To cut a long story short, it seems to me that what Quantum Mechanics does is what any computer programmer would do when faced with an enormous amount of information that he could not possibly compute in a sensible timeframe.

Why track every particle in the universe if it only matters where it is when you need to know about it?

Could the interference patterns caused by single particles be the result of approximations in the computational algorithms of the universe?

Put it this way… if the universe was in some way ‘pure’. If it existed arbitrarily, independent of anything else, then why would time and space be quantized? Are Xeno’s paradoxes for real? If time and space were not indivisible then I would claim that Xeno’s paradoxes would NOT be paradoxical IF the universe were ‘pure’ and ‘free’ because a smooth calculation over ANY interval would be possible. The paradoxes ONLY become paradoxical if you have to make the calculations! If nothing needs to do any calculations then yes you CAN integrate from 0 to 1 in a finite time. It is ONLY if something has to work something out that an un-quantized space or time will never complete an integral.

So, in the way that I see it, the Universe really works like an enormous computer. There are a huge number of locations, but they are discrete. One planck volume each. And a huge number of times, but discrete. One planck time each. At each time each volume contains information. Nothing more.

And my idea is testable! I learned this in my degree when simulating the n-body problem.

Take two bodies that are falling towards each other under gravity. As they get closer together they get faster and faster. Any computer program that simulates this over discrete time periods will eventually reach a point where the bodies are really close together and the forces on them are enormous, so the accelerations are enormous and so their new velocities are enormous. After one more time period they have passed each other and are racing away at stupendous speeds. You just violated conservation of energy. So you step back one step and you move forwards by a smaller period of time. Now the forces, accelerations and velocities get even higher. And no matter how small you make your unit of time you always face a point where things break down. Even at the planck scale of time and distance conservation of energy will be violated.

So we have a position where either planck scales are real or they are simply descriptive in terms of quantum uncertainty. You can test by conservation of energy which is the case. It may be beyond our detection abilities at the moment but the test is there. If we could prove that energy is not conserved then we would know that time and space are genuinely discrete and therefore we COULD describe the universe as a set of information which is really just like a computer model. Or we would show that energy is conserved and that therefore the planck scales are simply descriptive of our ability to describe the universe using observation. Indeed a place between unit 0 and unit 1 on the planck scale would exist. In which case quantum theory would appear to break down. In fact Xeno would come back to haunt us. After all if you need to make an infinite number of calculations to move an infinitesimal step forward in time and space you could never get anywhere. After all even the tiniest change in the universe requires the propagation of that change to everywhere else in the universe, allbeit at the speed of light of less. In a smooth scaled universe any change, no matter how small, requires an infinite number of propagations of the changes – as per Xeno.

In a way, if I follow this argument to its logical conculsion I have to ask myself again : Why does a single photon interfere with itself in Young’s Double Slit experiment? If I follow this path then the answer is that it does so because the universe doesn’t know where the photon is and therefore it does pass through both slits and that it is not because of interference with another universe where everything is identical except that the photon went a different way. After all where the bloody hell ARE all these other universes? That’s the hardest question for the multiverse proponents to answer! Myself included!

One answer would be to conclude that the universe itself is a quantum computer but then it would have to exist inside some container which leads to infinite regression.

I’m not happy with any of the answers. How CAN a photon go through both slits? Yet how CAN there be an infinite number of universes (or rather a very very large number representing each possible quantum state)?

I suspect the answer is far more subtle than any of us can realise. I do not want to shed the idea that our universe is mechanistic although including a lack of knowledge that we call the WaveForm, but neither do I wish for a plethora of universes constantly being created.

So it would be so easy just to say the universe is a computer program. But then it’s got to be running somewhere on something and we have to wonder about the rules of the universe in which that computer exists. If that universe was singular and purely mechanistic with not even the concept of a wave-form then where would they come up with that idea from? Indeed without the mechanisms of quantum mechanics what would existence even be like? Everything we know relies on quantum mechanics. Take it away and you are left with a reality that we could not even begin to describe. Could anyone come up with a way to describe a self contained computer that conforms to everything we know? After all… there is such a thing as a wave function that describes the entire universe and if it can be conceptualised (although not solved) inside that universe would it require a larger universe to contain it?

Quantum Mechanics is the most confusing thing human endeavour has EVER come up with.

I believe it was Feynman who said “If you think you understand Quantum Mechanics then you don’t understand Quantum Mechanics.”

It does not sit well with me to think that a conscious observer is required for QM to work and therefore for the Universe to exist.

Which of these two would you say has a fundamental existence? The understanding of Mathematics or the concept of Mathematics? I would insist that Mathematics exists regardless of the ability to understand it.

Mathematics can describe any geometry, any equation, any self-consistent ‘thing’. We can create a perfectly valid set of rules that describe a universe that differs from our own. Physics describes the universe we live in – and sometimes a universe we don’t live in – but it only does so through mathematics.

Yet how could you possibly think that these mathematical frameworks only exist when there is a consciousness to observe their operation? Since the early universe clearly did not have any consciousness in it the only way you could believe this would be to create a God. But a god would have to be outside of the Universe to be able to observe the point where time began but being outside the Universe he would be outside the mathematical framework of QCD and therefore unable to interact with it. Occam’s Razor makes a clean cut here. It is far simpler for the Universe not to have to require a conscious observer than it is to create an observer who is outside of the Universe and can observe it without breaking QCD (or indeed to extend QCD into some extra dimension or concept to explain how this can be).

