Suspect sexual statistics sussed
What I find so surprising about these statistics isn’t their absurd impossibility: it is that they are so wholeheartedly believed, defended and repeated. I put this statistic to a number of men and women, who invariably said “Obviously. Everyone knows men are more immoral than women.” Men concur with a certain amount of pride, whereas women agree with condemnation, while both assert its truth.
One wonders whether, if people were asked a less controversial question such as “Do more men shake hands with women on average than women shake hands with men?” they would be so adamant.
Drumsna, County Leitrim, Ireland
<b>For the record</b>
鈥� Comet again? Cinzia Fantinati is the German Aerospace Centre’s operations manager for the comet lander, Philae (27 June, p 25). The European Space Agency controls the Rosetta mothership.
鈥� Our focus may have slipped in our illustration of the orbits of Pluto and other planets (13 June, p 30). The sun should have been more clearly at one of the foci of each of the elliptical orbits; and in each orbit Pluto comes inside the orbit of Neptune only once.
Through a glass, ultravioletly
Colin Brown asks your Last Word column whether he can get the full benefit of vitamin D from sunshine through glass (13 June). When I was a small boy in Edinburgh in the early 1920s my mother had Vitaglass fitted to our huge west-facing nursery windows 鈥� she understood this was the only way we would get our vitamin D from the sun while indoors. Does anyone remember this window glass? Was she right?
Perhaps this is why I am such a healthy 94-year-old.
London, UK
Health hacking not just hypochondria
At first sight the “health hacking” apps that you report seem perfect for hypochondriacs (4 July, p 18). But it has been demonstrated that those who have a greater sense of control in their lives have better health. So the sense of personal control offered by such an app could itself achieve better health.
Bishops Waltham, Hampshire, UK
Autopsies must be revived for safety
The virtual disappearance of the autopsy indeed poses a significant threat to the quality of medical care (20 Jun, p 6). Many studies show that clinical diagnoses are wrong in up to half of cases; and in between a tenth and a quarter of these cases the patient received the wrong treatment.
Surely this is a matter that the UK’s Care Quality Commission should investigate, rather than wasting its resources checking whether clinically unimportant standards for waiting times have been met?
Great Ryburgh, Norfolk, UK
<b>Green doubts</b>
In seeking to answer “how can we best protect nature in an increasingly crowded world?” Fred Pearce proposes a limited dichotomy (20 June, p 26). He offers the choice between living sustainably within nature or embracing a range of new technologies. In my view, humans are faced with different choices: we can live within ecological limits or crash towards extinction.
For humans to live within nature requires adhering to a few basic principles: no couple to have more than two children; use only renewable energy; and all forms of technology must be fully recyclable. Any deviation from this, or even a lifestyle separate from nature, will fail.
The second possible outcome is one that no one wants to talk about: a crash in human population, probably as a result of all-out war, and the destruction of civilised society.
Humanity can either become ecologically sustainable, or provide a future with very low human numbers eking out an existence in an environment that lacks the beauty and inspiration of the one we have now.
Port Lincoln, South Australia
It's not only dogs' noses that know
Liz Bestic reports on dogs sniffing out cancer (4 July, p 34). They aren’t alone. I had half a lung excised due to lung cancer in 2004. It was diagnosed by a young Polish doctor, a locum, who visited me at home and smelled something wrong on my breath. I had no specific symptoms 鈥� no cough, bad chest, sore throat or temperature 鈥� but felt so unwell I had taken to my bed. She sent me for an X-ray the next day and the cancer was detected early enough for a cure. I hadn’t smoked for over 30 years.
I believe her ability to detect the smell saved my life.
Skipton, North Yorkshire, UK
A cosmos filled with phlogiston?
Perhaps the question “how long can we keep looking for dark matter?” was answered in one of your articles last year (28 June 2014, p 32). We typically make an assumption that the universe is homogeneous and isotropic 鈥� that is, that it looks roughly the same in all locations and roughly the same in all directions from any standpoint. That article suggested that if we forgo this, the need for dark matter/energy disappears.
