Is this article for real? What atrocious logic. This isn't prejudice, this is people recognising the damn obvious. What are people meant to do? Look a photo of Robert Mugabe for instance, and an ape, and say "Oh, no, I don't see any similarity whatsoever". The sooner we stop seeing racism and prejudice everywhere, the better.

Tom Franklin, London, UK

I'm with Dr. Roddy Campbell of New Zealand. People are people. Period. If we could just harness and appropriately use all of the emotional, physical, and mental energy devoted to trying to find negative differences in humans we would then have discovered an incredible source of power.

Noni Bigelow, Delton, USA

You should hear what we po'folk think of Ivy League college students. To say that "Americans" think anything based of a study of underclassmen from this or that college or university is so grossly idiotic as to be, well, idiotic. What have we become? We have more Ph.D.'s in the world today than ever before, and we seem to be devolving into who-know's-what. Isn't it time for another Ice Age? We need to go back to basics and scrape the Northern Hemisphere down to bedrock once again. Yes! The "Study" about money causing cancer was much better.

M.Murray, Huntsville, AL/USA

30 years ago I was at Cornell Univeristy when a cancer scare broke out. The headline read "Money causes Cancer". A researcher had ground up some coins and injected them under the skins of rats. The rats developed tumours - so, hey presto! Money Causes Cancer. People believed it. Checkout operators demanded (and received) gloves to handle cash safely.

Of course it was a joke - any alien substance injected like this is likely to cause tumours. A researcher was exposing how easily dumb experiments can be made to prove anything.

Extrapolating white racism from "hazy sketches of apes" seems even less plausible to me. At least "money causes cancer" has a kind of poetic truth to it.

Tom Kinninmont, London, UK

I thought all races originated from tribes in Kenya
Its not possible to genetically delineate between different races in the world today.

About 98% of the genetic code is identical in EVERY single human being that has ever lived. In other words the remianing 2% of the Genetic code can account for every difference in every human being that has ever lived.

We are all from the same seed

(Anjana Ahuja is lovely isn't she)

Peter, Melbourne, Australia

This "research" comes from Stanford?! Isn't that the university central to the development of electronics in the mid-twentieth century and the internet in the 80s and 90s? Say it ain't so!

Jim Connors, Durham,

prejudice is a two way street. I am white and living in America. White Americans aren't the only ones with prejudice. I have experienced it many times. Lately I seem to find it more in young black Americians have a hatered towards white people.

I am over 50 and grew up when the Civil Rights movement was front page news. When Doctor King died the movement changed and not for the better. We have a black man running for President but there is worse poverty and education then there was 40 years ago. I don't know the reason, but it is sad.

Bill Smith, Philadelphia, PA/ USA

Morgan Freeman (actor) states that referring to people as "black" or "white" is inherently polarizing and therefore racist. He would like to remove the polarizing "black" and "white" references altogether. But what would all the polarizing psychology professors do then? Mr. Freeman is a very wise man. No?

M, Rochester Hills,

What a shame. As one who has been in action I don't mind what colour they are so long as they are on my side!

James, Chelsea,

The short answer to that is that I would far rather be descended from apes than from people who think like that.

What's so terrible about apes, anyway? Are they not better than so many people?

Ganpat Ram , London , UK

I don't want to be nasty. but I would like to put one simple question to white people:

Are you absolutely confident your general physical appearance elicits envy from blacks?

Just a question, just a question.

George Orwell, wise man, once wrote that he felt sorry for white people with their rough red skins after getting to know the smooth-skinned Burmese.

Just a thought. Don't get mad.

Ganpat Ram , London , UK

I try and work from the premise that all people are pink inside and that is what counts.

A recent C4 program on inner city gun crime highlighted the fact that while the majority of the perpetrators and victims in London were black, in similar povety ridden estates in Glasgow, the majority were white.

Marc, Harrow, Uk

Given that one of the best ways of calculating how racist a population are is to measure the levels of marriage outside of their group you will find that in reality it is your race whom are the most racist Dr Ahuja, and that white people are the least racist of all.

David Hill, St Andrews, UK

The mind boggles how such "studies" receive funding, and how articles such as the one above, are given credence in the Times.

I'm sure if you flashed pictures of polar bears then the opposite would happen, and people would identify it quicker with white people. Also, notice how they target their chose "hate" group, ie, white males- I wonder if they did similar studies with Chinese, South Asians, Arabs etc would similar results also have emerged- undoubtedly they would.


Ludicrous article

Ray Blair, Belfast,

I had to have a rather cynical grin at Anjana Ahuja’s suggestion that America might soon elect their first ’black president’. I felt the same when I watched Halle Berry trilling away about being the first black actress to win the Oscar and then the cameras panned over to her mother - a blond white woman apparently from Liverpool. How odd that person of mixed race, Obama’s mother and dominant influence in his life was a white woman from Kansas, claims to be black. I can only assume that in America, it’s a greater advantage, both politically and economically, to claim total black ancestry.

Sean Dunne, Louth, UK

So, black people look more like apes than white people. Because...they're black and so are apes,,, and have facial features that are more similar to apes. And white people look more like polar bears than black people. So what? Ugly people look uglier than beautiful people. Chinese people look yellower than black people. Teutonic people look more like white mice than Cambodians... and it goes on. So what? What really matters is that all of these people are people: not polar bears, orang-utangs or duckbilled platypi. Vive la difference! and celebrate the exciting (and, it seems, just discovered) fact that we are not all clones. The only racists are: 1. Those who take personal offence at research like this, or feel it is depressing (unless they are concerned purely with the methodology). and 2: Those who judge a man by his appearance more than his behaviour.

Dr Roddy Campbell, Christchurch, New Zealand

I don't understand why anyone would find it remotely necessary or desirable to publish the alleged 'results' of quite such unedifying and needlessly conceived 'research'. The ugliness is in it being found worthy of any editorial attention at all.

Juliet Pain, Monmouth, Wales, UK

yes this is a most depressing piece of research. (whites associate blacks with apes) what is depressing is that such a badly constructed, poorly thought out, slipshod piece of biased nonsense was given the benefit of being called scientific research. i just wonder if this so called research would stand up to a thorough statistical analysis. i very much doubt it.

Dr Kevin Law, Dundee, UK