Letters archive

Dan Jones presents a rather optimistic view on the possibility of more "humane" interrogation of detainees (6 March, p 40) . Detention and interrogation, even when they do not involve violence, are inherently coercive and potentially traumatic. A fifth of suspects detained for ordinary police interrogation experience abnormally high levels of anxiety, and some develop …

The Stockholm Environment Institute's assessment of the Earth's life-support systems seems to have failed to examine the issues closely enough. Your article ( 27 February, p 30 ) did not mention soil loss or degradation, though it did deal with land use. Many soils can sustain agricultural use for many years – if they are …

Amanda Gefter repeats a common fallacy about infinite universes: the assumption that "everything that can happen will happen – an infinite number of times" (6 March, p 28) . There are many – possibly infinitely many – ways that this might not be true, given our limited knowledge about what constraints apply to how universes …

There seems to be no consensus among theists as to why we should believe in their various – and largely mutually exclusive – deities (6 March, p 26) . Without this, it is hard to pin down what it is that atheists are "resistant" to. One phenomenon I've noticed in discussions with theists is a …

There is no doubt that the eastern bluefin tuna fishery in the Mediterranean was poorly controlled during the first few years of tuna penning and that urgent action is needed to ensure long-term sustainability of this fishery. The scale of illegal fishing is, however, nowhere near what you imply (14 November 2009, p 44) . …

When David Shiga wrote that the Absolute Color Calibration Experiment for Standard Stars will have "a precision of 1 per cent or better" and that this is "twice the accuracy of current measurements" (6 February, p 13) what was he trying to tell us? Precision and accuracy are two very different things. Take the distance …

Coming across a New Scientist dated March 1975, I read a letter entitled "Energy squandering" from L. M. Newell at the University of Essex, UK, bemoaning shops' habit of keeping televisions on and the consequent waste of energy. No doubt the writer would have been even more appalled at today's monsters, which can churn out …

I am afraid that Derek Hallam (13 February, p 25) and Paul Parsons (16 January, p 38) are misquoting Alexander Pope. The quotation correctly reads: "A little learning is a dang'rous thing" – a very different concept to knowledge. The stanza continues: "Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:/ There shallow draughts intoxicate the …

• The nominal domestic electricity supply voltage in Europe is harmonised at 230 volts, not 240 volts (13 March, p 20) . • It would take 20 Oyster wave-power system to power 9000 homes, not just one Oyster system (6 March, p 18) .