Letters archive

I'm delighted that you take the quantum Bayesianist understanding of science seriously (10 May, p 32) . But you overemphasize the subjectivity of the scientist as badly as conventional physics ignores it. You attribute to QBism the view that "Measurements do not cause things to happen in the real world, whatever that is: they cause …

Your leader calls for social motivation rather than market forces to drive the production of new and better antibiotics (24 May, p 5) . But it does not explain why commercial companies ever developed antibiotics, and why they do not go on developing new ones. If it is indeed true that the free market has …

As the accompanying report details (p 10) , not only must new antibiotics compete with existing off-patent generics that are by comparison quite cheap, but maximising sales of the new drug only speeds up the development of resistance.

Since market forces do not drive the search for new antibiotics, why not try using techniques from another field? Football clubs successfully train, develop and then sell people. Universities have a steady flow of potential star scientists through their doors, yet wave goodbye to them when they graduate. If a university signed potential science stars …

In her exploration of pigeon intelligence, Kirsten Weir made the common mistake of equating negative reinforcement with punishment (3 May, p 40) . Negative reinforcement involves removing an unpleasant stimulus such as incarceration to increase the likelihood of a desirable behaviour recurring. By contrast, punishment involves applying an unpleasant stimulus to decrease the likelihood of …

Celia Berrell has it the wrong way round when she says she will have finished with her body when she dies (17 May, p 30) . As I see it, it is this body's amazing ability to store memories that makes me. I am my body's creation. When the support system for memories breaks down, …

I would probably eat insects or synthetic meat, although this is hardly virtuous (24 May, p 14) . My wife despairs of my dustbin-like omnivory. Yet there are less exotic and lower-tech alternatives on the plate as well. Many pest or culled species are edible but wasted, such as pigeons, rabbits and grey squirrels in …

Clare Wilson writes of misdiagnosing bipolar disorder and schizophrenia (10 May, p 10) . I am not a psychiatrist but a prison medical officer. Prisons are large repositories of psychiatric patients, and I see many. It is essential for us to learn the basic underlying causes of mental illness, rather than just classify them according …

There is little point in worrying about destroying the remaining stocks of the Variola virus, since the genie is surely out of the bottle already, and awaiting its opportunity to reappear (17 May, p 26) . In his article, Gareth Williams states that the Variola genome has been sequenced and the key proteins can already …

I think the sleep researchers featured in Ann Finkbeiner's article on insomnia are chasing the wrong thing (17 May, p 32) . The ability to be alert even while asleep is surely an essential asset in the struggle for survival. A couple of mice scampering around the floor is enough to make me wide awake. …

Previous correspondents have discussed teaching children honest scientific methods (17 May, p 31) . Here's my experience. Two years ago, I began a pilot scheme in which primary school pupils were used as genuine field technicians for field trials. I made it clear to them that we didn't know what the answer would be. It …

It came as an unpleasant surprise to find that your article on the cost of switching to green energy production made no mention of nuclear power, the most realistic, time-tested energy source to get us out of the impending climate catastrophe (17 May, p 6) . James Hansen says so. Ken Caldeira says so. Kerry …

We have discussed nuclear energy's place in the future energy mix many times, most recently in a special report on Germany's mired attempt to go green (19 April, p 8) .

Lisa Grossman reports Seth Lloyd saying that the idea of Boltzmann brains fails the Monty Python test, because it is "too silly" (17 May, p 8) . If being too silly is an argument against something existing, we are all in big trouble. We apparently live in a universe that spontaneously exploded out of nothing, …

Gary Slutkin may be right that there is too much emphasis on punishment as a means of reducing violence (17 May, p 28) . But in the most notable of the Bobo doll experiments he mentions, children were more likely to imitate an adult whose behaviour was rewarded. If the children saw that the adult …

Using the phonetics of a native language to simulate English phrases (10 May, p 21) was used with great effect by Luis d'Antin van Rooten in Mots D'Heures: Gousses, Rames . Each "poem" is written in French homophones to mimic an English nursery rhyme. I took great delight in having my French work colleagues read …