Find the cause of pain
You report Beverly Collett and Irene Tracey as calling for pain to be treated as a disease (6 March, p 6). This would be a terrible, retrograde step.
I retired in 1995 after 15 years running a clinic treating patients with intractable neurological pain. It was fascinating. All the patients 鈥� and I do mean all 鈥� had previously had their pain “treated” by other doctors who had not first made a diagnosis of its cause.
Patients with intractable pain invariably suspect that something nasty is eating away inside them. Imagine the effect that this, combined with the pain itself, would have.
We took a comprehensive history, and after appropriate investigations gave a detailed explanation of the cause of the pain. Even when treatment was not successful in altering the experience of the pain, patients stated that knowing its cause enabled them to relegate it to a minor aspect of their life, instead of dominating it.
Empathy excess
Helen Thomson writes that all documented pain synaesthetes suffered traumatic pain before developing the condition: “Many are amputees, and their phantom limb is the site of the pain they feel when faced with another’s distress” (13 March, p 42).
All my life 鈥� I am now 64 鈥� whenever I heard about someone being sliced by a sharp object I felt a sharp pain in my circumcision scar. Now I know why. My case may expand the understanding of this phenomenon: unlike most amputees, I was only a week old when I was circumcised and have no conscious memory of it.
It was a routine circumcision performed by a competent doctor, but in late 1945 newborns being circumcised in the UK probably did not receive any anaesthetic.
Muscular thinking
The idea that you can “let your body do the thinking” may go back further and wider than you suppose (27 March, p 5 and p 8).
When the mathematician Jacques Hadamard was doing the research that formed the basis of his book in the late 1930s, he asked Albert Einstein about “elements in thought”. Einstein responded: “The above mentioned elements are, in my case, of visual and some of muscular type.”
Perhaps such a kinaesthetic approach to thought is sensible when trying to conceive of the curved space of general relativity.
From Peter Harrison
As I read of Tobias Loetscher’s finding that when people think of a number smaller than the previous one they look to the left and down, I found myself imagining larger numbers to the left and farther down than smaller ones.
I realised I was subconsciously thinking of a spreadsheet. It seems a lifetime of using tables with headings across the top and down the left has completely obliterated the influences of my early years.
Fetcham, Surrey, UK
Why flap over bats?
In your editorial you repeat uncritically the propaganda that so many bat conservationists use to try to justify the conservation of their favourite organisms (27 March, p 5).
Some bats do feed on insects, but what is the evidence that they selectively eat insects that damage farmers’ crops? Won’t some insects be beneficial to farmers in being the predators and parasites of those pests? Others may well be pollinators of some of those crops.
Do farmers really cut down their pesticide usage when they see bats flying over their crops?
From Matthew Smith
If white nose syndrome is caused by a fungal infection, then it is likely that those few bats that survive will possess traits that make them resistant to the disease. These will go on to breed a new generation of resistant bats.
Bats will beat this disease without the help of humans, as will the ecosystems that may themselves become significantly impacted by the loss of bats.
Let’s be honest: the reason we want to limit the disease is because it may harm us, either through reducing the ecosystem services bats provide or by altering our view of what a “proper ecosystem” should be like.
Cambridge, UK
Sniff at pheromones
I agree with Richard Doty that there is not likely to be a human pheromone to make anyone irresistible (27 February, p 28), but that does not mean there are no human pheromones.
Other mammals have small-molecule pheromones. All rabbit pups, for example, respond to their mother’s mammary pheromone, 2-methylbut-2-enal ().
In addition to pheromones, mammals have signature mixtures, the complex smells unique to each individual, which are part genetic and part acquired. It is this combination of variability and learning that sets signature mixtures apart from pheromones (See my essay in ).
There may be debate about the statistics of menstrual synchrony in humans, but the physiological evidence that there may be a so far unidentified pheromone in women’s underarm secretions that can affect other women, especially their menstrual cycles, still stands.
Richard Doty writes:
鈥� In I showed, case by case, how major claims of the identification of pheromones are not reproducible, or are based on findings in which learning or novelty play the primary role, or point to chemicals that fall short of truly or uniquely mimicking the actual behavioural or endocrine processes observed in normal circumstances.
Military innovation
Henrik Tschudi proposes that scientists pledge not to do research that would be harmful to life on Earth, taking into account all possible applications (13 March, p 26). This could eliminate most scientific projects.
The internet was invented by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency for military communications. Battlefield injuries lead to medical advances, funded by the military with the primary purpose of saving soldiers’ lives and limbs. Nuclear power technology was originally funded by 鈥� you guessed it 鈥� the US Department of Defense.
Conversely, the pledge would bar such non-military research as pharmaceutical development, medical technology, automotive and aviation research, and, of course, all computer technology, because the possible applications include military uses.
Neuroscience ethics
Curtis Bell asks us to refuse to participate in the application of neuroscience to goals that violate human rights and international law (6 February, p 24). This has sparked an important and overdue discussion among neuroscientists concerning the “dark side” of our field.
Cognitive and affective neuroscience have come of age and are now of practical interest in many fields involving human behaviour, including business, education, law and, as Bell reminds us, warfare. But drugs which enhance the effectiveness of soldiers, to give just one example, can also enhance anyone working under fatigue and stress, including soldiers on rescue operations and surgeons on night call.
Like Bell, I am against wars of aggression, but I believe that we should mobilise against them as citizens, rather than refuse, as neuroscientists, to develop technologies that can help peacekeepers and rescue workers. More good can be done by increasing transparency in neuroscience research and by raising awareness among scientists and the public of its social impact.
Free will and blame
As Holly Anderson describes Eliezer Sternberg’s book My Brain Made Me Do It, both seem concerned about the problem of free will, but then speak of moral responsibility (27 March, p 50).
Confusion between blame and responsibilty often muddies the discussion of such issues. If I were to hurt another person I would undoubtedly be responsible.
Whether my choice of action was determined by my genes, my nurturing, my culture, my neurons, God, the devil, or little green men from Alpha Centauri, it would be my hands committing the deed. Regardless of the physical and chemical processes that underlie our choices, our decisions will in some part be determined by our genetics, our nurturing and feedback from previous decisions.
The freedom I have to make decisions is probably quite small 鈥� otherwise I wouldn’t continue to make the same bad decisions over and over again for most of my life. I don’t believe anyone is to blame for their actions; yet I hold them all fully responsible.
Thus I make amends for the times when I hurt others, and would like others to do the same. I would like to live in a society with a legal system that also seeks to do the same, rather than one intent on punishing people 鈥� which seems to be more about appeasing the “moral” indignation of others than finding solutions to society’s problems.
Trojan wars
You advise readers to click on a link in an email only if it comes from a trusted contact (20 March, p 20). Never click on such links. You should copy the linked address and paste it into a plain-text editor, and learn how to examine it for suspicious signs.
Mostly, it will be harmless. But one time your trusted contact will have had their computer hacked, and it will have sent emails to everyone in their address book. Following the link in that email may take you to a site that in turn hacks into your machine, and makes it send emails to all your contacts.
For the record
鈥� The medical TV drama that included 85 instances of sexual misconduct was Grey’s Anatomy, not House (3 April, p 5).
鈥� The designer of antennas for robot submarines is Jake Piskura, not Piscura (27 March, p 56).
鈥� Edward Witten would be better described as “string theory’s leading architect” than as its founder (13 March, p 28). Its founders include Gabriele Veneziano (2 September 2006, p 28) and Yoichiro Nambu and Jeffrey Goldstone (10 April 1999, p 32).