26 | New Scientist | 1 June 2019
Challenges of functional
neurological disorder6 April, p 28
From Jon Stone, Amanda Payne,
Jamie Lacelle and Mark Edwards,
Edinburgh, UK
Your recent article on functional
neurological disorder shed
welcome light on a common,
disabling and distressing
condition. But, as patients
and health professionals who
participated in the article, we felt
let down and upset by the choice
of titles in the printed version:
“Mind over matter – How you
can think yourself sick... and
well again” and “Mind tricks”.
These imply old-fashioned
ideas of “imaginary” or “made-up”
illness purely in the domain of
the mind, not modern ideas that
include a brain perspective, which
the article discussed. They suggest,
wrongly, that patients can easily
think themselves out of their
symptoms. It is a challenge to
develop non-dualistic language to
navigate the fine line dividing fact
from stigmatising stereotypes.
You can find more information
at neurosymptoms. org,
FNDHope. org and
FNDAction. org. uk.Why do we tolerate the
internet of broken things?11 May, p 23
From Paul Bowden,
Nottingham, UK
Chris Stokel-Walker describes
the nightmare of not being able tomake a cup of tea while your kettle
updates itself. This does raise an
important question: why do we
put up with things that are so
badly engineered that they need
fixes after we have bought them?
A bicycle maker that had to visit
your house to fit new wheels would
soon go out of business. So why do
we put up with this for software-
controlled gadgets? Isn’t every vital
update admitting poor design?This looks like evidence
of Chinese snooping4 May, p 11
From Chris Clark,
Houston, Texas, US
You say there is no evidence that
Chinese network equipment firm
Huawei has mishandled data. But,
for example, Le Monde reported
last year that equipment installed
in the Chinese-built headquarters
of the African Union in AddisAbaba, Ethiopia, transmitted data
every night from midnight to 2 am
to servers in Shanghai. Bloomberg
News then reported that after this
was discovered, Huawei servers in
the building were replaced.Another mystery of that
first black hole picture20 April, p 6
From Hans Christensen,
Copenhagen, Denmark
You discuss big questions that we
still must answer after making the
first image of a black hole system.
One of the mysteries, for me, is
how the shadow of the black hole
appears. I realise that the halo of
radiation around the black hole
itself is asymmetrical because of
the rotation of the accretion disc.
But how does the shadow of the
black hole step out in front? Would
the image still be black in the
middle if seen from other angles?The editor writes:
The researchers clarify that
any gas in front of the black hole
produces some light that reaches
us, but the current set-up can
detect only that it is 10 times
dimmer than the ring. Also,
we are looking almost down the
axis of the accretion disc – the best
estimate is 17 degrees off the pole.The extraordinary energy
of a 1-gram star probe13 April, p 32
From John Fewster,
London, UK
You report a plan to send a
swarm of 1-gram devices towards
Alpha Centauri at 20 per cent of
light speed. Each will have kinetic
energy equivalent to half a kiloton
of TNT explosive, comparable to a
small nuclear device. Any entity
on the receiving end may get the
wrong message.Views You r le t te r s