Letters archive

In her review, Susan Blackmore says she has learned much from my book, but complains there are already many similar accounts of ontological realms, and that I don't cite them. I do, in fact, cite the ones she mentions, as well as others, and explain why mine is different. My focus is less on cataloguing …

Blackmore describes three approaches to explaining the so-called "hard problem" of consciousness. There is a fourth: that there is no hard problem at all. Though many people still appear to believe that human brains are in some way qualitatively different from those of other animals, I don't. Isn't a dog or a crow conscious of …

The weight-loss injection Wegovy, if it lives up to expectations and is used widely, can set the imagination racing on possible consequences. Improved health will surely increase average longevity, with implications for pensions and care of the elderly. Lower average passenger weight will result in lower fuel consumption and lower emissions for aircraft. If progress …

You say the search for alien life needs strong guidelines to be sure of what is really out there. Among those guidelines, I would include a caveat: be careful what you wish for. Although my strongest claim to scientific erudition is a barely scraped O level qualification in biology many years ago, I have always …

Given the more than 70 per cent reduction in foraminifera shell thickness since 1872 due to ocean acidification, the idea that global temperatures will stop rising in the short term if we manage to get to net zero seems optimistic. These shells are an oceanic carbon sequestration engine that will need alkalinity levels to return …

In her review of Naomi Alderman's The Future , Sally Adee makes the surprising comment that "we are uniquely ill-equipped by evolution to handle uncertainty". Surely the opposite is true. Our success as a species thus far is based on our enormous flexibility and adaptability that have allowed us to spread everywhere. Time will tell …

Graham Lawton wrote about the growing worries that a stable supply of clean water around the world is threatened. The flush toilet was the beginning of the downfall of modern society. To mix human faeces with 4 litres of water a few billion times a day is the most heinous rebuff to nature. Never mind …

The fly ash left after burning coal only contains a small proportion of lithium. If the ash is used for the extraction of this metal, what will happen to the other 99.8 per cent of this waste, which includes arsenic, lead, mercury, radioactive elements and added chemicals used in the extraction? Fly ash is a …

In our look at links between Huntington's disease and IQ ( 25 November, p 10 ), a study in August focused on young adults who were alive, while research supporting toxicity of the Huntington's protein involved animal models and lab-grown neurons.