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Show THE DAILY UTAH CHRONICLE THE CHRONICLE'S VIEW Tuition Hike Hurts t Ai so Helps . logical, somehow reconfirming the suspicion that the administration is all too willing to please the state's technophilic governor and Legislature who eyes science majors engineering students in particular as if each were a fecund cash cow. But President Machen's right. And kudos to the man for recognizing that, at this point on our cybernetic timeline, Web services are essential to the efficacy of the univer- financial aid and campus with disabilities received less money than initially proposed, but that's one of the only real surprises to emerge from this most recent legislative session. By now tuition increases almost seem obligatory: they're compulsory fiscal adjustments most students have learned to expect. ' Even President J. Bernard Machen's announcement yesterday that he's proposing to bump up tuition another 3 percentage points was as predictable as the Student on '' ' well-maintain- ed sity. It's alarming to consider that without the proposed allocation, funding for these ;Web service employees is really quite shaky. In fact, most of their paychecks are currently scooped from U deficit funds. With some imaginative planning, perhaps this newly invigorated cadre of. Web masters can add features to the U's network that will better serve the stu- lake effect. So the real issue of course is . determining where this new money is to be allocated'. Machen wants to put 1.5 percent of it toward the university's Web services. The new funding would be channeled into raises for staff members who maintain d Web University of ' sites and -' techninew Web hiring Utah-relate- LETTER . dent Feasible improvements might include the conducting of ail financial aid transactions over the Web. Or perhaps technicians could make it possible for students to pay tuition at their own comput- cians. To many, such a proposal reads as a smack against a truly liberal education at a university that often seems to ignore the humanities and turn its attention toward seemingly more practi-- , cal, research-base- d departments. It may be perceived as yet another manifestation of the university's penchant for throwing money to all things techno ers. So while tuition increases are never pleasant things, it's nice to see that, for now, the dollars may' be going to the right place. - TO THE EDITOR Reinforcing an Image of Illegitimacy Editor: As a strong advocate for giving students an effective and substantial voice in university governance, I find the frequent reports about defaced and vandalized election materials to be utterly disappointing. Instead, this process should have been focused on electing articulate student representatives who come from a wide range of social and cultural backgrounds. I have experience with student governance at two universities in Ohio, and I can safely say that these crude and immature acts of vandalism never occurred during the course of campaigning at these schools. Even when campaigns took a provocative and even highly controversial turn, students resisted this sort of sophomoric temptation. And candidates did a good job of making sure their legions of supporters avoided such activities as well. For those who decided to deface posters, thank you for helping remove those precious shreds of legitimacy from your student government. You clearly demonstrate that students at the University of Utah apparently are not ready to participate with the voice they really should see PiTY page 6 Unsigned editorials reflect the majority opinion of The Daily Utah Chronicle Editorial Board. Editorial columns and Setters to the editor are strictly the opinions of on the Opinion Page is one based on vigorous debate, while at the same time demanding tolerance and respect. Material defamatory to an Individual or group because of race, ethnic background, gender, appearance or sexus! orientation will be edited or will not be published the author. The forum created Being Wrong Is Part of Path to Being Right function. But no one in the field is seriously proposing that function, and reasonably so; despite the advertisements in the pages of Celebrity Skin, there is no scientific evidence for pheromones that will attract human CARLOS PONCE Chronicle Opinion Columnist recent article in the Journal of Anatomy presents evidence for the existence of a vomeronasal organ in chimpanzees. In addition to the significant data, I would like to think that article also brings to all aspiring scientists a reminder, a small highlight of a feature that distinguishes science from other human efforts: At one point or another you are going to be wrong. How good a scientist you will be depends partly on your ability to make peace with this A fact. First, let me set the scene: Part of the scientific community has been sharply divided in the past 10 years by the theory that humans may possess a vomeronasal organ, or VNO. The VNO is an accessory olfactory organ, very prominent in species like rats and hamsters, which mediates very relevant social behaviors: If you remove the VNO ft cm a hamster, for example, the poor thin;: will nn mate. Put dimply, the VNO respo ds to pheromones. vc a lot And m oilier species, pheromones to do with se. The presence of a 'NO in humans might suggest, by analogy . similar 1 Cl- - females to your comic-boo- k den. The divisive issue is simply whether humans have functioning VNOs or not. The proponents of the existence of a human VNO preneurons that respond sent olfactory-lik- e to molecules we cannot smell, for example. The detractors of the human VNO have pointed out some difficulties with the theory: Why hasn't anyone found a neural pathway from this organ to the brain? Why don't chimpanzees and gorillas, our closest relatives, possess a VNO? Why can't we find it in all human noses? A young and controversial field creates strong positions for the researchers involved, and these positions get filled rather quickly. But when theories make different predictions, not all the theories can be correct. By stating that chimpanzees do have VNOs, January's Journal of Anatomy has provided more support for the theory that the human VNO exists. But there is room for future developments that might tilt the scales either way. The question for the fledgling scientist is this, then: How easily could you drop your beliefs given great evidence toward their disproof? Will you grow old fervently clutching at your ideas because you really like them? Because they are aesthetically pleasing to you? Because they are yours? Because you invested your intellectual value in them? Because figures of authority told you to believe? The history cf the world is infested with 70NICLE OPINION EDITOR SCOTT LEWIS delusion. There is great worth in intellectual enterprises that will remind you, very often, of this fact. The appeal of the scientific method is its straightforward acknowledgment of this weakness: The human tendency is to err, and our only hope is to watch each other's backs. When I miss, tell me. When I misunderstand, help me understand. I will do the same for you. You are going to be wrong sometimes. That is why scientific results are presented with error bars, those devices measuring doubt that always accompany findings. The only wrong thing is to ignore reason because the alternative doesn't feel good. They are acknowledgments, confessions of imperfection: Look, this is what I found, I may be wrong. I may be wrong by this much. If I missed, tell me. If I misunderstood, help me understand. The many years one invests in a theory would not go to waste in the event of disproof, not if it was a very good question to pursue in the first place (and ideally, if the course of work provided new starting points of research). What one should hate is to never find out the truth, to grow old clutching at old beliefs because they seemed really, really cool. Or worse yet, to hold on to a theory that has been disproved, to reject reason because it is hard to accept that one has been wrong for the past LETTERSCHRONICLE.UTAH.EDU few years. The cheap example of this is cold fusion. There is nothing wrong with making a mistake, folks. The only wrong thing is to ignore reason because the alternative doesn't feel good. Aspiring scientists are fortunate to expand brain glucose in matters that sooner or later will have a resolution. The matters that occupy them are framed so that they will have an experimental outcome; these researchers have the comfort of taking positions in a problem and waiting for evidence to make the decision. Not everyone is so lucky. But, ironically enough, confidence seems to increase in discussions outside of science. That should bother people. How could one write comfortably about the morality of homosexuality, for example, when the definition of "morality" is 'so vague and parochial? How can someone take an unmovable position on an untestable subject? If a scientist, basking in the luxury of falsifiability, still finds it necessary to exercise caution in intellectual matters, how could the political commentator do anything less? The truth about any scientific proposition, like the one about VNO, is less important than one's ability to accept the outcome. Dark ages come by more often because of the suppression, not lack, of information. My advice to fellow fledgling scientists? We are descendants of the flat Earth, people. But, for our sake, let us always consider the possibility of a round Earth just in case. Carlos at: welcomes feedback cponccchronicle.utah.edu or send a letter to the editor to: lettcrs(a)chronicIe.utah.edu. 581-704- 1 |