Letters archive

I am wondering whether "autism" is a single condition. Your article on concerns about diagnosis in girls and women reports at least two patterns: one commonly found in males and one in females. I interpret them as follows: male-pattern autism has underactivity in the social brain, whereas female-pattern autism has overactivity in it. We don't …

The problem with saying autism is underdiagnosed in girls is that, as Gina Rippon mentions, there is no known biomarker, so it is only recognised behaviourally. If it is defined by behaviour, then if girls behave in a different way, why say they are autistic? We should probably find a different term.

Researcher Jess Maddox is right: the distinction between smartphones and social media isn't just pedantry. The social disruption happens because each person who uses algorithmic social media apps is being shown content tailored to keep that individual angry and acquisitive, and because users can be vile and threatening without negative consequences. Then the angry people …

How exciting, I thought, seeing the headline "Pregnancy's lasting effects", as I have never come across anything on this aspect of breastfeeding. But producing breast milk wasn't mentioned. For those of us who did this for years, it would be good to know if it had a lasting effect ( 5 April, p 19 ).

The idea of "honest placebos" isn't new. New Scientist reported they were effective against irritable bowel syndrome ( 9 March 2016 ). They have appeared in fiction, too. In Stephen King's It , Eddie finds out his asthma inhaler contains a placebo, but continues to use it ( 5 April, p 20 ).

In my 70-plus years on this planet, no one I met or whose film review I read who "loved the book" ever liked the movie version. No director will ever display what your imagination found in "your" book because literature and cinema are very different art forms. Dashed hopes are pretty much unavoidable. Simon Ings's …

I enjoyed Rowan Hooper's piece imagining the future use of mechanical avatars on Mars. However, an important factor was missed: distance. Currently, communication can go no faster than light speed, which means that any instruction from a human host on Earth to an avatar on Mars would take at least several minutes to arrive, and …

You underplayed the carnage being wrought on world-class US science by the actions of Donald Trump and Elon Musk as they pull plugs on whole institutions and their labs. I ask readers to spare a thought for hard-working US scientists with invaluable troves of data that are about to be lost to the world in …

You report that warming soils "could" sequester more carbon than we thought, offsetting some of the carbon release expected as climate change alters peat bogs and permafrost. And an earlier article says the contribution of large animals to carbon removal "may have" been underestimated ( 29 March, p 39 ). While there might be some …

If thousands of quakes are rocking the northern part of Mars during its summer, then, presumably, only its southern hemisphere may be a relatively safe place to establish a self-sustaining human mission. Hopefully this has been taken into account in any plan for a Mars community ( 22 March, p 13 ).

Wind farms creating regions of lower air speeds for neighbouring turbine clusters shows that decisions on building such facilities must be made by bodies acting in national and international interests, not by firms acting for private profit ( 12 April, p 11 ).