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5 October 2011
From Sandra Baron
When reading the review by Bob Holmes of Mark Changizi's book Harnessed: How language and music mimicked nature and transformed ape to man (20 August, p 48) I noticed an oversight in the theory. It is interesting that music and language use neuronal circuits that evolved to discern sounds in our environment, but I believe …
5 October 2011
From Chris O'Brien
Bravo for Royal Society president Paul Nurse's stand against anti-science (17 September, p 5). I was wondering when respected members of the scientific community would voice concerns about the political point-scoring that devalues science. The number of charlatans and vested-interest groups given a voice by the popular media is alarming, and avoiding a confrontation with …
5 October 2011
From Roland Porath
Barbara Oakley and Guruprasad Madhavan rebrand gullibility as pathological altruism in order to avoid stigmatising people whose support of others is misguided and has negative effects ( 10 September, p 30 ). Undoubtedly an altruistic thing to do, but could this itself be a case of pathological altruism? Whether this strengthens or weakens their argument …
5 October 2011
From Rich Philp
Might I suggest that the Japanese social psyche has been more disturbed by losing faith in the authorities they once implicitly trusted than by alarmist media coverage of the scale of radiation leaks from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant (3 September, p 7).
5 October 2011
From Ernie Dewing
It is suggested that we search for evidence of an extraterrestrial presence on Earth millions of years ago (10 September, p 10). Surely archaeologists, geologists and palaeontologists have done their bit. How could they have missed signs of non-human mining or other technology?
5 October 2011
From Glyn Wainwright
There is a mountain of biochemical evidence to back Robert Lustig's view that fructose is a trigger of metabolic syndrome (24 September, p 35). In terms of dietary advice, it all went wrong in the 1950s with US scientist Ancel Keys's selective Seven Countries study, which concluded that a diet that favours unsaturated over saturated …
5 October 2011
• In the look at off-the-scale pH bunkum (24 September) , Feedback's earlier reference to alkaline water was in our 20 August issue. • Chyi-Song Hsieh, who featured in our story on T-cells (24 September, p 21) , is male, not female as stated.
Issue no. 2833 published 8 October 2011
