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2 January 2008
From Peter Sutton
May I suggest some additional causes for the malaise in science in schools (1 December 2007, p 23) ? Despite today's teenage dependence on iPods, cellphones, microwaves, laptops, lenses, shades, and despite unprecedented health, food security, cheap travel, cheap clothes and many, many other products of science, our teenagers do not have any respect for …
2 January 2008
From David Kent
The tenets of Kate Douglas's article on the relationship between the conscious and subconscious mind (1 December 2007, p 42) have been in use for some time by creative designers, particularly in engineering. When I was an aero engineer, my technique was to set out a design requirement, with limits and parameters, kick it around …
2 January 2008
From Adam Sargant
Feedback's mention of unusual licence conditions for free software (3 November 2007) reminded me of "careware" such as Paul Lutus's HTML-editing program Arachnophilia. The "buyer" gets something of value in exchange for something the "seller" wants – which is in general "anything except money". Lutus, for example, writes: "Here is a payment I will accept …
2 January 2008
From Paula Caplan
When Jamie Wilson suggests that the way to "validate" war veterans' experiences is by placing a psychiatric label on them (8 December 2007, p 24) , he exemplifies the way society now medicalises, or "psychiatrises", virtually everything. Contrary to his implication, my article (17 November 2007, p 56) did not suggest that people who are …
2 January 2008
From Paul Branthwaite, Bench International
In her article on the high price of cancer drugs, Rachel Nowak uses emotive phrases like "inflated prices" and "most profitable industry" and "patients denied drugs" (1 December 2007, p 8) . New biological drugs are costly, largely because they are really, truly, deeply more expensive to research and manufacture than previous therapies. And other …
2 January 2008
From John Williams, Head of Science, Bishop's Stortford College
Attitudes at this school are very different to the glum picture of school science painted by Michael Reiss (1 December 2007, p 23) . Pupils enjoy science and a quarter of our 16 to 18-year-olds choose to study physics. We have our own Science Action Centre, a smaller version of the London Science Museum's Launchpad …
2 January 2008
From Clay Ogg
While cutting down rainforests to grow palm oil for biofuels may constitute "madness" (1 December 2007, p 50) , burning other vegetable oils is no more sane, nor less damaging to Indonesia's rainforests. Indonesia is expected to increase its palm oil production by more than half over the next 10 years. This is driven, in …
2 January 2008
From Andrew Smyth
You report Igor Suslov saying that "humour is the brain's way of dealing with errors" (24 November 2007, p 6) . The "false alarm" theory of laughter proposed by V. S. Ramachandran in 1996 suggests that people laugh to communicate that some misperceived event is harmless: so when an object misidentified as a snake is …
2 January 2008
From George Taylor
You conclude that "the idea that science can simply replace religion in the public consciousness is not only fanciful, it's also bad for science" (10 November 2007, p 3) . Mary Midgley strongly concurs, and from an epistemological point of view her argument cannot be faulted (1 December 2007, p 24) . Other correspondents who …
2 January 2008
• It is not certain that the extra inertia of a heavier, humid baseball (as compared with a dry baseball) counters its slower speed as it leaves the bat, as we suggested (15 December 2007, p 15) .
2 January 2008
From Alan Potter
I've never written a thesis. I've never pretended to create cold fusion. Even with your help, I still don't understand string theory. I don't have a PhD (I don't even have an A-level). I will never have another amusing thing to send to you, and in any case this letter will probably disappear into a …
2 January 2008
From James Wright
Psychoanalysis is, Kate Douglas says, "now discredited" (1 December 2007, p 42) . I hardly think this is fair. Psychoanalysis created a revolution in the way people view themselves. Freud's cousin Edward Bernays applied its principles to business, creating both an economic boom and the public relations profession. Psychoanalysis may deal with phenomena which cannot …
2 January 2008
From James Wilson
James Love's proposal to replace patent protection for new drugs with prize money (10 November 2007, p 24) seems to have a fatal flaw. What happens when an innovative drug to tackle a specified illness enters a market – and takes the prize money such a breakthrough commands – but then, some years later, the …
Issue no. 2637 published 5 January 2008
