Silver Jacket

Category: Science

  • Not Off the Presses

    For each of the three press releases below, all put out today, guess which summary was provided by EurekAlert and which was not.

    Bully Saliva clue to chronic bullying

    A) Saliva in children's hair may be a biological indicator of the trauma kids undergo when they are chronically bullied by peers, according to researchers who say permanent markers can also aid in the early creation of long-term psychological effects on youth.

    B) Hormones in children's saliva may be a biological indicator of the trauma kids undergo when they are chronically bullied by peers, according to researchers who say biological markers can aid in the early recognition and intervention of long-term psychological effects on youth.

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  • Unnatural Selection

    RunawayjuryI’ve got a feature article in the current issue of Psychology Today. It examines the methods, efficacy, and ethics of jury selection consulting, which is sometimes branded as a science but often more closely resembles a dark art.

    Legendary attorney Clarence Darrow once argued, "Almost every case has been won or lost when the jury is sworn." In the most important trend- and precedent-setting cases, attorneys leave nothing to chance. A trial of one’s peers? Nah. Jury consulting rakes in hundreds of millions of dollars a year, a significant portion of which goes to stacking the jury. Consultants stage mock trials, do drive-bys of potential jurors’ homes, and enlist body-language experts to intuit potential jurors’ moods, personalities, and deepest secrets. (Stealth jurors–the ones secretly plotting to push an agenda or nab a book deal–are notoriously hard to weed out.)

    For this story, in addition to researchers and lawyers, I interviewed the top-dollar consultants who helped select the juries for the trials involving OJ Simpson, Scott Peterson, Rodney King, Ken Lay, Vioxx, and other big clients. One of these gurus, Jo-Ellan Dimitrius, has even been personally blamed for the LA riots. Yes, the practice of jury selection is evolving, becoming more rigorous and sophisticated thanks to social scientists and statisticians, but it’s still largely based on gut and chance. And sometimes all it takes is a juror with hemorrhoids to throw off your whole game.

    [A few of the blogs that have picked up on the story so far:
    Arts & Letters Daily
    3 Quarks Daily
    The Situationist
    Neuroethics & Law Blog
    Psychology and Crime News
    Deliberations]

  • Weird Science

    Part of my job is skimming tons of science journals and separating the Easter eggs from the chaff. And some of those eggs smell kinda funny. Here are the top 10 paper titles I've encountered in the last six months.

    Evilmonkey10. "Reinforcing effects of smoked methamphetamine in rhesus monkeys" (Psychopharmacology)

    Where the hell does one find monkeys who know how to smoke meth? Oh, from the abstract: "Materials and methods  Four rhesus monkeys were trained to smoke cocaine (COC)… Upon observing stable levels of self-administration, METH was substituted for COC". Not. Cool.

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  • Step 3: Don’t open the box.

    Schrodingers_catUsually my coworkers and I are too busy at the office to use IM for anything non-work-related, but occasionally it serves as a virtual water cooler, like yesterday.

    matt: how was your date
    matt: is that why you were late
    jay: no, i had a doctor's appointment this morning.
    matt: was the doc appt related to the date?
    jay: i wish.
    carlin: there's a male morning after pill now?
    matt: it seeks out and destroys your sperm wherever it happens to be
    carlin: it's a homing and killing device.
    jay: yeah. the guy takes the pill, the woman's pregnancy terminates.
    jay: does your sperm have to be pre-installed with self-destruct devices?
    matt: no the spewed sperm are quantum-entangled with your remaining sperm. it reads those.
    carlin: bingo
    jay: "quantum entangled" – i'm not familiar with that term.
    matt: simple physics.
    jay: yeah, sounds real simple
    matt: collapse of the wave function, etc.
    carlin: it's a sperm, it's a particle…
    matt: it's a spermicle
    matt: we should do a charticle on spermicles
    jay: and how does it work? the man swallows a pill?
    carlin: it's a spermcicle
    carlin: yum
    jay: or he goes to the window and releases it?
    matt: he jacks off into a black box
    matt: with a cat in it