That is to say that “The Universe exists as it is, as we understand it, as anyone understands it, and as anything will ever understand it, regardless of whether we do so correctly or not or indeed whether we or any other conscious being exists to be capable of understanding it”.

And that “Mathematics exists as a framework for describing any possible reality regardless of the existence of any particular reality that it can describe”.

And so, applying this to QM, it would be easy to say that I must therefore believe that one of the Many Worlds interpretations is the choice for me. But that seems so excessively complex as to beggar belief. So what am I to think?

To go back to Schroedinger’s Cat… this thought experiment relies on something very crucial. The box itself is isolated from the rest of the Universe. The inside of the box must be interacting with the outside of the box and thence with the rest of the Universe. So information is flowing out of the box at all times. The wave function must be collapsed at all times! That is, you cannot perform this experiment and so why should it have any relevance to which form of QM might be right or wrong?

Also, just to backtrack for a moment, the requirement for a consciousness makes ‘consciousness’ special. I am a materialist, not a dualist or pluralist, so I do not believe that there is any ‘thing’ that cannot be described by the laws of physics. To me the ’self’, ‘id’, ‘ego’, ‘mind’, ‘consciousness’ or whatever you want to call it is nothing more than the complex macroscopic expression of fundamental physics. There is no extra ingredient that makes life alive or the mind ‘mind-ly’. Therefore even if the requirement didn’t make sense to me in a purely logical way I would have to deny it.

So here’s what I believe the correct interpretation of Quantum Mechanics is:

1. I believe that the Wave Function describes the lack of information about a system, not a lack of determinism in the system.
2. I therefore have to believe in a Many Worlds version of the theory. No other interpretations will work, given point 1, with the majority of the features of QM.
3. I can find no other way to explain single photon interference given 1 and 2 other than to agree with Deutsch that it must be caused by interference between universes (see his book The Fabric of Reality).

The strange thing is that is not the conclusion I thought I would come to. But having spent so long researching and thinking about it that’s where I ended up!

Over the past year or two I’ve been doing a lot of research into vaccines and the anti-vax movement. One thing I did not know was how long the immunity you gain from vaccination can last. With a new baby in the family who is just approaching his first vaccinations and the recent re-emergence of Pertussis (particularly in California) I have become concerned whether my immunity is up to scratch and whether I or anyone else my son might come into contact with might even be a carrier of diseases that he could catch.

I had to visit my doctor yesterday so I asked him “Why we don’t have continual boosters throughout our life for Pertussis or Tetanus for example?”

He said that the perceived wisdom here in the UK is that after your childhood course of 5 vaccinations for each condition you are as good as protected for life. Now my doctor is pretty good and quite the skeptic himself. We recently had a good chat about Andrew Wakefield being struck off. So he didn’t state this as fact. He stated it as the NHS’s position.

Since then I’ve been looking for research articles on the duration of vaccination immunity and so far this is the kind of evidence that I’ve found:

Pertussis vaccination immunity wanes in 4-12 years
Natural immunity can last up to 30 years
There are also articles which discuss the need to re-vaccinate the elderly against diseases including Pertussis.

So it seems on the surface at least that the NHS is wrong. If the last vaccination is given in the mid teens then by the age of 30, possibly even by the age of 20, people will have lost their immunity to at least some of the diseases they were vaccinated against. Those diseases may no longer pose a significant threat to their lives but they do still pose a risk to the lives of the young and old they come into contact with.

Now I am thoroughly confused about why we let this risk exist and I draw no firm conclusions at this point as to the level of the risk or the accuracy of the links above in relation to the specific NHS vaccination schedule. More research needs to be done but my opinion is clearly moving towards there being a real risk as a result of this vaccination policy.

Man at front of queue gestures at bracelets on sale at the counter. The packaging says “Embedded Holographic Technology” and “May improve your strength and swing” etc.

Man at front of queue: Do those really work then?

Boy behind counter: Yeah, I wear one all the time.

Me: Yeah, wearing a hologram on your wrist will really make you better at golf.

Boy behind counter: Well I play off 4.

Man at front of queue: [With slight sarcasm] There must be something in it then.

Me: Yeah, Confirmation Bias.

Anyway I looked these things up and the company behind them is EFX. They have websites for many different countries. I stumbled across the US, UK and Hungarian sites in my top few google hits.

I decided to make a new Trading Standards complaint about it. And here’s my complaint sent to Consumer Direct:

Please would you forward this complaint to Kent Trading Standards, as the body responsible for applying the law in this company’s region.

The company detailed in this complaint is selling a range of products for which there exists no evidence to give backing to the claims they make for their ‘Embedded Holographic Technology”. The products are sold by many websites and shops around the country and are no more than snake-oil.

Allowing such blatant rubbish to be pedaled at the expense of those without a basic understanding of medicine and physics is shameful.

The claim on their website follows – ALL this from a mylar ‘holographic’ device???

A side note – their main US website claims that Mylar is a ‘metallic substance’ when in fact it is a polyester (plastic)… they can’t even get THAT right!

—

Q. What is the major benefit of EFX?

A. EFX helps restore natural in harmony to the body.

The effect is believed to stabilize and harmonize the body’s bioelectric current. When the body is in harmony, the muscles relax, cells un-clump, and blood circulation increases, allowing for greater stability, easier movement and pain relief.

