided over the British Association meeting in 1873, where he demonstrated his breadth of interests by giving an address on the relationship between academic chemical studies and a sound general education. He was awarded fellowships by many learned societies in Europe and took a close interest in promoting the cause of science degrees in London in particular.

He retired from University College in 1888 and went to live in Haslemere, where he remained mentally active, though a little physically disabled, until 1904.

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Energy going to waste

Understanding the concept of noise is not as simple as it sounds. It has been defined as “sound of any kind” and as “overloud or excessive sound”. Our word is derived from the French noise, meaning argument or quarrel, and further back from Latin noxa, that which hurts, and nausea, disgust.

As a philosophical concept we can define noise as energy in the wrong place. In modern life, dominated by machinery and enormous energy consumption, we do well to remember that noise means a waste of energy.

To be fair, some noise has its rightful place in society. No one need find fault with the policeman’s whistle or the warning siren of the ambulance. The value of noise perception in warning us of hazards in a busy city becomes particularly evident when we are incapacitated by deafness. But when it comes to powerful exploding fireworks or guns, the racket of a motorcycle whose owner has removed part of the exhaust system, the whine of an overhead aircraft or the roar of a passing juggernaut, we really do realise that much noise is energy dissipated wastefully. If our machines were better maintained we should have to endure less trauma, and, presumably, energy that currently goes to waste would be saved and so diminish our demands on the universe’s failing resources.

The natural world has its noise generators too. The clamour produced by a flock of startled pheasants, starlings or rooks can briefly be alarming. But the mechanical clash of a farmer’s tractor-driven implement far exceeds it and may continue for hours without a break.

The noise intensity accompanying a sporting occasion is often incredible and unbearable, serving no useful purpose. And modern music, vastly amplified to ensure that it takes precedence over all other environmental vibrations, surely expends valuable energy and at the same time distorts perception.

There comes a time when we must choose to put a stop to this waste.

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Doubts about the desirability of devices for detecting deceit

Using clever lie-spotting devices to detect deceivers has for many years raised the temperature of debate. The notorious polygraph, which has long obsessed security agencies in the US, has been subject to what Nature calls “withering criticism” and the data it provides are now banned as evidence in many US states, as elsewhere in the world.

However, the conventional polygraph is not the only aspect being questioned, as Jonathan Knight observes in Nature for 15 April. All such devices are overshadowed by the argument that the scientists who pronounce upon their efficacy and advocate their employment are rarely, if ever, independent and strictly objective but are employed by the companies that manufacture the machines or the agencies that plan to use them. Indeed, according to Knight, the polygraph, having been conceived in 1915 by the psychologist William Marston, should have had ample time to prove its worth, if it has any.

The original data used to decide on the truth or falsehood of a statement made by someone under examination included changes in perspiration, breathing pattern, pulse and blood pressure resulting from simple “yes” or “no” answers to a series of questions. Today it is recognised that there are many more physiological indicators of stress, which is the essential element governing responses to various stimuli. In 2003 a report issued by the US National Academy of Sciences concluded that beyond doubt there could be no certainty that physiological changes measured by polygraphy could indicate deliberate dishonest answers to questions.

A recent review of what has been called “brain fingerprinting” claims it cannot detect lying but only the presence of stored information in the brain at the moment. It merely measures the electrical activity of a host of neurons. Delay in their reaction may occur, but may depend rather on memory of an event than on a sense of guilt. Tracking eye movements and infrared scanning of circulation in the face may detect stress but how to interpret this is another matter. Stress is not another name for guilty knowledge. It may arise from a minor indisposition or from an awareness of a questioner’s desire to intimidate the subject for any reason whatever.

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