Letters archive

In his letter (25 June, p 32) Alan Sangster accused Erle C. Ellis of taking a rose-tinted view of humankind's relationship with the Earth in his article on the Anthropocene. My response would be to say that Sangster is guilty of taking an unduly bleak view when he calls us a "belligerent, warlike and rapacious …

The article "Hoodwinked!" (25 June, p 46) was a breath of fresh, optimistic air for those of us researching the detection of lies. To make practical use of such research, a number of outstanding questions need answers. Does increased cognitive load increase the number of false confessions? How should an investigator elicit a truthful statement …

Will reporting of adverse drug reactions (ADRs) by patients refine our medicines (18 June, p 32) ? I don't think so. I have epilepsy and experienced many of the ADRs my drugs cause. Online, I have exchanged information and helped other sufferers – and every day people ask if their medication is causing all manner …

Lay persons and some chemists complain that newly synthesised and other exotic elements are of no practical use, and that any attention paid to them is more or less a waste of time. How wrong they are is demonstrated by James Mitchell Crow's interesting article "Unsung elements" (18 June, p 36) . It is good …

Given the history of the sweet potato, the discovery of genetic links between Easter Island and South America (18 June, p 21) should be no surprise. Sweet potatoes originated in South America, but are widespread in Polynesia. The question is how did they get there? Surely it's more likely the transfer was initiated by the …

I knew the proposed Zero Emission Hypersonic Transport concept aircraft (25 June, p 23) was a dog's breakfast as soon as I saw that there were three different types of engine involved. I'm surprised that any engineer would seriously propose this. I am even more surprised that they haven't included the obligatory artist's impression of …

"Should the tailors of Savile Row start to worry?" asked Duncan Graham-Rowe in "Rag-trade robots" (18 June, p 46) . No, the people who need to worry are the millions of textile workers in poor and developing nations who rely on the industry for their wages, meagre as they are. Are they all going to …

Given the latest figures on global warming trends (18 June, p 7) , it would be a damaging mistake not to act on the worst-case scenario. If we let climate change run its course, we could be leaving ourselves open to possible wipeout in the long run. Global warming may be hard to prove definitively, …

I have done some research on the breathing of water spiders (18 June, p 20) and was surprised by the results reported, because my work, and that of others, suggests that the air trapped on a spider's abdomen – a much lower surface area than the bubble nests mentioned – is enough to sustain the …

Perhaps there is a better alternative to using a high-powered propane cannon or gunshots for mapping caves with sound waves (4 June, p 26) . As a graduate student in the acoustic building division of Canada's National Research Council in Ottawa, I took part in an evaluation of the acoustic quality of two nearly identical …

What a pity Michel Mühlethaler of the University of Geneva didn't think to contact an old sailor before beginning his study of the benefits of rocking adults to sleep (25 June, p 17) . I could have saved the university a small fortune. Years ago, I passed many a long hour sleeping blissfully in hammocks …

• In the "Battle of the bulge" feature (11 June, p 32) we transposed the volume and page numbers in one of the references. It should have been Nature , vol 469, p 374.