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22 July 2009
From Frank Jackson, World Disarmament Campaign
John Horgan reports the welcome but unsurprising finding that war is not an inevitable result of human nature (4 July, p 38) . I have argued this throughout my 60 years of peace campaigning. Humans are complex beings: aggressive and conciliatory; competitive and cooperative; individualistic and socially minded; but not killers by nature. The psychological …
22 July 2009
From Patrick Davey
Martin de Smet reports that malaria in Cambodia is developing resistance to artemisinins (20 June, p 22) . I lived in Uganda for four years, and saw the impact of malaria there. It is clear that if resistance becomes widespread it will be a death sentence for many people. In Uganda we grew artemesia and …
22 July 2009
From Olaf Lipinski
I was not as surprised as your reporter at the correlation between drinking alcohol and scores on memory tests taken by senior citizens (4 July, p 14) . The question is, where is the alcohol consumed – is it drunk alone or with company? I expect that most seniors drink while at the pub or …
22 July 2009
From Bill Wilson, Member of the Scottish Parliament
Debora MacKenzie's article gives the impression that the UK has a uniform flu-testing strategy that was likely to miss many cases of transmission within communities (23 May, p 10) . This is not the case: Scotland has its own health policy. The First Minister assured me last month that Scotland is at the forefront of …
22 July 2009
From Peter Brugger, Department of Neurology, University Hospital Zurich
Your letters pages have been replete with claims of priority for the experimental induction of out-of-body experiences ( 11 April, p 22 and 6 June, p 26 ). None of these predates George Malcolm Stratton's 1899 report of carrying a mirror device on his shoulders for several days which produced an image of his walking …
22 July 2009
From Robert Morley
New Scientist clearly does not espouse Bjørn Lomborg's Viewfinder soundbite when he calls for "a more reasoned, more constructive, and less frightening dialogue" on global warming (27 June, p 25). The following week's front page headline screamed: "It's worse than we thought" ( 4 July ).
22 July 2009
From Andrew Lee, Editor, The Engineer
Diego Gambetta and Steffen Hertog (13 June, p 26) suggest that in the psyche of engineers lurks something that makes them more predisposed to terrorism than doctors, linguists, historians, or even sociologists. Even if we accept their claim that engineering graduates are over-represented in the ranks of violent radicals from the Islamic world, it's quite …
22 July 2009
From Paul Branthwaite
Viewfinder reported that one-in-three kids thinks the Earth will cease to exist before they grow up (27 June, p 25) . I remember the same feelings when I was a teenager, during the ever-present threat of nuclear holocaust. My greatest fear was that it would all kick off before I had the chance to race …
22 July 2009
From James Logan
Richard Wiseman claims to have proved that remote viewing does not work ( 13 June, p 6 and p 23 ). Surely all he has proved is that he personally cannot send images telepathically. It could be that you need telepaths at both ends of the attempted transfer. He should repeat the experiment using a …
22 July 2009
• Marie Curie was alive between 1867 and 1934, not 1854 and 1923 as we stated (4 July, p 23) . • Laurie Dizney and others reported their findings on the spread of infection in mice in Emerging Infectious Diseases (4 July, p 12) . • The name of the Yale University anthropologist mentioned in …
Issue no. 2718 published 25 July 2009