EFX energetic power works instantly. The immediate effects experienced are; increase strength, balance, flexibility and range of motion. EFX products have also been reported to help relieve joint and muscle pain, improve blood circulation, reduce swelling, keep muscles conditioned and flexible, alleviate stress, boost endurance, and prevent motion sickness.

I am still waiting to hear back from the Trading Standards Office in Manchester about the ‘minus-ion’ bracelets I complained about previously. They aren’t obliged to contact me unfortunately but the chap I spoke to there did say he would try and call me when he had something to report.

My top 10 hits were:

1. BMJ Article on trials in 2006.

I don’t have access to this full article but based on other articles that refer to it, the findings were negative and the trial was rigorous.

2. A website trying to sell books on Magnet Therapy

The front page refers to three trials that produced positive results but there are no references to any papers so I cannot check for double-blinding etc.

3. The American Cancer Society

Although there are anecdotal reports of healing with magnetic therapy, available scientific evidence does not support these claims. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) considers magnets harmless and of no use for medical purposes.

Enough said!

4. A Wikipedia Article

Magnet therapy is considered pseudoscientific due to both physical and biological implausibility, as well as a lack of any established effect on health or healing.

The above quote just from the introduction links to two books and one article alone.

5. Anesthesia and Analgesia

A very good summary on how hard it is to disprove something that has so many claimed benefits. Fortunately trials have been run in some specific areas and if one claim is shown to be false it casts the others in a very poor light. Not only that but when it comes to advertising you have to be able to show evidence for your claims not a lack of evidence to the contrary.

6. Strangely is the same as hit number 5.

7. The ‘evidence’ from a company selling Magnetic Therapy products

There is a vast amount of text on this site and I have read through a good chunk of it. By following a few links one can get some excerpts of research papers which have been published. Some of these excerpts show that the trials were improperly conducted. One on Asthma in children shows that there was no sham group to compare with for example. Another that stood out for me shows such extraordinary results that I wish I had a subscription to the Journal that published it to see if there were any follow-ups or rebuttals.

RESULTS: Wounds in the magnet group healed in an average of 15.3 days, significantly faster than those in either the sham group (20.9 days, P = .006) or control group (20.3 days, P < .0001). There was no statistically significant difference between the sham and control groups (P = .45).

CONCLUSIONS: An externally applied, low-power, static magnetic field increases the rate of secondary healing. Review of the literature reveals conflicting evidence regarding the use of magnetic energy to aid the healing of bone, tendon, and skin. Level I studies are lacking and difficult to execute but are needed to define conclusively the role of magnets in clinical practice.

Eplasty: Journal of Burns and Wounds. 2008 July. 25;8:e40. PMID: 18725953

The claim is that a magnet caused the rats’ wounds to heal 25% quicker. That’s an astonishing claim and one that ought to be researched further if there has been no flaws found in the trial. But putting myself in the place of a researcher on the trial I can think of a dozen problems that might be found, e.g.

• I made the wounds on the control group a little deeper
• I treated the control group a little more roughly when measuring their progress
• I fed and watered the magnet group with more/better food

etc. etc.

8. A site with links to trials with positive outcomes

There are more than twenty trials listed here but not a single one of them is one of those that reported nothing more than a placebo effect. Since those studies exist and since nowhere on this site, as far as I can find, do they mention any doubts about the efficacy of the treatment, there is an obvious bias here. I didn’t take the time to read all of the studies but to take the first one mentioned:

At 4 hours, VAS pain scores (+/- SE) on a 5-item scale (0-500, 500 worst) decreased 79 +/- 18 mm in the active group and 10 +/- 21 mm in the placebo group (P < 0.05). There were no significant differences in any primary or secondary measure of efficacy between the treatment groups at 6 weeks. Despite widespread testing for magnetic properties, at study end, 69% of the active group and 77% of the placebo group (P > 0.2) believed that they had been assigned to the active treatment group. CONCLUSION: Despite our small sample size, magnets showed statistically significant efficacy compared to placebo after 4 hours under rigorously controlled conditions.

I don’t see how they can possibly have that conclusion! After a session the patients showed better pain reduction with magnets than with sham treatment. Fair enough but has there been any attempt to blind the medical staff giving the treatment from whether it is real or sham? Studies have shown that this is hugely important to the outcome. It is not mentioned.

The final outcome after six weeks of treatment shows no difference in efficacy. That alone shows that the treatment was no more than placebo. After the trial is over the subtleties of patient response to the professional will have decayed and the actual efficacy becomes more apparent to the patient.

Given that the above disagree with each other, I have to conclude that the response to a session must be down to some factor during the session, that possibly being the professional’s knowledge of which treatment is being administered.

9. Alternative Medicine at About.com

Reference is made to 5 papers and the site must be given some credit for appearing balanced. However it does end up being rather confused because of it. It starts by saying there is little evidence but then states.

Even though claims that magnetic therapy can treat diseases like cancer and multiple sclerosis are unfounded, there is some evidence that it may help relieve pain related to these chronic conditions

It claims that Arthritic and Pelvic pain studies are positive. On the other hand it states that a fybromalgia study failed to account for the better quality of beds patients were resting in and that

in studies on the use of magnetic therapy for relief of chronic low back pain and wrist pain related to carpal tunnel syndrome, researchers found magnets no more effective than placebo treatments

Again, credit to them for at giving both positive and negative findings.

10. The National Centre for Complementary and Alternative Medicine

There is actually the best source of information in the top 10 links. It gives a good overview of what the treatment has been used for, historically and contemporarily, what magnets are, how they are used, what the speculation is over what they might do, and what the trials show.

