Letters archive

David Werdegar says “it is impossible for us to think without language” (Letters, 20 July ). But people who have severe aphasia – loss of language abilities – because of strokes or other brain damage may be unimpaired in other thinking abilities, including arithmetic, logical and causal reasoning, chess playing, spatial navigation and theory of …

The news from Olafur Eliasson that Little Sun lamps increase the homework efficiency of girls in households without electricity by 80 per cent isn't inspiring: it's a sad story about the unequal expectations for boys and girls ( 13 July, p 28 ). I support the health and safety and climate justifications for replacing oil …

Trying to explain away the “hard problem” of consciousness, Rowan Hooper claims qualia are illusory and so there is nothing to explain ( 22 June, p 34 ). He says “we don't normally talk about our qualia, we talk about things such as being tired”. But that misses the point. A smartphone can register that …

Debora MacKenzie reports that infection with Porphyromonas gingivalis, a bacterium involved in gum disease, may cause a variety of serious diseases ( 10 August, p 42 ). I have heard that having all one's teeth extracted was a not uncommon 21st birthday present in parts of England until the middle of the 20th century. It …

Assuming that people who have no teeth at all wouldn't be troubled by plaque-dwelling bacteria, I wonder whether any correlation has been sought between toothlessness and the prevalence of the diseases identified by MacKenzie . The editor writes: These bacteria can get into your bloodstream just by chewing, so even having all your teeth pulled …

Donald Hoffman claims to have used the theory of evolution by natural selection to discover that what we perceive isn't objective reality, but an interface with it ( 3 August, p 34 ). He says evolution itself may be just an interface projection of deeper dynamics stemming from a network of conscious agents. But such …

From Simon French, Totnes, Devon, UK I very much enjoyed the quantity of wrasse in one issue ( 20 July, p 17 , p 19 and p 34 ). Your report of a new purple species of fairy wrasse was followed two pages later by bluehead wrasse changing sex. Then, you quoted string theorist Timm …

• Matthew Williams at Cardiff University, UK, and his colleagues created – on their own initiative – a “dashboard” that flags between 500,000 and 800,000 tweets per day related to Brexit. Of these, between 0.2 per cent and 0.5 per cent are classified as hateful, and about 0.2 per cent of those have tags for …

Opening New Scientist is like stepping into a stream of cool fresh air, free of tendentious partisan advocacy and suffused by a balanced, evidence-based view of the world – an example being Andre Geim's expression of regret over Brexit and its likely effect on scientific enquiry ( 24 August, p 23 ).

In the interests of science and the country, Geim proposes , the UK must implement the result of the referendum and leave the EU. But leading hard-line Brexiteers follow a political and economic philosophy that aims to reduce the role of a societal state in myriad ways: lower standards for food and products, less support …