Letters archive

You report that bird species are hopping on and off the critically endangered species list due to changes in habitat (16 May, p 6) . Does that make change good or bad? I thought that environmental change kick-starts evolution, so it must be good, right? Yet environmentalists behave as if the opposite were true: every …

Evolution is not a theory but an established law, according to a quote in your Viewfinder section (2 May, p 23) . Scientists' use of the term "theory", it is suggested, inadvertently helps creationists' argue their case. Before we can even consider the merits of this line of reasoning, we need agreed definitions of "fact", …

The potential benefits of spite reported by John Whitfield would not have surprised an Athenian citizen from the 5th century BC (16 May, p 42) . In 458 BC, the playwright Aeschylus produced his Oresteia trilogy, in the final part of which the avenging Furies are confronted by the goddess Athena. She persuades them to …

The magnetic monopole virtual particles that you report (9 May, p 28) are, of course, no more the real thing than holes in a semiconductor crystal are positrons. Admittedly, in the absence of the real thing, the virtual particle can give some idea of a monopole's behaviour, but no more than this. If real monopole …

The idea of a multiverse is gaining respectability (2 May, p 35) , but while it explains why physical constants have their observed values, it still provides us with no means to predict them from first principles. Since we can imagine other universes, each with completely different physics, the difficult questions have merely been put …

Valerie Yule suggests that things should be made to last and be repaired (16 May, p 26) . It's an admirable thought but not realistic. Take the humble PC. True you can take one apart and plug in new circuit boards easily enough. However, as technology moves rapidly forward, today's high-speed technological wonder soon becomes …

I hope Chris Mooney is correct in his assessment that Barack Obama will help make intellectualism a permanent value in the US (9 May, p 22) , but I doubt he is. I have taught evolution as part of my geology courses for over 40 years and have come to be very pessimistic about American …

You report on a facial-recognition system that can identify from mouth movements alone the distinctive patterns characteristic of particular languages (25 April, p 17) . Skilled English lip-readers are aware of such differences even within the one language we share. I had a deaf English student who attended various lectures at college, including classes delivered …

Feedback applied its arithmetic talents to the premise that continual use of Dettol antibacterial cleaner would select one resistant bacterium in 1000, and that this would lead to astounding numbers of resistant bugs (2 May) . An earlier article on insecticide use asserted that fast-acting pesticides give "any insect that resists them an enormous competitive …

Linda Geddes asks for evidence of how much a restful atmosphere contributes to healing, stating this is "something health chiefs are sure to demand before making changes in our hospitals" (9 May, p 45) . I suspect that Geddes is under 40 years of age, as hospitals have already changed in ways that make them …

One of the methods that Paul Marks suggests airports might employ to stem the spread of pandemic diseases is a "cough detector" (23 May, p 18) . This would be an excellent addition to concert halls and opera houses – finding the persistent coughers could activate a range of counter-measures benefiting the rest of the …

• We did a little too much colouring-in on the map showing the spread of dengue (30 May, p 38) . It hasn't spread to New Zealand. • The DOI for the research on swine flu published in The Journal of the American Medical Association should have been : 10.1001/jama.298.6.644 (9 May, p 4) .