Preliminary scientific studies of magnets for pain have produced mixed results. Overall, there is no convincing scientific evidence to support claims that magnets can relieve pain of any type. Some studies, including a recent National Institutes of Health (NIH) clinical trial for back pain, suggest the possibility of a small benefit from using magnets for pain. However, the majority of rigorous studies have found no effect on pain.

Notice they say preliminary and notice that they go on to say:

More research on magnets for pain is needed before reaching any firm conclusion.

More rigorous research is needed before reaching any firm conclusions about the effectiveness of magnets for pain.

They have been very professional in their approach to the topic but I do think those two statements indicate they really really want to believe it’ll work. I’d disagree and say that the best run studies have shown there is no benefit above placebo and that they constitute a large enough body of evidence to put the subject to rest. Either way it’s a good page on the subject.

Summary

So far I have not found any good quality trials with positive results. I haven’t even found any trials yet that cover most of the claims of the Trion:Z bracelets – reduced stress, better concentration, more powerful golf swings etc! The Cochrane Organization doesn’t have any meta-analyses on any Magnet-related subject.

1. That Organic Farming is better for the environment.
2. That Organic Food tastes better.

From my own previous discoveries I have several pre-formed opinions:

A. Organic Farming’s output is sufficiently lower than non-Organic farming that we could not feed everyone if we all adopted it.
B. Organic Farming in general MAY not be the same thing as sustainable farming and non-organic farming practices MAY be sustainable.
C. Organic produce is no better in taste or nutrition.

Being a person of sound scientific method I am open to changing my opinions based on evidence. So I will try to address both the media assumptions and my own views. But first we need to know exactly what Organic Farming is. Does it mean no chemical fertilizer or pesticide? No fertilizer or pesticide at all? There must be differences from farmer to farmer but in terms of the legal ‘Organic’ phrasing in UK shops, what does it mean? Must they be non-GM products? What does GM even mean? Where’s the boundary between Modified and Genetically Modified?

Firstly the term Organic in relation to farming or produce is a generic one. To sell your food as Organic you must be certified by an agency. The most well known of these bodies, in the UK, is The Soil Association.

It was quite a wild goosechase to get to that previous statement that seems so trivial. From Wikipedia I found DEFRA from where I (eventually!) found the right BusinessLink URL for Organic certification, which here in the UK, is defined by the European Union and regulated by DEFRA. You have to be certified by a Certification Body of which, in the UK, there are 9 approved bodies. The link to find this list took me back from businesslink to DEFRA again. But then each of these bodies has its own certification requirements – they may be very similar but they are not the same – and from this page you can only get an email address for some of these bodies – apparently they don’t all even have a website!

So what can I find out about their certification? After a bit of searching I found their information pack and downloaded the one appropriate to agricultural farming. Only problem is that there’s nothing in there about what you have to do, just contractual stuff and an application form. Eventually I downloaded a standards document which is the closest I can find to a set of instructions.

So what’s involved? For the most part it’s what you would expect. Genetically Modified Organisms and nanotechnology are absolute no-no’s. Crop rotation is required. Packaging has to be ‘Green’. But there is a lot of content about everything beyond the actual food itself. From managing hedgerows to protecting forests, from keeping uncultivated land for wildlife to maintaining and restoring old buildings. Of course there is a great deal of detail on managing the soil, from not doing any deep ploughing to only using natural and organic fertilisers.

There are exceptions to pretty much every rule but they generally say “Where not possible to use organic xxx you MAY…”. However the sheer number of exceptions listed for supplemental nutrients is shockingly large. It speaks about “Where Justified” and “Heavy Metal Analyses” and “With Approval” but there are TEN such revisions taking up several times more space in the document than the actual Rules. See section 4.8. This same pattern is repeated in section 4.11 regarding the use of pesticides.

It would take a biochemist to state whether the options available to Organic farmer for Fertiliser and Pesticide “where justified” are relatively harmless compared to what is regularly used on non-organic farms. And it would take a team of researchers and a Freedom of Information act to work out how much non-organic fertiliser and pesticide is being used in our supposedly organic food. The conclusion one must draw though from the sheer number of exceptions in these rules compared to the rest of the document is that the Soil Association is having to give in to farmers’ needs to keep productivity up.

Interestingly you cannot burn crop stubble which, as anyone can tell you, is a zero carbon activity, but which I thought was the best way to return lots of nutrients to the soil. When I reflect on that I suppose it is the best way to get some nutrients back into the soil quickly so you can replant the field for the very next season, but if you are using crop rotation letting the field lie fallow and then mowing/ploughing is probably better. At least you allow everything to break down that way rather than risk losing some of the nutrient content to oxidation.

Overall the intentions of these Organic Certifying Bodies is undoubtedly good and I really applaud the requirements concerning wildlife habitats, boundaries, buildings and all the ancillary stuff that isn’t the food itself. But, given my above points about the exceptions to the rules, I have serious doubts as to whether the average Organic food is any more ‘organic’ than food produced on a modern non-organic farm which simply uses sensible policies. Just recently the BBC ran a program on farming in Australia where by creating custom nutrient mixes based on each field’s requirements the farmers have seen an increase in productivity and a decrease in both volume and cost of fertilisers. In the same program the same farming consultant showed how he had created another additive which allowed the water that the irrigation system delivered to penetrate deeper into the soil resulting in stronger plants and less water used.