Are cosmologists wedded to homogeneity and isotropy simply because they make the maths so much easier?
Brentford, Middlesex, UK
A cosmos filled with phlogiston?
In your leader you ask “How long can we keep looking for dark matter?” (20 June, p 5). The search for dark matter reminds me of the obsolete phlogiston theory, in which anomalies of weight led to the positing of phlogiston as a substance released whenever anything burned. Then Joseph Priestley discovered oxygen, and Antoine Lavoisier explained its role in combustion 鈥� but many phlogistonists were left unsatisfied and unconvinced.
Similarly, might not all, or at least some, of the many paradoxes and unexplained effects of modern physics, such as dark matter, dark energy, the irreconcilability of quantum theory and gravitation, and the black hole information paradox, be explainable by something in plain view?
Chichester, West Sussex, UK
Editor's pick: Diet, reductionism and desire
Once again, scientists working on ways to make it easier for people to lose weight are concentrating entirely on appetite (20 June, p 14) as though this and hormones are the only factors involved in weight gain. Entirely ignored are the other reasons for eating, which include habit (it’s 11 am and therefore time for a snack) and social pressure (“Aren’t you going to have a drink?”).
Until researchers and funding bodies tear themselves away from simple technological determinism 鈥� in this case, chemistry 鈥� obesity research is going to bear a strong resemblance to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
Penshurst, New South Wales, Australia
Suspect sexual statistics sussed
Alongside your article on how females can be just as competitive and aggressive as males about reproduction, you highlight a claim that the average number of sexual partners in a lifetime is 12 for men but only 8 for women (27 June, p 34). If the average is the arithmetic mean then, if we assume each partnership has one man and one woman, and the number of men and women is roughly equal, this discrepancy is hard to explain.
Numbers of reported partners are, however, likely to be different from reality.
Sheffield, UK
Few women among our ancestors?
Is she “mitochondrial Eve”?
Seaford, East Sussex, UK
Few women among our ancestors?
Given a 13:1 male:female ratio, no wonder it took 40,000 years for our forebears to lay the foundations of modern Europe. That is the ratio I count in the illustration to your article on the three tribes that founded Western civilisation (4 July, p 28).
Keyworth, Nottinghamshire, UK
Terpenes are good, trees are better
Mike Moore’s work on the benefits of plants for humans will be welcomed by tree-huggers everywhere (27 June, p 26). A recent study involving 2623 children in Barcelona, Spain, showed that those in schools with lots of greenery had improved cognitive function 鈥� specifically improved working memory and attention ().
Chemicals produced by plants called terpenes are known for their calming fragrance, but trees and hedges also offer physical barriers against pollutants. Instead of squirting bottled chemicals into the air in cities to simulate the pleasures of being near trees, why not simply plant more trees?
Faversham, Kent, UK
<b>First class post</b>
In an effort to feel human I have gone outside with a blanket and 快猫短视频
Alison Atkin her response to a beautiful summer afternoon
When wind wins lower prices
I am surprised that Michael Grubb’s article on wind power subsidy and energy policy (4 July, p 24) didn’t mention how subsidising wind power cuts electricity bills, as explained in 快猫短视频 (24 July 2010, p 24). When wind power is available, it drives down the electricity spot price. This gives lower bills than without wind power, even taking into account the cost of subsidy (paid out of electricity bills).
The 2010 article cited a study showing that German electricity consumers saved 鈧�5 billion a year by subsidising wind power.
The UK government’s policy of scrapping the onshore wind power subsidy means electricity bills will be higher than they would otherwise be: not just bad for our environment, but bad for our wealth too.
Eastham, Wirral, UK
Editor's pick: Diet, reductionism and desire
I don’t eat because I am hungry, I eat because I like eating, but only if it is food I enjoy. Anti-obesity scientists seem to miss this point. For me, tasty food is the solution to all of life’s problems (except, unfortunately, being fat). And eating something I like stops me worrying about that too. Modifying food to satiate me sooner isn’t going to work.
I’d rather not eat than have to eat “diet food” or most processed food.
West Launceston, Tasmania, Australia