Letters archive

Your review of the exhibition Flop: 13 stories of failure reminded me of finding Stephen Pile's wonderful 1979 tome The Book of Heroic Failures ( 9 November, p 31 ). Its guiding principle was that anyone can succeed, but it takes genius to fail in spectacular ways. The notion that great success can come from …

Graham Lawton explains in a clear and logical fashion why people believe in the afterlife ( 23 November, p 40 ). But he overlooks the fact that many people don't think logically or clearly, at least from a scientific point of view. One reason why people believe in life after death is because they really, …

As a neuroscientist who identifies the concept of "me" with a subset of the complex activities in my all-too-mortal brain, I have no problem accepting the notion of "not-being" after my death . As a former embryology teacher, I also had to consider the conundrum, which Lawton mentions in passing, of my "not-being" for aeons …

We still have to do everything, immediately, to fix climate change, says Graham Lawton, but at least we aren't doing nothing ( 9 November, p 22 ). The other day, I drifted into a casual discussion about climate change with a friend who turned out to be a denier. It demonstrated that neither of us …

Fred White likens the climate crisis to an iceberg towards which we, like the Titanic, are heading (Letters, 23 November ). To extend this metaphor: we are metres away from that iceberg and the ship's wheel is broken. For every positive step we take to limit emissions, we slither backwards by electing a Donald Trump …

• When an atom of the hydrogen isotope tritium decays, it emits an electron and an anti-neutrino ( 30 November, p 10 ).

I was pleased to read your article on energy efficient homes , but sorry that it is dismissive of solar photovoltaic panels. A properly designed system would allow all power generated to be used in the house or returned to the grid. Conventional power station generation and distribution is only 30 per cent efficient, so …

Adam Osen says an average person in a developed country releases about 14 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, and a tree absorbs 22 kilograms a year on average (Letters, 7 December 2019 ). That is true, but it doesn't follow that everyone needs to plant 680 trees a year, because trees aren't a permanent …

Debora MacKenzie reports that measles infection damages children's immunity to other diseases ( 9 November 2019, p 15 ). When I had measles in the 1940s, it seemed very common for children to contract it again shortly afterwards. It is interesting that present research suggests this may have really been an unrelated disease with similar …

In the 1950s and early 60s, before immunisation against measles , there were typically epidemics of measles every two years, affecting up to half a million people, mainly children. The majority would have been immunised against polio, diphtheria, whooping cough and tetanus. But I am not aware of any increase in the incidence of these …