If the soil on your farm is just deficient in Manganese don’t you think it’s better to take your waste (which may well be ‘organic’) and process it in a factory to produce a Manganese product for you and other products for someone else, rather than just dumping a generic product with everything in it on your land? And do you think that plants grow differently depending on whether that Manganese is organic or synthetic? Do you think any other part of the eco-system that it may get into reacts differently based on its origin? If Manganese is harmful, say in the nearby river, then is it better to dump a small amount in the river from using a small amount of organic fertiliser or is it better to dump a tiny amount in the river from using the precise amount (large or small) of a modern, targeted, soil-penetrating, synthetic?

What I’m trying to get at here is that Science is a tool to be used. Without doubt in the past huge amounts of broad spectrum fertilisers have been dumped on fields simply because ‘they do the job’. However modern farming techniques use targeted fertilisation and pesticidal techniques. This is cheaper and results in the minimal amount of run-off from the fields to the rivers for the maximum crop yield. If I can create a targeted fertiliser that results in no run-off from your field but it happens to be synthetic and not organic would it not be the right thing to do to use that instead of the organic solution? Does it therefore not follow that a certifiably organic product may not have been produced in the most environmentally friendly way? And isn’t the real driver behind organic produce that of being Green?

Moving on, consider for a moment what a genetically modified organism is. The particular phrasing means that a scientist in a laboratory has specifically altered the gene sequence of an organism in order to change something about it. It may be that the change makes it glow in the dark, or have larger leaves, or be resistant to a parasite. It might even make the fruit of the plant produce a chemical which can be manipulated through the ingestion of another chemical to produce an immune reaction. This last point is salient. We know how to modify rice such that by prescribing a simple pill people will gain the same benefits as an anti-malarial injection – it’s been done with mice already – and it could save millions of lives. The conventional injection techniques do not reach the vast majority of people who need them because of the need to refrigerate them. I’ve been searching for the link to this article but sadly cannot find it – it seems to have been lost in the furore of on using modified mosquitos instead!

So are GMO’s evil? No. Could they be mis-used? Yes. Can you trust the companies that are going to produce these things? In general of course you can. They may backstab each other and stories about them forcing farmers to burn crops that have been contaminated with their patented GMO may be true, but ultimately they want to make money. And how do you make money? By selling a successful product to more and more consumers. If you damage or even kill your consumers you generally lose money, go bankrupt or go to prison. In addition I DO trust the scientists who do the actual ground work, the tests to see if there are any unintended side-effects; and I trust the government bodies who approve products for use.

But take away the word ‘Genetically’ and you’re still left with something ‘Modified’ and we’ve been modifying food since humans first stopped wandering nomadically and became a sedentary society at least as far back as 11,000 years ago, when, as the megafauna of North America declined, the Clovis people turned to cultivation of plants for an increasing amount of their diet. Naturally they re-cultivated the strongest and highest yielding plants and those with the most useful products. Within only a few hundred years they had created, by selective cultivation, plant breeds that could not survive without human intervention.

In the rather more recent past, from the 1950’s onwards, large-scale and intensive cross-breeding produced most of the strains of cereal crops that are grown around the world today. Even those grown on organic farms are Modified by the actions of the past. These breeds would not exist without human intervention in their genome, albeit through macroscopic manipulation. There is an Episode of Penn and Teller’s “Bullshit” which discusses this in some detail that I would highly recommend viewing. This “Green Revolution” was driven by Normal Borlaug who is often referred to as having saved 1 billion lives with his work.

I should also mention a program I watched on the BBC a few weeks ago on farming and specifically one farmer who had some wonderful (and organic) farming methods that had increased his yields, completely removed his need for fertiliser and reduced his waste products.

His cattle were confined to a relatively small tranche of a field at any time. There was plenty of room for them have no fear but he had parcelled his fields off into 30 or more smaller fields. They were kept in a given tranche for just a few days at a time and then moved to the next. The first result of this was that the cattle had changed their grazing style. Rather than pick and choose the best grass from a larger field they simply ate what was in front of them. It wasn’t that they had to eat the area bare to get enough to eat but rather as the farmer described it, the cattle knew they wouldn’t be able to eat that grass in the near future so they just grabbed whatever was nearest. This keeps the entire field area in a growth cycle rather than just the best bits of it. I assume that it beneficial for the field as nature’s abhorrence for a vacuum will surely increase the nutrient levels in those less luscious areas of the field if the plants require the nutrients to regrow. Additionally I assume that the cattle are better off for having a more varied diet.

The next step in the process is to move the cattle on to the next tranche and to introduce hens to the tranche the cattle have just left. The hens do several things. First they stamp and strut through the cow-pats, mixing it with the grass to form a high quality fertiliser. Secondly they feed on the parasites in the cow-pats. As a direct result of the latter the cattle have become entirely disease free and the farmer claimed that he had reduced his vet bills for the herd to zero.

The farmer had reduced his bills, improved the quality of his fields, increased the meat yield from the herd AND gained another source of income from the hen’s eggs whilst utilising the exact same space as he had previously. This is sustainable farming working brilliantly.

A second system the farmer had set up was to have a barn with rabbits in mesh cages, suspended above the floor. On the floor were more hens. The rabbits and hens both require a food input for this and additionally sawdust is scattered across the floor. The rabbits provide the farmer with meat and pelts and the hens mix the rabbit droppings with the sawdust to make fertiliser that can be sold, as well as laying eggs. The farmer makes a significant profit and has no waste products.

