All the Fun of the Unfair

As part of the Brighton Science Festival, Richard Robinson has been looking into the astonishing world of fairness.

It seems every living thing has a sense of fairness. That hardly seems possible, yet it appears a ‘fairness meter’ resides in some most unlikely places. Leguminous plants, for instance: the Brussels sprout ‘fixes’ nitrogen from the atmosphere… well actually the plant doesn’t do the fixing, it has nodules on its roots which house colonies of Rhizobia bacteria. They do the fixing, pass the product up to the plant and receive food in return. It’s a reciprocal relationship, or ‘symbiosis’, which suits both species. Sometimes a mutant strain of bacteria emerges in a nodule though – one which doesn’t fix nitrogen. Not having to work for a living leaves these mutants with a lot of spare time and spare energy, which they use in making babies. Their babies quickly overwhelm the nodule, which becomes completely indolent, while still taking the plant’s food contributions. Happy times for the nodule! But the plant eventually works out what has happened, and cuts off the food supply to the nodule.

So do we conclude that the plant has a sense of fairness? It certainly behaves as if it does, and we can see that in more complicated life forms such as animals the simple mechanism of the plant can evolve layers of instinctive and learned behaviour to produce the same result. In the world of human experience we see ‘fairness’ bandied about a lot, among children vying for attention, among employees in the workplace and among politicians world-wide.

‘All the Fun of the Unfair’, on Sunday March 2nd, is an afternoon-long (12.30 – 5.30 - Sallis Benney Theatre, Grand Parade BN2 0JY) exploration of fairness seen from the scientific perspective – statistical, economical, biological and evolutionary. Fairness, or something like it, can be seen in humans, capuchin monkeys, and even in bacteria. Guests include Richard Wilkinson, author of the best selling book on happiness, the Sprirt Level, also Paul Moore, the HBOS whistleblower, who first exposed unfair practices among bankers, and Caroline Lucas MR, who will take a searching look at the way Parliament tackles the issue

We hope to be fairly comprehensive and comprehensively fair.

For more information visit: http://www.brightonscience.com/2014/

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