Letters archive

Your story "Giant leap, tiny rock" reported on the US proposal for a crewed mission to a near-Earth asteroid, between 50 and 100 metres across (26 November, p 52) . If it was possible to walk on such a body, it could be circumnavigated in minutes and completely explored in hours. This cannot justify the …

I found Graham Lawton's article on dietary salt rather disappointing (3 December, p 46) , not because it disagreed with my own point of view, but because it stuck to the establishment line. It is beyond the scope of this letter to go into the mass of peer-reviewed data, including the very recent paper from …

Henry Farrell and Cosma Shalizi question the ethics and effectiveness of "nudging" people into making better choices (5 November, p 28) . Such questions are sound and justified. We should worry about whether we are manipulated by government. However, most behavioural economists would argue this does not deny people choice and democratic freedom. Terminology is …

Andrew Powell may be right to say in his letter (3 December, p 39) that many people who work in banking are honest. But when people outside the profession talk of "bankers" they mean those with the power to make decisions about how banking is carried out, and by extension those who were responsible for …

There is no conflict between science and religion; the only disagreement is whether religion is a subset of psychology or memetics. From Elizabeth Young James Whalley (19 November, p 37) is sure that there is a "disconnect" between science and religion. My own, uninformed guess is that scientific hypothesis, poetry writing, prayer and worship, and …

I couldn't resist composing this after the mention of the charmingly misspelled word "hematopoetic" in your story on blood grown in the lab from stem cells (12 November, p 8) : Haematopoiesis Not just hypo-thesis I'm cultured, I tell ya I'll treat haemophilia Or fill your arterials With my dark materials My stem cells just …

In your interview with anthropologist Fiona Stewart on spending a night in a treetop chimp's nest (8 October, p 31) , she says: "One of the interesting questions is when, in our evolution, did we come down to the ground, and why? When did we make the transition from sleeping in trees to sleeping on …

The contents page line that promoted your look at fungal pathogens as a possible driver for the evolution of warm-bloodedness (3 December, p 1) needs correcting. It stated: "Us mammals are unusually hot for good reasons". This is partly because we mammals get hot under the collar when we see bad grammar.

Andrew Martin's letter asks how, if neutrinos are skipping into other dimensions, they "know" when to reappear in this one (3 December, p 39) . But as long as they skip randomly in and out many times on their journey, there will always be some here to be detected. In fact, their unwillingness to interact …

Feedback's recent mention of homeopathy (19 November) brought to mind a seasonal joke. What's a suitable present for a homeopath? An empty box containing the memory of the chocolates that it once contained.