Letters archive

Some of the proposals reviewed by Stephen Battersby for geoengineering a cooler planet will be a hard sell given the polarised debate on climate change (22 September, p 30) . Who is going to tell the sceptics that meat is off the menu as a way of curbing emissions? Farming efficiency is probably at its …

Having read Brian J. Ford's new theory on spontaneous human combustion (15 September, p 29) , I feel that this myth should be dispatched. As far back as 1861, in A Handbook of the Practice of Forensic Medicine, Based on Personal Experience. Volume 1 by Johann L. Casper (The New Sydenham Society, London), the phenomenon …

No doubt some will feel uncomfortable, as your reviewer Kayt Sukel suggests, at Larry Young and Brian Alexander's idea that the release of oxytocin during sex "tricks" women into nurturing their partners (22 September, p 46) . Unless you believe in a non-physical soul – which I'm sure Young and Alexander don't – then everything …

Harold Kassel questions Neil Armstrong's elevation to hero status (22 September, p 28) . Yet Armstrong was the first to deprecate his own role and acknowledge the part played by all the NASA scientists and engineers involved in the moon missions. The status he held as a result of his role he carried with great …

You report that crows can recognise different humans (15 September, p 13) . I suspect that gulls can do the same. A juvenile herring gull has been visiting our bird table for about two years and is now completely relaxed about being approached by me or my wife and will happily feed from my hand. …

Rather than talking of free will (11 August, p 10) , perhaps a more productive approach would be to examine types and degrees of possible choice. We exist in turbulent, non-linear systems where sometimes tiny differences in action can result in greatly differing outcomes and sometimes the most concerted efforts will yield no change whatsoever. …

I read with interest Samuel Arbesman's article "Truth decay" on the apparent half-life of what we believe to be correct (22 September, p 36) . But I cannot resist asking: just how long will its conclusions remain true?

Being a theoretical neutrino physicist, your recent look at efforts to piece together the true nature of neutrinos was inspiring and shows that there are several unsolved problems in particle physics ( 8 September, p 30 ). Indeed, it suggests that neutrinos will play a key role in some of the unanswered questions beyond the …

Feedback is puzzled about the advice to "be discreet" when using a mobile phone (25 August) . This is standard on a host of advice websites from police, universities and others, and it is all to do with keeping your belongings – and you – safe from thieves.

Sriram Peruvemba of E Ink reacts to the development of glare-free colour e-ink for displays by pointing out, "Most long-form reading is done in black and white" (8 September, p 19) . That may be true now but such thinking is short-sighted. I for one would like to be able to read web pages outdoors …

Further to Elizabeth Iorns's discussion of disappointing reproducibility of results in the biomedical sector (15 September, p 24) . Statistics alone are enough to produce a slew of "highly promising" drugs that do nothing, provided that null results remain unpublished. Suppose 2000 drug candidates are, in fact, totally ineffective. Given that much research defines statistical …

After reading the discussion on artificial consciousness (8 September, p 18) , I wonder what would happen when a conscious machine is switched off and on? Would it regain consciousness, as after a sleep, or would it have a totally new self-awareness? If it is the latter, and we have destroyed the "self" of a …

You report the rise of online schooling (8 September, p 6) . As a teacher of 35 years and cynical of some aspects of technology in education, I'm all for it if it means disengaged children become engaged in their learning.

• In our article about applying special relativity to quantum systems (22 September, p 13) we should have said if you have three events and two are simultaneous, only four of the six possible orderings created by changing your reference frame work mathematically. • Feryal Özel, quoted in a story on the discovery of the …