Credibility denial
Your article reporting the acquittal of six geologists sentenced to prison for allegedly downplaying the risk of an earthquake (15 November, p 7) quotes the head of Italy’s National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology saying the ruling “restores credibility to Italy’s scientific community”. Surely that should have read, “restores credibility to Italy’s legal system”?
Pulborough, West Sussex, UK
For the record
鈥� A touch of monkey business affected our article on technology for animals: orang-utans become sexually active at 8 years, and it is human visitors 鈥� not other apes 鈥� that juveniles enjoy poking with sticks (29 November, p 44).
Ideas running dry?
I was puzzled by your short article about an electronic shirt that knows when the wearer is thirsty (29 November, p 23). We are told “as the person becomes thirsty the shirt will send alerts reminding them to drink”.
Isn’t that what the sensation of thirst does? Talk about pointless, redundant and wasteful technology. For their next trick, how about a hat that reminds you to breathe?
Burntwood, Staffordshire, UK
Wings of speed
E. H. Bristol questions the reported 2200 kilometre flight in two days by a banded stilt (22 November, p 35). The original paper reports that the bird flew “a minimum of 2263 kilometres in 55.9 hours”, which works out at an average speed of just over 40 kilometres per hour (Biology Letters, ).
An earlier project tracked the migration of the bar-tailed godwit from Alaska to New Zealand (). Aided by tailwinds, one bird flew 11,000 km in just over eight days, averaging 56 kph.
Such cruise speeds are consistent with those achieved by a variety of species, from hummingbirds to geese.
Ledbury, Herefordshire, UK
Sailing away
Further to the discussion of what civilisation would look like without fossil fuels (18 October, p 34), we forget that for the last 200 years fossil fuels were chiefly employed to offset energy lost to friction, later recouped through efficiencies such as regenerative braking.
Ocean transport ignores the implications of friction by employing heavy fuel oil no one else will use, in a place where legal restrictions are lax. With proper laws and recognition, seasonal trade and sail could return and become the most efficient means of transport of all.
Cairanne, France
Snack attack
鈥� The seals appear to be actively hunting porpoises, particularly young calves, so it’s possible the seals have broadened their diet after traditional food sources became scarce.
Snack attack
You report that seals have been recorded attacking porpoises, and the issue immediately brings one idea to mind (29 November, p 7).
Porpoises and seals share almost identical diets and we are currently wiping out their food supply. Is it any wonder they are fighting over a dwindling resource that is essential to both?
It’s probably a good thing that neither of them have the means to attack fishing boats!
Stockport, UK
Bat battles
You report on bats intentionally jamming each other’s sonar when several are feeding in the same locality (15 November, p 16). While recording bat species in the Wye valley area near south Wales I regularly picked up several common pipistrelles (Pipistrellus pipistrellus) feeding together.
Each individual made a slight shift in frequency from the standard 47 kHz. Every now and then I would get what I termed the “sod off” call 鈥� a very loud broadband “shout” covering the whole frequency range and much more at either end.
I always presumed that this was to discourage the opposition from coming too close to the bat concerned or to its prospective meal. It would also interfere with the reception of any other bat nearby; it certainly gave me a shock if I was close enough and wearing headphones.
Penallt, Monmouthshire, UK
A thousand words
Pamela Protheroe writes that children read slower when pictures are present (29 November, p 32).
But the reason children read more slowly when pictures are present is that they are dividing their time between reading the text and looking at the pictures, which is the whole point of picture books.
One might as well say that pictures with distracting text beside them lead people to study the pictures less closely.
An unstated bias that words are more valuable than pictures relegates art books, comics and other books with a strong illustrated element to second-class status.
As a professional comics artist, I have met several literate and intelligent adults who cheerfully admit that they can’t “read” comics, or find analysis of a picture confusing without an accompanying linear textural explanation, which leads me to think the education system may be missing something.
Kew, UK
Wrong the right way
John Ioannidis risks doing more harm than good in driving out scientific papers that are wrong (22 November, p 32). The sort of multiple checking he recommends makes it more difficult for individuals and authors from small, poorly funded institutions to get their ideas heard.
Large institutions tend to develop a momentum that makes them less likely to come up with really radical ideas than those less-fashionable centres may produce. Of course, these radical ideas are more likely to be wrong.
