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19 January 2022
From Brian Horton, West Launceston, Tasmania, Australia
In the article exploring a new way to solve paradoxes, some examples, such as the liar paradox, were shown to be a result of statements being necessarily either true or false ( 8 January, p 44 ). The idea of dialetheism was introduced, where a statement may be both true and false at the same …
19 January 2022
From John Park, Farnborough, Hampshire, UK
It is increasingly evident that invasion into ecosystems can have unforeseen global consequences ( p 9 18/25 December 2021 , and p 56 18/25 December 2021 ). The articles "Race to start commercial deep-sea mining endangers ecosystems" and "A whiff of the past", which details the historical decline of marine ecosystems, must surely be evidence …
19 January 2022
From Adam Grassly, London, UK
The idea of engineering a benevolent SARS-CoV-2 virus to wipe out an older, more harmful variant is interesting ( Letters, 1 January ). However, it poses a few challenges. Engineering a variant that is more transmissible could go hand in hand with improving its ability to invade host cells, with a possible risk of causing …
19 January 2022
From Richard Wilson, Bicester, Oxfordshire, UK
Johnjoe McFadden claims that "Occam's razor isn't just a tool of science – it is science" ( 18/25 December 2021, p 70 ). This is a cut too far! Science is imaginative theory-building with careful, innovative experimentation that provides reproducible evidence against which theoretical predictions are measured in order to increase our body of knowledge …
19 January 2022
From Shawn Charland, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Much has been made of the cost of the recently launched James Webb Space Telescope ( 11 December, p 36 ). My antennae came out when I read that the mission was jeopardised by its price ballooning from $500 million to nearly $10 billion. We didn't send $10 billion into space. I would be surprised …
19 January 2022
From Ian Glendon, Ashmore, Queensland, Australia
Regarding your word search grid of 3312 letters with 155 hidden words ( 18/25 December 2021, p 43 ). We have found around 100 elements, but while masses of tin is in evidence, we are still seeking silver and gold. On the plus side, we have found 11 new elements, four new amino acids and …
19 January 2022
Helen Albert wrote our story on the reliability of preclinical cancer biology research ( 18/25 December 2021, p 14 ) The Cartographers, included in our round-up of sci-fi books for 2022 ( 1 January, p 33 ), is published by William Morrow
26 January 2022
From James Buzolic, Coolum Beach, Queensland, Australia
Miriam Frankel ended her article on how to alter your personality with a call for self-acceptance ( 15 January, p 46 ). I would echo that. Ratings for the big five personality traits all start at 0 and go to 100 per cent, and the assumption seems to be that it is desirable to score …
26 January 2022
From John Carpenter, Bishop's Waltham, Hampshire, UK
Graham Lawton's article on alcohol-free and low-alcohol beers was fascinating ( 8 January, p 34 ). In the late 1980s, when I was a pharmacology lecturer at the University of Manchester, UK, a large brewery company asked me and my late colleague, John Rees, to look at the relationship between consumption of low-alcohol beer (1 …
26 January 2022
From Richard Swifte, Darmstadt, Germany
Regarding Steven Pinker's stated key mechanisms for irrational beliefs, I think the potential loss of self-esteem is also a key factor in many people clinging to such beliefs in the face of reason ( 11 December 2021, p 46 ). There are many examples of scientists, who one would expect to always base their opinions …
