From Paul Whiteley, Bittaford, Devon, UK
John Hedger’s letter on feeding coffee pulp to animals and the necessity of getting out in the field to find out why they weren’t thriving made me chuckle (Letters, 14 September).
In a similar vein, as a duty engineer many years ago, I was called into the control room of a large multinational telescope. The visiting scientists were getting some strange results from their spectrum of a star. They were excitedly talking about this and coming up with fantastic theories and solutions as to what might be happening inside the star or indeed whether they could trust the data. The spectrum did look weird. I went into the dome and found that someone had forgotten to turn the fluorescent lights out!
