21 August 2006
Is that a gorilla I see before me?
Most readers of a page such as this must feel fairly confident that they would notice if a room they were standing in grew to four times its size.
Research at Oxford University, however, shows that we are easily deceived in such matters. In an experiment where a virtual room changed dimensions, subjects made huge errors about the size of things in it.
This is apparently because we have real trouble getting rid of our preconceptions, the key one in this case being that rooms tend not to move around much unless they are starring in a TV property programme or are situated in the Autonomous Republic of Hingham, where time-space distortion is an accepted daily hazard.
In another experiment it was found that people failed to notice a gorilla crossing the road. This is not surprising. Gorillas do not cross roads; zebras and chickens do.
If our preconceptions are strong enough, we run the risk of missing something important. And there are people who work very hard to feed our assumptions – who don’t want us to see that some things may be moving.
It’s extremely hard to get scientific funding for research that may challenge the prevailing consensus – for instance on the causes of AIDS, the value of chemotherapy and the extent of climate change.
A professor of surgery put it like this: “Over the last 50 years government- sponsored and industry-sponsored research programmes have come to dominate scientific research.
“A totalitarian system now exists where only scientists that adhere to the prevailing orthodoxy can receive funds to conduct research. Not only will the government not fund studies on alternative hypotheses for AIDS and cancer, but this stricture applies to other areas of inquiry.
“All research on climate change must conform to the dogma of human-caused global warming, and studies on vaccines dare not criticise their safety or efficacy.”
The walls are closing in. Is anyone worried? Is that a gorilla?
Bear facts about Bob the Builder
Just north of Norwich – not far from the forests of Felthorpe, in fact - mysterious things are happening that can only be attributed to global warming.
A correspondent has sent me photographic evidence of elephants in her garden. She also tells me that she has found a large, undamaged pike there, far from any stream or river.
But much stranger than that is the case of the chair, the koala and Bob the Builder.
This stemmed from my correspondent’s quite natural practice of placing an old chair in the gateway opposite her house, so that she could sit there and crochet while waiting for transportation to her craft sessions. I guess we’ve all done it.
On this occasion, she tells me, “the chair disappeared - even though it was a broken plastic one rescued from a skip - between Saturday night and Sunday morning”, which most readers will realise is a very short time indeed.
A few weeks later she replaced the chair. The next morning she checked – and found Bob the Builder in it, holding an England flag.
After a brief telephone call, she returned to discover that Bob had gone missing, leaving his flag about five metres up the road out of the village. “I put the flag in the bush near the empty seat,” she reports.
She also put a notice on the chair: “Come home, Bob.” The following day she found not an elephant or a pike, but a large koala in the chair, holding the flag. And a notice, which read: “Bob’s Mate Ted. Where R U Bob?”
Grittily, and strangely unphased, she guarded Ted from the garden until bedtime. But some time after that Bob's Mate Ted and his chair were abducted – and thrown into a ditch. Persistently, she rescued them with her walking stick, sat Ted back in his chair, with an empty chair beside him bearing the “Come home, Bob” notice, and…
Next day, only one chair in front of the gate, with the notice “Cherchez la femme, Bob?”
Since then things have been strangely silent.
Checking in without name or age
On my last visit to the doctor I couldn’t help noticing that his receptionist - normally as cheerful as you would naturally be if you were healthier than everyone else in the room - was looking even more upbeat than usual.
It soon transpired that this was because someone had installed a computer check-in system – technology only slightly distinguishable from magic and sitting quietly to the left of her desk.
She urged me to try it, in the manner of someone introducing a favourite child which, though witty and delightful, cannot totally be trusted.
I was unable to resist. I touched the screen gently as requested, and it sprung into action, needing only to know my sex, and the month and day of my birth, before confirming my appointment.
Tactfully, it did not mention my age or name, and nor did I. These things are best left undiscussed.
I suppose one day the whole surgery will be run by computer, and I shall have to click on all my symptoms before obtaining a diagnosis. Of course, the screen will have to be a lot bigger.
One more cup of coffee for the road
I once got so frustrated during a social game of bridge that I poured the remains of a cup of coffee over one of my opponents. Since he was much, much bigger than me, I expected to leave the room in pieces, if at all.
Instead he became one of my closest friends. He died suddenly at the end of last month, aged 57, after a heart bypass operation had seemed successful. He was David Gemmell, the most successful heroic fantasy writer in the country and a man of amazing generosity, as well as a gifted storyteller and wordsmith. The BBC web page obituary quickly garnered well over 600 comments from friends and fans, many of them testifying to the way in which he had made them feel stronger, or better about themselves.
Courage, loyalty, love and redemption were at the heart of what he wrote and what he was. Yes, he was much, much bigger than me. He will be sorely missed.