Dr Samuel Furse

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Here is a dangerous opinion: murderers should not be killed.

It is an opinion you have probably heard before, and if the statistics I have heard about are right, and you live in western Europe, the chances are you agree with it.

However, in India, they do not. At least, they do not agree with it to the point of changing their statutes to reflect this. We have seen a prime example of this, this week, with the announcement that the four men convicted of raping and causing the death (murder or manslaughter is not clear) of a woman student, have been given the death penalty. Another man who was alleged to have participated in the incident has already died (there is evidence he hanged himself, though his family deny this) and one male who was 17 at the time has been sent to a juvenile reform institution.

This case therefore provides food for thought for those who oppose the death penalty but who also have a strong interest in tougher, and greater, sentencing of rapists. In the UK, current attitude suggests that rape is a more sinister and politically incorrect crime than murder or manslaughter, so one might think that a death penalty should be awarded for that crime, if any, especially if it is accompanied by the death of the rape victim. It seems that international organisations are also starting to take this view. For example, Meenakshi Ganguly, the South Asia Director of Human Rights Watch, said the treatment of individual women was “much, much more important” than whether or not the perpetrators were put to death. It is not clear under which context these remarks were made, but from the outside it starts to sound that human rights can be picked and chosen.

What interests me more than the human rights angle is India’s use of the death penalty at all. Ghandi said, referring to violent conflict, “An eye for an eye, and the whole world goes blind”. Barely more than sixty years after independence, this appears not to apply within India. Add that this particular case is unbalanced in this respect; justice is apparently served to one manslaughter/murder and six rapes by five deaths and a remedial sentence. This starts to sound more like a state-mediated revenge for the crimes at the behest of public pressure, and less like justice.

Militant feminists reading this will no doubt be angered by that view, but I am not alone in holding it. Tara Rao, Director of Amnesty International India seems to agree. He said that “Sending these four men to the gallows will accomplish nothing except short-term revenge”.

There is no doubt, for me at least, that nothing can justify the actions of rape and murder of any person. However, in the interests of equitability, we must ask ourselves whether death and a painfully unbalanced approach solve any of the problems that come under the spotlight in this case. The upshot of this is that men and women are as separated as much as they ever were, justice has compromised yet again by ignorant and political intervention and the causes and consequences of rape and murder are more unclear than ever before.

What we lack is an even-handed, cool-headed, objective approach. When are we going to get that?
 
 

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I thought of another one of those euphemistic phrases they use in obituaries, last week.  You know the ones – ‘he did not always uphold the highest ethical standards of the city’ means he was a thief, ‘she was a tireless campaigner for free speech’, means she was a crashing bore, ‘he did not always see eye-to-eye with the prevailing political orthodoxy of the time’, means he was a fascist.  The pleonasm I thought of was for an ex-colleague of mine, an academic of sorts: ‘S/he had an unorthodox approach to authorship’.  Authorship, in this case, refers to the process of apportioning credit for work done for scientific publications – journal articles, patents and books.
 
The Structure of Turnip Yellow Mosaic Virus: X-Ray Diffraction Studies, Aaron Klug, J. T. Finch, Rosalind E. Franklin. 
 
In case you are not familiar with it, typically, the first author is the Ph.D. or Master’s student who does the lab work and who writes the first draft of the paper.  The last author is the supervisor and the person who wrote the grant proposal that funded the project.  The second author is perhaps the post-doc who re-wrote the paper or the one who was the go-to person in the lab when the student needed to learn a new technique or problem-solve.  The second-to-last author is often a second supervisor, who also helped write the grant and helped out with the supervision occasionally.  Mid-author positions are people who made the smallest contributions, they may have acquired and analysed some data that was included in the paper but does not make-or-break it.

I must admit I thought of the euphuism ‘unorthodox approach to authorship’ only when I was on the negative receiving end of it; I was not included in the list of authors of a publication, where I should have had a reasonably prominent position.  This is not as upsetting or as frustrating as it may sound, it just means I have one fewer publication to add to my list.  In any case, it is far from the only example as virtually every academic I know has been left off a list of authors unfairly at some point.  Some have even written about it and the whole process, including Sylvia McLain.

In this particular case, the euphemism goes a bit further than covering up for someone’s political correctness.  The ex-colleague in question also likes to take first authorship in a paper every couple of years, without having done any lab work or writing much of the manuscript.  This person also likes to include people (sorry, “authors”), who have made no contribution at all to a given publication, as a way of shoring up their perhaps weak, position.   So, it may be an hyperbole of sorts, but it is not too unfair itself.

The argument against this gripe I raise is that these things are really convention.  There is no set rule, they differ between disciplines (authorship in engineering and science are in the reverse order with respect to one another), and there is no one to arbitrate claims of it going wrong.  Authorship therefore has a political and even subjective slant—and so getting what you deserve really requires more effort that just being in the lab and working hard.  You must be memorable to the person who presses the submit button that sends the manuscript to whoever publishes it.

