Elephants, donkeys, and rats - Letters - Letter to the Editor

Science News, April 26, 2003

"Dirty RATS: Campaign ad may have swayed voters subliminally" (SN: 2/22/03, p. 116) fails to mention the very plausible explanation that was offered at the time by those who produced the Republican campaign ad. Namely, that they were using a graphics-software program that produces the effect in question for any word. The validity of the research isn't affected by whether the appearance of "rats" in this manner was deliberate or not, but the validity of statements made in presenting this research certainly is. Talk of "negative campaigning" implicitly accuses the Republicans of deliberate use of subliminal messages, but that has never been established

VINCENT FITZPATRICK, MANVEL, N.D.

In the article, the string XXXX is called "a presumably neutral nonword." But the string XXX is standard for "poisonous," and a string of Xs is symbolic for what is crossed out or forbidden. Another example is the X- to XXXX-rated movie.

ELIHU LUBKIN, SHOREWOOD, WIS.

Researcher Joel Weinberger says that XXXX has been used in previous studies by many researchers. He admits, however, that he didn't think of the adultmovie connotation of XXXX. Future research may instead use strings of random letters.--S. PERKINS