Margaret Pritchard (The Australian, Last Post, 31/12) would have it that a British brain study has shown “greater development in the conservatives and a certain thickness in the leftists”. What she omits is that the leftists’ “thickness” is a measure of a part of the brain concerned with complex rational cognitive function, and the conservative “development” is in a part associated with primitive emotional reactions – obviously rendering them unable to correctly interpret scientific studies. Like those on, say, climate.