52 | NewScientist | 3 November 2018[email protected] @newscientist newscientist
LETTERSDon’t forget the lunar
elephant in the roomFrom Guy Cox, St Albans, New
South Wales, Australia
Douglas Heaven looks at why we
haven’t yet detected intelligent
life elsewhere (6 October, p 15).
The main point, that we haven’t
yet looked widely enough, is
clearly valid.
But Heaven also mentions
another point: that Earth may
be somehow unusual in its
ability to harbour intelligent life.
Here’s the elephant in the room.
Yes, Earth is unusual – it has a
moon that is very large in relation
to the planet’s size.
That is unlikely to have affected
the evolution of life, which
probably occurred in water. Any
life elsewhere that is even vaguely
Earth-like would also have evolved
in water. But the tides created by
our large moon facilitated theFrom Krista Nelson,
Rokeby, Tasmania, Australia
Clare Wilson reports on disagreements
over whether antidepressants work
(6 October, p 34). It seems to me that
more emphasis should be placed
on treating depression as a suite
of conditions rather than a single
condition with a single treatment.EDITOR’S PICKSome people seem to hold that if
a drug doesn’t work for everybody,
then it is useless and shouldn’t be
prescribed at all. In fact, whether a
drug works is a very individual thing
and many people with depression
spend the first year trialling different
drugs until they find the one that
works for them.
This process tends to be entirely
horrible – so it is good to know that
scientists are now working on tests
to predict which drugs will be best
for each person.
Wilson also mentions that more
women than men are diagnosed with
depression or anxiety. I strongly
suspect that women are more likely
to be misdiagnosed with these
conditions when in fact they have
other serious illnesses, from chronic
fatigue to heart disease.Depression is not just one condition
movement of life on to land.
Without those tides, life, however
intelligent, is likely to remain
aquatic. Aquatic civilisations
would have no use for radio
waves, so by searching for radio
transmissions SETI is simply
looking in the wrong place.You don’t have to be
literate to be publishedFrom Anthony Forbes,
Durban, South Africa
Fred Pearce speculates on whether
a present-day journal would
publish a paper submitted by a
janitor with no formal education,
like James Croll, discoverer of how
ice ages happen (25 August, p 34).
Philip Stander, the author of
Vanishing Kings: Lions of the
Namib desert, collaborated with
the Ju/’Hoansi people of north-
eastern Namibia to study the
melding of tranquilliser darthttp://www.galaxyonglass.com
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