6 Scientific American, June 2022
DEDICATED READER
I have been reading Scientific American
since I was in high school. I am now 90
years old and a longtime subscriber. The
February 2022 issue is one of the richest
ever. I just handed it to my daughter, the
mother of a 13-year-old, to read the articles
on teaching kids to spot disinformation in
media [“Schooled in Lies,” by Melinda
Wenner Moyer] and on how people often
(wrongly) jump to conclusions [“Leaps of
Confusion,” by Carmen Sanchez and David
Dunning]. I read with enjoyment the arti-
cles on new research on the skills of Nean-
dertals [“Neandertals Like Us,” by David W.
Frayer and Davorka Radovˇci ́c] and how the
promise of technological progress can con-
ceal major costs and dangers [“Breaking the
Techno-Promise,” by Naomi Oreskes; Ob-
servatory]. And I ordered two books you re-
viewed in Recommended.
Marion Buhagiar
White River Junction, Vt.
SOURCES OF CONFUSION
“Schooled in Lies,” Melinda Wenner Moy-
er’s article about teaching schoolkids to dis-
tinguish among different kinds of informa-
tion to protect them from disinformation,
covers a topic that is dear to my heart, al-
though one for which I have little hope. As
part of my high school chemistry class, I
had students do a project on the safety of
the artificial sweetener aspartame. I came
to realize two things: The first is that assess-
ing the validity of primary information on
many topics is beyond most people’s capa-
bilities. As a Ph.D. biochemist, I may be able
to do so more than some others, but there
are many topics that I am unqualified to an-
alyze. The second is that we must therefore
choose a source whose analysis we accept.
Consequently, I added a part to the assign-
ment asking why the students chose to ac-
cept, to trust, one source or another.
I observed that many of my stronger stu-
dents chose to accept institutional sources,
such as the American Cancer Society or the
Food and Drug Administration, whereas
many of my weaker students chose to ac-
cept more personal sources and stories. I
wish I had more systematically collected the
data, but these observations led me to hy-
pothesize that those who prosper within a
system tend to accept the system as trust-
worthy. Those who do not prosper so well
tend to be more skeptical of the system, in-
stead choosing to accept their own experi-
ences or those of others known to them.
The article quotes journalism and me-
dia studies researcher Seth Ashley as not-
ing “that the world is messy, and that’s okay,”
but that is also what makes our choice of
whose perspective to trust so challenging.
There will always be reason to question one
source or another. Maybe the best we can
do is get to the point where students recog-
nize the mess and, because of that, recog-
nize that they could be wrong.
Russell Kohnken Skokie, Ill.NUCLEAR DEFENSE
Regarding Naomi Oreskes’s assertion that
nuclear energy cannot help our climate cri-
sis in “Breaking the Techno-Promise” [Ob-
servatory], I agree that nuclear plants have
not lived up to their promise so far. As she
notes, they take too long to build and bring
online and are too expensive. And they re-
sult in high electricity costs. But I am sur-
prised at the pessimism, given the urgent
need to do something. New nuclear tech-
nologies are evolving, such as multiplesmaller modular plants that don’t take so
long to build. Renewables are critical but
will never be enough to replace fossil fuels.
Nuclear fusion is too expensive and far
away. We need the political will to put a
price on carbon and build smaller and saf-
er reactors. Giving up is not an option.
Steve Mueller Colorado Springs, Colo.Even though it’s long term, nuclear energy
development should be a high priority. As
a retired engineer, I understand the exten-
sive effort required for the completion of ef-
ficient, economical nuclear electricity sta-
tions. Technology improvements, develop-
ment engineering and construction time
must be planned for and underway now.
For the short term, we must use the sus-
tainable technology of wind and photovol-
taic farms and eliminate fossil-fuel subsi-
dies. Also, let’s add a federal tax on gasoline
and reduce the dependence on transporta-
tion via Eisenhower-era highways with
more use of our mass-transit systems.
Don Finan, Sr. Palos Park, Ill.SPACETIME EXPERIMENT
Reading Adam Becker’s riveting article on
“The Origins of Space and Time” remind-
ed me of when I was a high school student
in Los Angeles in 1965 and read about two
students at the University of California, Los
Angeles, who were challenged by their sci-
ence professor to devise a theory on time
and space, complete with an example.
The two students took folding chairs to
a street in nearby downtown Westwood,
Calif., and sat in a vacant parking space for
an hour after depositing the required coins
in a parking meter. They subsequently
wrote a report to their professor on what
they had done, concluding, “In order to oc-
cupy space, you must first have time.”
Doug Weiskopf Burbank, Calif.THE FIX IS IN
I was glad to read “Freedom to Tinker” [Fo-
rum], Kyle Wiens’s informative opinionFebruary 2022
LETTERS
[email protected]
“We need the political will to put a price on
carbon and build smaller and safer nuclear
reactors. Giving up is not an option.”
steve mueller colorado springs, colo.