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17 October 2012
From Mary Midgley
The word "real" does so many different jobs, being the opposite of pretended, fictitious, apparent, imaginary or superficial, for example, that there cannot be a single thing called "reality". Your reality special (29 September, p 34) seems mainly to oppose it to "apparent", suggesting that what is real is actually whatever the latest fashion in …
17 October 2012
From Stephen Whitehead, Chief executive, Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry
Ben Goldacre, the author of Bad Pharma , seems fixated on issues within the pharmaceutical industry which have long been addressed (6 October, p 28) . He claims that "drugs are tested in poorly designed studies... selectively reported, with unflattering data hidden". In the UK there is a robust system of regulation for the undertaking …
17 October 2012
From Alan Jenyon
Our genome "software" is still at version 1.x, never having had the benefit of a rewrite. Evolved from the last universal common ancestor, it contains programming remnants from countless predecessors (15 September, p 30) . If we ever succeed in decoding the genome software as some hope, for example, via the ENCODE project (8 September, …
17 October 2012
From Chuck Stewart, Director of the Lesbian and Gay Psychotherapy Association of Southern California
It is about time that the US outlawed the ineffective and unethical psychological practices of "conversion" or "reparative" therapies (6 October, p 7) . They have never worked and are disrespectful to people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or who are questioning their sexuality. California has done the right thing in banning those therapies. Now, …
17 October 2012
From Bob Masta
You discussed whether browser extensions that rate the accuracy of online news are likely to change our opinions (15 September, p 44) . But a knock-on effect may be that downrated sites could lose status, hence traffic and advertiser support, giving them a monetary incentive to spread less rubbish in the first place.
17 October 2012
From Eric Bender
You reported a quantum entanglement experiment that seems to show that a "dead" photon can influence a "newborn" one (6 October, p 11) . The gap between the existence of the entangled particles has been shown to be a small fraction of a second, but could further experiments expand this to years, decades, centuries and …
17 October 2012
From Alan Bundy
Samuel Arbesman makes some interesting points about the apparent pattern of decay of accepted knowledge (22 September, p 36) , but perhaps this is only part of the story. Not only does factual information evolve, but so does the language in which these facts are expressed, which might help to explain some instances of decay.
17 October 2012
From Peter Frederikse
I enjoyed your article on the relationship between Alzheimer's disease and diabetes ( 1 September, p 32 ). However, I would like to clarify where we performed the rabbit studies which showed for the first time a direct link between these two conditions. The studies, reported in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease , were done …
17 October 2012
From Don Martin
I imagine most people will agree with Marc Bekoff that it is high time we recognised that animals are conscious (22 September, p 24) , but I wonder if he is not naive in supposing that such recognition will help to stop the abuse of animals. Around the world now and throughout history, our species …
Issue no. 2887 published 20 October 2012