These are the kinds of techniques that we need to be encouraging. An organic certificate does not ensure that these kinds of approaches with minimal inputs (particularly fertilisers and pesticides which are the pollutants we really need to cut down on) and maximal outputs are being used. But neither does not having said certificate mean that methods like this are not being used.

My first search was for ‘Organic farming pros and cons’ and my first link was to this hugely long domain name. As I started reading it I thought it seemed quite rational. The page is even titled ‘Advantages AND disadvantages of…’. However by a third of the way down the page I realised something was awry. Perhaps you’ll notice that there are no links to any research or that there are lots of links to books for you to buy.

The graph of cancer rates fails to correct for anything except life expectancy so it remains a graph showing the impact of everything else on cancer rates. Everything else and Exposure to toxic chemicals are not the same.

And lastly the Disadvantages section claims all perceived disadvantages to be advantages or at least desirable.

My second search result led me to Buzzle.com. Sadly this website falls down on its homepage with the bold statement that:

Organic Farming is a technique used in farming without the use of any chemicals or synthetics.

As we already know that is incorrect. Synthetics are allowed.

Aim of organic farming is to produce crops which have the highest nutritional values with least impact on nature.

We have yet to address this issue. We will shortly!

Crop rotation, green manure, use of natural fertilizers and biological pest control form the crux of organic farming. It is a proactive ecology management strategy. This strategy enhances the fertility of the soil, prevents soil erosion and at the same time protects the humans and animal kingdom from the side-effects of chemicals and synthetics.

Crop rotation does enhance soil fertility by giving it time to recover between periods of intensive use. However many non-organic farmers do this anyway as purely sustainable, green and economic sense. Soil erosion is caused by deep ploughing – another thing that most farmers do not do anymore.

Organically grown food tastes better too.

We haven’t addressed this yet but no evidence is offered by the site.

The overall cost of cultivating the crops reduces as the farmers use green manure or worm farming to replenish the lost nutrients of the soil.

Kind of… All farmers will re-use their own ‘organic’ waste products if it is the appropriate source of nutrients for their fields. However if the soil is deficient in something specific the most effective, sustainable and cheapest solution is a narrow-spectrum fertiliser which may or may not be organic.

The life of organically grown plants is longer than the plants cultivated by traditional methods.

A plant only grows the way it is genetically programmed to grow. It matters not what nature of external forces acted on it. The lifespan of a given species will always be the same with the same inputs – whatever their source.

Organically grown crop is more drought tolerant.

Totally incorrect. GMO crops are vastly more drought tolerant than unmodified versions of crops. The gene that makes them so came from an existing crop of course. Nature provided it and we copied it.

And the site continues to be inaccurate when it comes to the disadvantages of Organic farming, although I give it a little credit for mentioning that there are some:

The first disadvantage of organic farming is low productivity. With the highly developed chemicals and machinery, the farmer is able to multiply his harvest manifold times. The organic farmers use the cultivation method as opposed to drilling method used by the traditional farmers. The cultivated soil is prone to wind and water erosion. The traditional farmers opine that direct drilling does not cause any disharmony in the soil structure.

Organic farming uses machinery too you know!? Traditional farming also eschews deep ploughing because of the problems it causes with the soil.

The next argument, which goes against organic farming, is that the organically produced food is expensive. The cost is very often 50-100 percent more than the traditional food.

This doesn’t have to be the case. If you take the examples above of the farmer with cattle/hens or rabbits/hens he was able to produce more for less. By being sustainable your costs will always be lower and by manipulating synergies you can increase your yields. But sustainability does not go hand in hand with the presence or lack of an organic certificate. Being sustainable is an entirely independant call. Yes there will (always?) be some farmers willing to dump vast amounts of fertiliser on their land to gain a short term productivity that cannot be rivaled and to make a small margin of profit on a lot of product. But hopefully we can make them see sense.

The other valid argument is that organic food is not always available. There is a reason behind that. The organic farmers grow crops in accordance to the season. Neither do they artificially grow any crop nor do they extend the life of the plant or use chemicals, synthetics or pesticides. Therefore, oranges will be found only in winters and mangoes only in summer. Looking at it from the health benefits point of view, there is no doubt that you will benefit if you eat a particular food item, when it is actually in season.

There’s no reason you can’t create organic food out of season. I don’t recall anything from the Soil Association’s guidelines that preclude the use of UV Lights. I admit it’s fairly unlikely that an organic farmer would use them but either way there’s nothing unsustainable about the poly-tunnels in The Netherlands that produce an enormous proportion of the UK’s vegetables on a tiny amount of land. As a sealed system the ‘run-off’ could be collected and processed to prevent any pollution which would in fact be more sustainable and Green than anything else.

The last statement about benefits of eating foods in season just leaves me bemused. Can anyone think of any reason why anyone would even put this forward as a rational hypothesis?

Anyway, enough of quoting from random websites. I have to assume that, somewhere out there, there exist equally biased sources on information on the other side of the fence. I haven’t found one yet but they must exist. If someone hasn’t come up with it already I announce the law that ‘If it can be perceived of then it exists on the internet’, which is probably analogous to infinite monkeys and typewriters.

I still need to tackle the issue of whether organic produce tastes better.

My first search took me to TheNibble.com, a gourmet food website. In a non-scientific test 11 products were tested and:

Organic was the clear winner in one and tied in five others.