    EPILOGUE

    Jay laughs so loudly at this that another coworker asks Jay to share with the group.
    jay: what should i say?
    matt: MAKE SOMETHING UP
    jay: give me something!
    Carlin distracts the coworker with a question about the flowers on her desk.
    carlin: drop it
    matt: um, tell her you found a picture of a monkey that looks like a dog
    jay: should i seriously forward that to her?
    carlin: no drop it!!!!
    matt: looks like she's over it
    jay: ok. thanks. nice work, carlin.

  • Failed Scoop

    KittLast week’s TIME magazine reminded me of one of the best and one of the worst things about working at a magazine with such a long lead time (the bimonthly Psychology Today.) Here’s a large chunk of the mini-story titled "MINI-PIMP IS MAD" on page 18* of TIME’s December 4 issue:

    "If you spot a car sporting the license plate LOLITA or MINI-PIMP, change lanes. Psychologists at Colorado State University have found that people who give their car a name or gender are more likely to express road rage … So if you come across the SWEAT-BOX OF DEATH–a name actually given by one of the study’s participants to his Ford Bronco–steer clear."

    That’s really interesting. Especially because it’s not true. Here, let me quote the actual research paper:

    (more…)

  • Gift of Gab

    ZooWhile reading about Willams syndrome, I found this:

    One thing [Salk Institute neurolinguist Ursula] Bellugi has documented is the peculiar richness of the Williams child’s vocabulary. For example, when she asked a child with Down syndrome to name all the animals he could think of, the reply was "Dogs, cats, fish, bird, fish." A Williams child of the same age and IQ answered, "Brontosaurus, tyranadon, brontasaurus rex, dinosaurs, elephant, dog, cat, lion, baby hippopotamus, ibex, whale, bull, yak, zebra, puppy, kitten, tiger, koala, dragon."

    If I ever build a zoo I will hire a zoo director with Williams syndrome.

  • Kall and Response

    Nytimes_ketamine

    Washpo_ketamine_1Yesterday the New York Times science section asked, "What is vitamin K good for, and where can it be found?"

    As if reading their minds, on the same day the Washington Post style section wrote, "Ketamine, sweet ketamine, answer to our glutamatergic dreams."

    Let me elaborate. What is K good for?
    A. Chillaxing / Seeing God (depending on dosage.)
    B. Anesthetizing animals, children, and the elderly. (It’s very safe because it doesn’t depress respiration. It’s not used more widely because of occasional side effects; see above.)
    C. Here’s the news: Treating depression.

    A paper published in the August issue of Archives of General Psychiatry shows that administering sub-psychedelic amounts of ketamine can have antidepressant effects that begin within two hours and last two weeks. Wickid.

    At first I didn’t notice that paper when the August Archives came across my desk. Either because it was unremarkably titled "A randomized trial of an N-methyl-D-aspartate antagonist in treatment-resistant major depression" instead of "Injecting fucking special K makes you trip balls AND totally puts you on cloud nine." Or because we got Oprah Magazine that day. (My job requires that I cast a wide eye on news and trends. Have you seen Oprah’s new hair? OMG.)

    Once I read the study I spotted a mighty confusing line though: "Adverse effects [included]… perceptual disturbances… euphoria… and increased libido." Reminded me of that old Ali G segment where he asks a narcotics agent about hash:

    Ali G: And what is its effects?
    Guy: You can go paranoid, which means you think people or things are coming at you. It makes your heart race. Your blood pressure can go low, so you can feel a bit woozy sometimes. It’s got a lot of medical effects on the body.
    Ali G: And is there any negative effects?

    Bottom line: I’m not sure I’m getting my biweekly recommended dosage of vitamin K. I can’t wait for the chewable Flinstoner version to come out.

    Related: The side effects of vitamin R.

  • Furries are made, not born.

