Letters archive

David Rand and Martin Nowak discuss the use of the public goods game – a financial game that tests self-interest versus social responsibility – to gain insights into collaborative group behaviour in the context of human impact on the environment (14 November 2009, p 28) . The winner of the 2009 Nobel memorial prize for …

In your editorial on an oil from soybean genetically modified to produce essential fatty acids, you state: "Created by Monsanto, the soybean is a far cry from just about everything that the industry has thrown at us so far: modified crops benefiting no one but seed companies and farmers" (31 October 2009, p 5) . …

Michael Hanlon paints a bleak picture for the future of human exploration of the solar system (21 November 2009, p 28) . His hopes might be bolstered by considering the ambitions of countries other than the United States: from today's perspective it seems likely that the next flag on the moon will be Indian or …

Stuart Clark's opinion piece on how to treat the data set from the big bang's echo relates that a group of astronomers has suggested drip-feeding the data to researchers so that they can use some to create their models, and refine them with subsequent data (5 December 2009, p 26) . This baffles me. Surely …

Any funding source, government or private, can co-opt research to its own agenda. Stuart Parkinson and Chris Langley claim that the recommendations of their organisation, Scientists for Global Responsibility (SGR), could remedy this problem through new processes of transparency and accountability (7 November 2009, p 32) , but their article fails to detail how these …

In their article on discredited dinosaur hunter Nate Murphy, Jeff Hecht and Joe Iacuzzo state that: "for decades out-of-state palaeontologists had been coming to Montana to plunder its dinosaur fossils" (12 December 2009, p 42) . This is unfair: there was neither the means nor motivation in many western states to preserve their palaeontological resources. …

Mark Davis suggests, in his article on invasive species (25 September 2009, p 26) , that concerns over the fate of affected native species arise from prejudice. The article appeared to ignore the major policy driver in this area, which is the Convention on Biological Diversity. Supported by more than 190 governments, the convention recognises …

Kate Douglas's article on whether cats or dogs make the best pets was fascinating, but there is a small gap in her research (12 December 2009, p 32) . Douglas claims that "no one has really tried training cats"; she should have visited the Popovich Comedy Pet Theater. One of the lesser-known shows on the …

Feedback is too hasty to ridicule the News of the World newspaper for its questionnaire that caused contributor Michael Barraclough to puzzle between the first and second choices: "In a typical month, I buy the NOTW : never/less than once/1-2 times/3-4 times" (19 December 2009) . If Barraclough bought a copy once every two months, …

• In our article on results from the Large Hadron Collider (12 December 2009, p 6) we said that a paper was accepted for publicaton in the European Journal of Physics . It will appear in the European Physical Journal C .