Autumn agenda

This issue of SPA reflects various events of the summer and looks forward to autumn.

The London bombers, explains Barrie Mellars, will have left security forces and the police with a huge amount of potential evidence in a variety of forms. Digital forensics is coming into its own. He argues that it must become a recognized scientific discipline.

Having won the bid to stage the 2012 Olympic Games, London will be taking more interest in sport. Andy Miah draws attention to the latest worries about gene transfer (‘gene doping’), which could enhance athletes’ strength or endurance on a genetic level, perhaps impossible to detect. The Olympic Movement sees this as a critical issue, but Miah asks what would be wrong with genetically modified athletes. He suggests that, if we want to protect their health, regulation may be more effective than prohibition.

Autumn should see the appointment of a new leader of the Conservative party.  In the light of the contest, and the perennial interest in the leadership of the Labour party, the SPATalk debates whether leaders are born or made.  Adrian Furnham believes that leadership ability is largely inherited, whereas Alex Haslam sees the group dynamic with followers as the crucial factor that makes leadership both possible and powerful.

By the end of the year, forecasts Ian Gibson, we will know whether the new Select Committee on Science and Technology will maintain its previous status with the scientific community.  Ex-chairman Gibson accuses the government of patronage and blackmail in deciding the membership of the new Committee, which he says serves party apparatchiks first and science second.

Climate change was one of the big issues on the Gleneagles G8 agenda in July.  Following this, Robert May flags up November meetings on climate change. He hopes the UK can help maintain pressure on the United States to agree to significant cuts of greenhouse gas emissions. He also looks forward to a review of the economics of climate change policies, announced by the Chancellor in July, and is scathing about the ‘eccentric account of the current state of the science of climate change’ published in summer by the House of Lords Select Committee on Economic Affairs.

November also sees the World Summit on the Information Society, whose purpose is to explore how information and communications technology can advance the UN Millennium goals for development.  Civil society groups complain that the conference will stress a cyber security agenda and ignore the threats which technology poses to human rights. Rikke Frank Joergensen lays out the issues.

Naturally, SPA also chronicles various developments in communicating science:  the annual science communicators’ conference, a new game to use for science communication and a citizens’ jury with a difference.

Wendy Barnaby, Editor