The answer lies with university appointment panels and grant-awarding bodies. These give researchers an incentive to submit as many publications as possible and get the most radical ideas out early (when they are still half-baked).
If both bodies demanded that applications should be backed by no more than six papers, researchers would have an incentive to minimise their number of publications with better integrated, related work and better tested ideas in their more important papers.
Making appointments and giving grants is expensive; it would be worth getting paid referees to re-review all six papers submitted in each case.
Reading, Berkshire, UK
Hold the mayo
I was rather surprised to read of a new eco-friendly egg-free mayonnaise, and the intensive research required to find a plant ingredient to take the place of egg (22 November, p 31).
Almost 20 years ago, when diagnosed with an egg allergy, I began buying a similar vegan product made using pea protein.
This product is still available, is very similar in texture to standard mayonnaise and is quite delicious. I stopped eating it because of the rather unsociable effects of the pea protein.
As an alternative, I now simply whip up plain yogurt with a little olive oil, crushed garlic, black pepper and cider vinegar.
Basildon, Essex, UK
Discount vaping
You discuss the problem of e-cigarettes possibly becoming a gateway to smoking (1 November, p 35). This could surely be solved by pricing policy.
Simply structure sales taxes to make e-cigarettes relatively cheap and readily available, and cigarettes and other forms of tobacco prohibitively expensive.
Of course, this would involve countries not entering into deals such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which affects New Zealand and Australia, and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), which could considerably constrain the ability of sovereign governments to make such laws (1 November, p 32).
Wellington, New Zealand
Dammed floods
鈥� Hadfield notes that some of the most serious flooding along the Yangtze is generated downstream of the dam, and there is a debate about whether the dam will be a blessing or a curse in terms of flooding. Sadly there was no room to include this in the article.
Dammed floods
I read with interest Peter Hadfield’s article on the Yangtze river (22 November, p 46), having returned in September from a cruise down the river from Chongqing to Shanghai, including a tour of the Three Gorges dam and journeying through the five ship locks.
An important function of the dam that was not mentioned is to control flooding, which is a major problem for the seasonal river of the Yangtze.
Millions of people live downstream of the dam, with many large, important cities like Wuhan, Nanjing and Shanghai situated adjacent to the river. Plenty of farm land and China’s most important industrial area are built beside the river.
The Yangtze has seen some terrible floods. In 1931 there were 145,000 deaths although some Western sources put it much higher, between 3.7 and 4 million.
Further flooding killed 33,000 in 1954 and in 1998, 15 million were made homeless and the economic loss was estimated at over 拢16 billion.
Ambleside, Cumbria, UK
Rampant robots
Before embarking on the development of lethal autonomous weapons systems, we should bear in mind Walter M. Miller’s 1954 science fiction short story I Made You. It is narrated from the viewpoint of a heavily armed, robot tank. Battle damage has destroyed the tank’s capability to identify friend from foe. It therefore bypasses all the built-in safeguards and systematically annihilates its own creators.
Great Shelford, Cambridgeshire, UK
Rampant robots
Chris Baraniuk’s article on robotic warfare was thought-provoking, but there is an additional aspect of warfare that was not considered (15 November, p 38).
In a democracy, governments’ zeal for warfare requires a considerable measure of public support, and there is nothing like a procession of returning body bags to turn the public against a war. We have experienced this recently in the UK over the war in Afghanistan.
In a robotic war, the more technologically advanced combatant can expect few casualties as long as ground troops are not used extensively.
Consequently, the public will have little information regarding the progress and extent of the engagements, and arguably will have less interest than in conventional wars.
This means that politicians will be freer to wage war abroad than they are now. This is not a welcome prospect.
Feniton, Devon, UK
Wrong the right way
Ten years ago, Ioannidis identified wide-ranging problems with scientific research, but this is not a new phenomenon. Studies of aircrew fatigue during the second world war had little success in quantifying the origins of poor performance, until cognitive psychologist Frederick Bartlett studies were inappropriate and all relevant factors are needed to produce sensible results.
Somewhere along the way Bartlett’s message has been lost. Most researchers have been trained to limit the variables in an experiment so that statistics are manageable and correlations can be made. This makes life easier but means that some important factors are omitted that could have had a major influence upon the results.
Perhaps we should be critical of the way in which experimental design is taught.
Stoke Gabriel, Devon, UK