    Gorping

    I’m tempted to let that just sit there, without comment.

    But all you furries out there might waste countless hours searching the nets for the missing frames that would show this "gorping" action more explicitly.

    Cool your jets (and put your dry cleaner on hold.) It’s merely a depiction of a video shown to a set of two-year-old test subjects: Fig. 1 from a paper titled "Learning Words and Rules: Abstract Knowledge of Word Order in Early Sentence Comprehension" in the August issue of Psychological Science. Who knew grammar could be so kinky?

    But seriously, if you want to find gorping, just ask Moby.

    Update: My dear advice-giving friend Liz has now opined on the origin of the furry friend trend. More generally, she advocates:

    I Would Vote for a president who runs on anti-meme. How does it work? It works on the same principle as a hybrid — it stores up potential energy. Every time you stop yourself from creating a delightful and idiotic social trend, the energy gets stored in a battery. That battery is around eight pounds, and the presidential hopeful runs around with it, hitting people.

  • On the Money

    Leary2A review of the new biography of Timothy Leary appearing in the Times today includes the following paragraph:

    In a twist that could have occurred only in 1970, a consortium of drug dealers paid the Weather Underground to spring Leary from the California Men’s Colony at San Luis Obispo — he pulled himself along a telephone cable over the fence, then was picked up by a car — and transport him to Algeria. He duly issued a press statement written in the voice of the Weathermen, the money line of which was: "To shoot a genocidal robot policeman in the defense of life is a sacred act." [emphasis mine]

    The last time I recall seeing someone use that terminology in reference to a piece of writing’s spunkiest moment was in my own hand, aimed at an article I wrote in 2003 for a national physics lab’s magazine. Sending the link to a fellow writer, I wrote, "Be sure to read the final graf for the money shot."

    What was it?

    [LA Times science journalist K.C.] Cole proudly told me what Dava Sobel, author of Longitude and Galileo’s Daughter, said of her once. "’K.C. Cole is our ambassador to the realms of the exceedingly strange.’" Couldn’t one say the same of 60’s psychonaut Timothy Leary, the Harvard scientist who explored the far reaches of experience with psychotropic drugs in search of insight? Cole laughed. "But my exceedingly strange realm is the universe," she said. "It’s the real stuff. That’s what’s so amazing about it. The universe itself is much more amazing than anything Timothy Leary ever saw. I don’t care what he was on."

    And personally, I think the money shot in the Times piece was its title: "The Nutty Professor." Ahem.

  • Guts

    LogobodyLast week in New York I went to BODIES…The Exhibition, one of those human cadaver plastination exhibits derived from Gunther von Hagens’ Body Worlds. Among my favorite stops on the anatomical tour was the last–the body of work comprising glimpses of visitors’ psychological anatomies. At a table with chairs sat big binders filled with white pages inviting comment. Rather than add to the compendium, I sat and read. In just that one day, hundreds of people had shared their inner thoughts on the thoughtless innards they’d witnessed.

    A few notes on the exhibition: most bodies displayed were male. One room featured fetuses and infants in various stages of development, including one still housed in its mother, revealed by way of cutaway. The bodies all come from China, some donated but most unclaimed.

    Some comments raised political or ethical concerns. Should people be displayed after death without consent? Should female bodies have been used to illustrate more than just sexual reproduction (or, in one case, obesity)?

    Some comments were emotional. One woman wrote that she had had an abortion and became choked up when she reached the fetus room. She requested that all women considering abortion visit the exhibit.

    And, unsurprisingly, many comments were inane. "Chuck Norris can slam a revolving door." "Maiden Rulez." "Chinks are dumb and have small dicks."

    But below are four of my favorites.

    To many wangs. [Double entendre?]
    To many dead baby’s.

    I should not have seen this.
    Sorry.
    Dave

    Some of it looked like chicken.
    mmmmm  lol

    It was cool and interesting but it made me sick and dizzy and I almost cried.
    Call me.
    [phone number redacted]