This political element to publishing science leaves everyone open to equally subjective judgement about the decisions made, or the names forgotten.  In other words, I am aware that someone may therefore think of an obituary euphemism for me at some point.  I wonder what it might be.  In a literal sense and by my own admission, I do not suffer fools gladly.  I do not like having my time wasted, less still by people who are stupid or have no idea they have done it.  According to Stephen Fry, where this pleonasm is used, the real meaning is that this person is “a howling shit” (on Youtube, from 10’40”).  I hope I am not that, but I cannot deny that it is not a million miles away from finding stupid people boring.
 
 

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Recently, the acclaimed former ballerina Darcey Bussell was quoted in a national newspaper extoling the virtues of “Sanctuary Spa Lipid Recovery Facial Oil”. The product name given on the website of a national pharmacist is slightly different, “Sanctuary Active Reverse Lipid Recovery Facial Oil” but appears to be the same product. A product with that name is also available on at least one on-line auction website and through other retailers in the UK and abroad.
The name used for this product interested me for several reasons. The first, of course, was that it contained the word “lipid”. The second was that the name also contains the terms “active reverse” and “recovery facial”, and because I am not sure I understand them. Taken at face (!) value, I imagine they are broadly along the same lines as “anti-ageing”, but they seem less clear than that term. The cynic in me immediately asserts that this is because the term ‘anti-ageing’ has been discredited: demonstrable evidence of a reversal of the process of ageing by applying oil-in-water emulsions to the surface of the skin, has yet to reach the public domain. However, the product label does contain some more text that allows us to deepen our understanding of what the manufacturers suggest it is for, and how it should be used:

“Lipid complex: re-charges, hydrates & protects cells from ageing to provide a host of visible benefits on the skin’s surface.”

The term ‘Lipid complex’ has a particular meaning in chemistry, that is not in common usage, nor is relevant to the ingredients listed on the product (see below). It is not clear to me what “re-charging” is in this context, only that it sounds like the sort of thing that one might want, whether or not it makes clear sense. “Hydrates” on the other hand, is clearer, is means to expose to water, especially in a way that moistens a surface or mass at a molecular level. Hydration of skin can of course be achieved with water itself, as anyone who has had a long bath will know. However, the list of ingredients do not include water, so hydration is apparently not possible—unless it is contained in one of two accompanying products, “Peptide Protect Day Cream SPF20” or “Peptide Replenish Night Cream” that are associated with it. However, they would be the hydrating agents, and not this preparation.

The next phrase “protects cells from ageing” is more dangerous, and I am afraid to say, an out-and-out lie. The cells on the surface of our skin are dead and so are not involved in the ageing process. So, simple logic tells us that there is no way that they can be protected from it. This phrase also sounds like something deliberately designed to be unclear but that sounds vaguely like what one might want.

These observations make one wonder what this preparation will do. We can start by looking at the ingredients:

“Helianthus annuus (Sunfower) seed oil, Simmondsia chinensis (Jojoba) seed oil, Triticum vulgare (Wheat) germ oil, Rosa rubiginosa seed oil, Caprilic/capric triglyceride, Lavandula angustifolia (Lavender) oil, Linalool, Punica granatum seed oil, Geranylgenarylisopropanol, Anthemis nobilis flower oil, Citrus aurantium amara (Bitter orange) flower oil, Limonene, Geraniol.”

The first four ingredients, and thus the bulk of the material in this preparation, are all oils. “Punica granatum seed oil” is the oil from pomegranate seeds. In chemical terms, these are triglycerides [link] that are a liquid at room temperature. Chemically they are very similar to olive oil and so the effect of rubbing that on your skin will be very similar to this preparation. What this preparation contains that olive oil does not, are various perfumes: lavender oil, linalool, Anthemis nobilis flower oil (better known as chamomile), Citrus aurantium amara (Bitter orange) flower oil, Limonene, Geraniol.

There is no doubt that this mixture would provide a sort of aesthetic experience that may improve mood, however, none of these ingredients has been shown to be able to reverse the effects of activity, the latter being the apparent claim of the product name.

This leaves us with one ingredient, “Geranylgeranylisopropanol”. This is a non-standard name for one of a collection of organic compounds produced mainly by plants, called terpenes. This ingredient has been included in at least one patent related to the treatment of medical disorders and is “rated” by writers of guides to cosmetic ingredients. However, according to the Thomson-Reuters database of scientific research (wok.mimas.ac.uk), no research has been published about this compound. It is therefore unclear what it may or may not do. The structure it has (at least according to a patent, that lists it) suggests that it probably has amphiphilic character, so could be classified as a lipid. It is unlikely to self-assemble as the polar head group is too weak, but it is probably amphiphilic nevertheless.

This leaves the current product investigation facing a damning conclusion: this product is unlikely to be what shoppers think it is, nor to have the effect that the deliberately-unclear name suggests. At best, there is no evidence for the claims apparently being made. Despite these, the product has not been exposed as a scandal (unless this article is the start, but I doubt it), it is still sold widely and it has not been withdrawn or re-modelled as a result of the application of the Trades Descriptions Act. There is some suggestion that the product contains an amphiphilic species, a lipid, so that part of the name appears to be correct.

The question in my mind now is: what is the point of this product? It is not flagrantly unlawful, but it serves no obvious purpose either, other than it might smell nice. Is this product part of a conspiracy to test Geranylgeranylisopropanol on a large group, an unsuspecting public?

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