Â鶹´«Ã½

You report Anna Machin's research on fatherhood's effect on men ( 24 March, p 37 ). The birth of our first baby was medically "normal", but slightly odd circumstances meant I was handed the hastily wrapped baby to hold (and put my face near) very soon after birth. This seemed to have a long-term emotional …

Trevor Hussey warns scientists that methods change, which is undeniable (Letters, 14 April ). But he suggests we need to discuss with philosophers not only methods, but also our objectives. Isn't this putting the cart before the horse? The philosopher David Hume understood philosophy as the inductive, experimental science of human nature . This can …

Sally Adee reports that robots aren't coming for our jobs and indeed they may be creating more work ( 14 April, p 9 ). So what is the point in having them? Ask anyone who did housework in the 1950s about vacuum cleaners and washing machines. They gave people leisure time. They removed drudgery. They …

Adee argues that automation anxiety is overblown , but conflates current automation with the future potential for automation. She cites my research with Michael Osborne, which estimates that roughly 47 per cent of US jobs are exposed to automation technologies – but argues that this is overstated because recent surveys of the workplace in Germany …

"... says the builder who accidentally hit the solar panel with a hammer" Heather Tweed responds to the news that poking tiny dents into solar panels makes them work better ( 28 April, p 9 )

You report researchers finding that the species of ostracod crustaceans with the largest differences between the sexes were also the most vulnerable to extinction ( 21 April, p 9 ). They speculate that the cause may be related to devoting resources to sexual display at the cost of other survival functions, much like the peacock's …

H. Gilbert Welch makes a very good point about the danger that screening will find cancers that aren't going to do us any harm ( 7 April, p 44 ). However, as a doctor who has investigated many people for cancer, and who has been investigated for cancer myself, I think the real challenge for …

I accept that screening for prostate-specific antigen (PSA) doesn't appear to improve prostate cancer survival rates . But I see a paradox. PSA screening followed by checks for symptoms can lead to unnecessary invasive procedures. But when symptoms appear they are generally followed by PSA testing – and the same invasive procedures. Why does it …

I quite agree with the boycott signatories demanding that autonomous weapons lacking meaningful human control shouldn't be developed (14 April, p 24). But the overwhelming issue with guns is leaving them unmonitored in the hands of humans who can't be trusted to behave reasonably and rationally. History is littered with war and other crimes, not …

You report Aaron Clauset classifying the size of a war by the number of soldiers killed ( 3 March, p 15 ). Civilians aren't included. This criterion leads to the bizarre consequence that a war (nuclear or otherwise), fought by artificial intelligence and killing few soldiers but millions of civilians, would be unworthy of recognition …