What she fails to mention is that the conventional food won in two of the remaining 5 categories (!!!) with the last three being described as ‘NONE’. I think this tied-but-not-tied result was where both products were just horrible.

So that’s twice as many wins for conventional food as for organic (which I can happily state about this non-scientific test).

You could also check out another episode of Bullshit which I would trust as reasonably good testing. No double-blinding but I don’t think Penn has anything to gain by fudging his results. 71% preferred non-organic products. And 90% (9/10) people were tricked into thinking that one half of a regular banana was in fact half of an organic banana. Actually this video excerpt from the same episode puts across most of what I’m writing about in the kind of manner I would normally like to put it across!

What remains to be answered? Whether or not Organic Farming could be used to feed the entire world…

I could tell you the answer is No. I could point you to the mathematics and you might respond that it’s too abstract. You might argue about crops we could use in areas we don’t currently cultivate. We could go back and forth for ever. So let’s instead ask the one man who probably ought to know, who since the 1930’s has been working on increasing crop yields around the world and feeding the starving, Norman Borlaug, in his 2000 interview with Reason Magazine:

This shouldn’t even be a debate. Even if you could use all the organic material that you have–the animal manures, the human waste, the plant residues–and get them back on the soil, you couldn’t feed more than 4 billion people. In addition, if all agriculture were organic, you would have to increase cropland area dramatically, spreading out into marginal areas and cutting down millions of acres of forests.

At the present time, approximately 80 million tons of nitrogen nutrients are utilized each year. If you tried to produce this nitrogen organically, you would require an additional 5 or 6 billion head of cattle to supply the manure. How much wild land would you have to sacrifice just to produce the forage for these cows? There’s a lot of nonsense going on here.

If people want to believe that the organic food has better nutritive value, it’s up to them to make that foolish decision. But there’s absolutely no research that shows that organic foods provide better nutrition. As far as plants are concerned, they can’t tell whether that nitrate ion comes from artificial chemicals or from decomposed organic matter. If some consumers believe that it’s better from the point of view of their health to have organic food, God bless them. Let them buy it. Let them pay a bit more. It’s a free society. But don’t tell the world that we can feed the present population without chemical fertilizer. That’s when this misinformation becomes destructive.

Since this has been such a long article, let me summarise:

1. Is Organic Farming is better for the environment?

No. Modern scientific techniques that are not necessarily compatible with the Organic Certification result in less pollution.

2. Does Organic Food taste better?
C. Organic produce is no better in taste or nutrition?

While I haven’t found any broad double-blind scientific tests, what evidence does exist is that people assume organic tastes better because they are told that it does. Ultimately a food product consists of exactly what it is genetically programmed to consist of and it doesn’t matter one iota where the elements come from to make it and therefore the nutritional content is the same.

A. Organic Farming’s output is sufficiently lower than non-Organic farming that we could not feed everyone if we all adopted it?

True. I have mentioned some methods which can increase yields for some food products but they would equally apply to non-organic farming and in the arena of crop yields which are the most important source of the world’s nutrition I bow to Mr Borlaug.

B. Organic Farming in general MAY not be the same thing as sustainable farming and non-organic farming practices MAY be sustainable?

True. While the aims of the organic movement to provide sustainability are noble this is not their core aim. Green and Organic are NOT the same as Sustainable. Both Organic and Traditional Farming can be sustainable but organic farmers are not able to use many of the best scientific techniques and products to improve their yields and reduce their pollution.

Specifically here for the long term effects.

Just goes to show how careful one needs to be even when someone has already done the research… reading that reduced Sodium wasn’t effective made me think that reduced Salt wasn’t effective until I had a really good look through their Hypertension group’s work.

I was expecting to find a negative result here but the review is not quite so clear cut. One brand, Rotta, appears to have a statistically significant benefit over and above the placebo.

Except in certain groups of people (e.g. marathon runners and sub-arctic soldiers!) Vitamin C does not provide any protection from catching a cold. It does help to reduce the length of the symptoms in children but only by 8%, which for the average cold would be half a day or so?

I didn’t go looking for this one, it found me. Surprisingly, given how many doctors I know have recommended it, this diet change is of limited effectiveness and there is not enough evidence addressing any possible long term effects (positive or negative).

This was the study I was most interested in finding as there is SO much in the media about super-foods and high-in-antioxidant foods. The study clearly shows no benefit. There is even evidence that some of the supplements, such as Vitamin A or beta-caroten, may DECREASE your life expectancy.

I need to find a link to this one particular study – and bear in mind it is only one study not a large analysis like the Cochrane one above – but there was a trial of beta-carotene in a group of patients at high risk of cancer. It had to be abandoned after a few years because the cancer rates in the group receving beta-carotene were 40% higher than those in the control group and mortality rates for all other non-cancer related causes were up 15%. Just one study as I said but I highly doubt anyone’s going to repeat it to see if it was a statistical anomaly!

Anyway, if you’re wondering if the health claims in the media are correct, or you have any concerns about medical treatments from your Doctor, head on over to cochrane.org/ and have a look around.

A great Atheist Blog with some really interesting commentary on he Bible. Some very similar points to my own articles on Free Will (and better written!): Daylight Atheism

Chris Brown’s assault on Rihanna is really God showing his goodness says Chris’s mum: Friendly Atheist

First let me make it clear that the laws of Quantum Mechanics, as far as science has pushed to date, are agreed upon by those Academics working in the field. Of course papers are published all the time and experiments done to further refine the theories or fill in areas that are still unknown but there are no schisms in the field of QCD. However there are somewhat philosophical disagreements on how one can best interpret the results of experiment that I described in the previous post about the Young’s Double Slit experiment. There is no, known, way to test which of these interpretations is correct which is why they are no more than philosophical in nature and it’s really personal choice between them.

