A recent news item discussed the use of virtual reality glasses on mice to see how they react to swooping birds. It’s not that complicated, they are scared, and they will either be killed or not in the next minute or so and having that on screen repeat is not very nice.

There are times when the world of science confuses me and even disappoints me and that is after forty years of telling students how wonderful science is and that they should follow it as a career.

Perhaps if scientists concentrated on some of the big issues, stopping cancer, improved food production and stopping climate change we would have a better world and more regard for those scientists.

Dennis Fitzgerald,
Melbourne, Australia