Letters archive

Hacking viruses to fight cancer cells sounds like a great idea (13 December 2014, p 28) . But what happens when these synthetic viruses, to which we humans have presumably evolved no immunity, escape into the environment? Could a viral cancer cure, individualised to one person's needs, become a killer or a cause of illness …

• There are good questions around safety, to which we do not yet have answers. On the subject of malicious use, Hessel says: "People worry about the hacking of digital technology to make viruses that could be dangerous. But I am not inventing any of these tools; they are all here today and accessible. It's …

I was struck by Catherine Brahic's report of the fabulous find of early hominin fossils in the Rising Star cave system in South Africa (29 November 2014, p 40) . This could perhaps be the most important archaeological site yet found. If the chamber is as remote and inaccessible as she describes, and is knee-deep …

Regarding schemes to combat global warming by large-scale geoengineering projects, not only is there the vexed matter of who decides which should be tried (20/27 December 2014, p 43) but, even if this can be agreed, there is the small matter of getting it right first time. Surely the key property of any such scheme …

Aviva Rutkin writes that by the age of 3 children from affluent families have heard some 30 million more words than their impoverished counterparts (29 November 2014, p 14) . The article goes on to discuss the consequences of this disadvantage in terms of brain development. But has anyone thought to ask how and why …

I am less than impressed by the table titled "Symmetries of 37" in Christopher Kemp's article on the putatively portent number (20/27 December 2014, p 61) . The pattern is a by-product of 10 being our chosen base for counting. The base itself is arbitrary rather than inevitable, and has probably arisen because of the …

Fred Pearce describes Chinese efforts to hold back the Gobi and Taklamakan deserts through tree planting (13 December 2014, p 13) . This mirrors work in the US during the 1930s to construct the Great Plains Shelterbelt , a 160-kilometre-wide swathe of 220 million trees stretching from Canada to Texas. The work was carried out …

Eric Oliver and Tom Wood discuss people's willingness to accept conspiracy theories (20/27 December 2014, p 36) . In my experience, people find it easy to overlook them too. I was a law instructor for a UK police force in the late 1980s. Someone in my department mentioned that Cyril Smith, then the member of …

Is belief in conspiracy theories due solely to human psychology and emotional reassurance, as Oliver and Wood say? They report more than half of people in the US believing in conspiracies. What are the comparable statistics for Europeans? It seems to me that many in the US believe in irrational things, such as creationism and …

I agree with Oliver and Wood that "The brain did not evolve to process information about industrial economies, terrorism or medicine, but about survival in the wild. This includes a tendency to assume that unseen predators are lurking or that coincidental events are somehow related." I have, however, also noticed an assumption by intellectuals, cognoscenti …

I notice that the New Scientist book Question Everything is being promoted with the question "Why doesn't your own snoring wake you up?" I can assure you from personal experience that my own snoring can wake me up. Lerwick, Shetland, UK

• It can happen. But you can also wake when you stop snoring due to sleep apnoea, which can require medical investigation .

Neither the authors of Fuckology: Critical essays on John Money's diagnostic concepts nor your reviewer Simon Ings (13 December 2014, p 48) could be aware that the word "fuckology" was used and possibly coined by John Sorohan, director general of RTÉ, Ireland's public service radio and TV broadcaster, in the late 1980s. He had come …

As a librarian and information scientist – and one continually being told how "obsolete" my field is becoming – I was gratified to read Laura Dattaro's article on the importance of data scientists (US edition, 6 December 2014, p 52. See bit.ly/EWData ). Dattaro is correct in saying that cataloguing and classification are essential to …

Guy Cox says it is irresponsible to burn precious resources (20/27 December 2014, p 42) . At a seminar in the late 1970s, Arthur Scargill, then leader of the UK's National Union of Mineworkers, spent some time describing the range of uses to which coal can be put. He concluded that the very worst thing …

Am I missing something in Michael Blumlein's short story "Y(ou)r q(ua)ntifi(e)d s(el)f" (20/27 December 2014, p 80) ? Or can I reset my scales to kilograms and lose 1 kilogram of weight more quickly than I can lose half a pound? This sounds to me like a great New Year weight loss plan. Brecon, Powys, …

• We were expecting a subtle joke there. But it was just wrong.

Thank you for the image of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (13 December 2014, p 12) . And, hey, I immediately saw this face... Niwot, Colorado, US

• The illustration accompanying our story on deep-sea life was a little murky: bottom-dwelling amphipods are shrimp-like, but not shrimp (6 December 2014, p 46) • Our article on educational robots (6 December 2014, p 22) loses marks: Nanyang Technology University is actually in Singapore. • And Martin Bojowald is at Penn State University's University …