So, to return to Young’s Double Slit Experiment and my closing questions in Part II. What constitutes a sensor that collapses the wave function?

I often wonder, why don’t the atoms and molecules in the air the light passes through constitute a sensor? I think the answer is that atoms are actually so empty that only the tiniest fraction of photons would be absorbed and thereby ‘recorded’. Of this tiny portion only another tiny portion would be re-emitted in the right directions to travel through the two slits and so form a deterministic pattern on the screen, which would barely register compared to those photons that would pass through undetected to form the probabilistic interference pattern.

So what are these interpretations of Quantum Mechanics I have mentioned? From the very birth of Quantum Mechanics Physicists have developed different ways to understand the Wave Function and its Collapse. The disagreements don’t affect how the Physics work but they are most interesting.

One of the best known schools of thought is the Copenhagen Interpretation (CI). It maintains that the Wave Function is not real but is purely a tool for computation. In the Double Slit experiment this interpretation would say that light (indeed everything) is neither a particle or a wave but that any given experiment can show either wave-like or particle-like behaviour but never both. In terms of what constitutes an observer anything will do. The role of the observer is simply to register and turn the probabilistic nature of the unknown into certainties.

Among those who subscribe to this interpretation of QM there are plenty of subtle variations on the theme, as determined by the individual’s bent towards positivism or realism. If you haven’t guessed by now I’m the latter. There are some who one might call purists who would say that if something is not being observed then it does not exist. There are even some who claim that it takes a consciousness to collapse the Wave Function but I disregard this as nonsense… is the Moon not there if everyone looks away? And there are those who would say that although something might not be being observed we can still make informed guesses about them. But all of them would agree that the Wave Function is the complete description of a system and that it does collapse on observation.

I would agree with the latter stance but I have often thought that it should be very hard for something not to be observed. Everything has some kind of field – commonly gravitational and/or electromagnetic. It may be tiny but it has to be registered by everything else in the universe at all times! Of course a criticism of my own argument there is that the Double Slit experiment could not produce an interference pattern if everything was always being observed in some way through the interaction of the forces. Even photons are bent by gravity, but perhaps, just perhaps, if a photon is just following the curvature of space time and is not being absorbed by anything we can truly consider it ‘unobserved’ and it can pass through both slits as a wave? The truth must be subtle and I believe we are all far too limited in our ability to comprehend the Quantum world. Entities like the photon or electron are not particles and they are not waves. They behave in ways that resemble these familiar macroscopic  properties at different times but they aren’t either.

Famously Einstein criticised CI by saying “He [God] does not play dice”. He was very opposed to the idea that nature was described by probability and not by deterministic events. This remark is often latched onto by Theists who assume this meant Einstein was therefore a Theist himself but if you read his body of work you’ll find an Agnostic, possibly Atheist, with a way of writing that suggests a Pantheistic liberalism in interchanging the concept of ‘God’ with the concept of the ‘Universe’.

Einstein himself preferred the Ensemble or Statistical Interpretation of QM. Essentially it states that the Wave Function represents the probabilities of different outcomes in an ensemble of like systems and that a single system within that ensemble has only one state. Therefore the Wave Function in a single system never collapses and everything is Deterministic in a single system, regardless of whether it is known or not. So the Wave Function only means anything if we repeat an experiment many times. As far as I can determine though this interpretation is incapable of rationalising the Double Slit experiment with a single photon interfering with itself.

Flying in the face of CI are the Many Worlds models. The many variations on this theme all have one thing in common, which they share with the Ensemble model, that there is no Wave Function collapse. Instead they state that every possible outcome of every event exists in its own world or history. In popular literature these are often called Parallel Universes but one must remember that one has to exist for every possible quantum state of every possible quantum event since, and including the Big Bang. The number of such universes is uncountable, although not infinite.

There are many variations on this theory too but the important theme of them all is that we never collapse a Wave Function. On observation we merely discover which possible Universe we are in. Something called Quantum Decoherence. Most importantly this completely removes the need for an observer which causes so many paradoxes in CI. The classic example is Schroedinger’s Cat in which a cat in a box may be dead or may be alive based on an unknown radioactive event. In CI the cat is in some super-state of being both dead and alive until we observe and find out. In Many Worlds models the cat is definitely dead or alive, one Universe or History exists in which each is true. We may not know until we open the box which we are in but we are in one or the other.

Some of the variations on this theme attempt to explain the single-photon interference by stating that the many universes interfere with each other. Those that are closest in their overall quantum state interfere with each other more strongly than those which differ wildly. So the universe with the photon traveling through slot one interferes strongly with the one in which it travels through slot two but where everything else is identical, but interferes very weakly with a completely dissimilar universe.

This Wiki page has a good overview of the many other interpretations of QM, some of which are gaining traction in the Physics community.

A very good read for understanding what these different views are more deeply about is David Deutsch’s Fabric of Reality. He explains positivsm, realism and so on in great depth. I would highly recommend it but please bear in mind that whilst his arguments are compelling he is an ardent advocate of a Many World’s interpretation of QM and so his own personal bias comes to bear.

More soon!