Dash for trash

Where is the evidence of super-abundance and "frenzied energy" in the figures quoted by David Cannadine? Do they not simply indicate that while the historians who actually did publish in 1989 averaged 1.14 publications each, by 1997 this annual average output was an even less "prodigious" 1.115?

Could my delay in re-entering British academia be because, since gaining my history doctorate in 1995, I have maintained an annual publications average of four? Is there hope of achieving my personal target figure of five now that I have learnt that sliced salami is produced by battery chickens?

And, more to the point, do leading-edge scientists warp the web woofing over whether their ground-breaking publications are accessible to "the general public and undergraduates"? Job offers on a hand-woven postcard, please.

M. A. Katritzky

Wingate Scholar, 1998-99

Sutton Courtenay, Oxon