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14 April 2010
From L. S. Illis
You report Beverly Collett and Irene Tracey as calling for pain to be treated as a disease (6 March, p 6) . This would be a terrible, retrograde step. I retired in 1995 after 15 years running a clinic treating patients with intractable neurological pain. It was fascinating. All the patients – and I do …
14 April 2010
From Jaques de Boys
Helen Thomson writes that all documented pain synaesthetes suffered traumatic pain before developing the condition: "Many are amputees, and their phantom limb is the site of the pain they feel when faced with another's distress" (13 March, p 42) . All my life – I am now 64 – whenever I heard about someone being …
14 April 2010
From Paul Ellis
The idea that you can "let your body do the thinking" may go back further and wider than you suppose (27 March, p 5 and p 8) . When the mathematician Jacques Hadamard was doing the research that formed the basis of his book Psychology of Invention in the Mathematical Field in the late 1930s, …
14 April 2010
From Keith Alexander
In your editorial you repeat uncritically the propaganda that so many bat conservationists use to try to justify the conservation of their favourite organisms (27 March, p 5) . Some bats do feed on insects, but what is the evidence that they selectively eat insects that damage farmers' crops? Won't some insects be beneficial to …
14 April 2010
From Tristram Wyatt, Department of zoology, University of Oxford
I agree with Richard Doty that there is not likely to be a human pheromone to make anyone irresistible (27 February, p 28) , but that does not mean there are no human pheromones. Other mammals have small-molecule pheromones. All rabbit pups, for example, respond to their mother's mammary pheromone, 2-methylbut-2-enal ( Nature , vol …
14 April 2010
From Ian Gilbert
Henrik Tschudi proposes that scientists pledge not to do research that would be harmful to life on Earth, taking into account all possible applications (13 March, p 26) . This could eliminate most scientific projects. The internet was invented by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency for military communications. Battlefield injuries lead to medical …
14 April 2010
From Martha Farah, Center for Neuroscience & Society, University of Pennsylvania
Curtis Bell asks us to refuse to participate in the application of neuroscience to goals that violate human rights and international law (6 February, p 24) . This has sparked an important and overdue discussion among neuroscientists concerning the "dark side" of our field. Cognitive and affective neuroscience have come of age and are now …
14 April 2010
From Martin Hobbs
As Holly Anderson describes Eliezer Sternberg's book My Brain Made Me Do It , both seem concerned about the problem of free will, but then speak of moral responsibility (27 March, p 50) . Confusion between blame and responsibilty often muddies the discussion of such issues. If I were to hurt another person I would …
14 April 2010
From Peter Brooks
You advise readers to click on a link in an email only if it comes from a trusted contact (20 March, p 20) . Never click on such links. You should copy the linked address and paste it into a plain-text editor, and learn how to examine it for suspicious signs. Mostly, it will be …
14 April 2010
• The medical TV drama that included 85 instances of sexual misconduct was Grey's Anatomy , not House (3 April, p 5) . • The designer of antennas for robot submarines is Jake Piskura, not Piscura (27 March, p 56) . • Edward Witten would be better described as "string theory's leading architect" than as …
Issue no. 2756 published 17 April 2010
