Social Science posts
- March 29, 2010
- 07:39 PM
- 1,121 views
What causes scientifc misconduct?
by Janet D. Stemwedel in Adventures in Ethics and Science (Sb)
In the last post, we looked at a piece of research on how easy it is to clean up the scientific literature in the wake of retractions or corrections prompted by researcher misconduct in published articles. Not surprisingly, in the comments on that post there was some speculation about what prompts researchers to commit scientific misconduct in the first place.
As it happens, I've been reading a paper by Mark S. Davis, Michelle Riske-Morris, and Sebastian R. Diaz, titled "Causal Factors Implicated in Research Misconduct: Evidence from ORI Case Files", that tries to get a handle on that very question.
The authors open by making a pitch for serious empirical work on the subject of misconduct:
[P]olicies intended to prevent and control research misconduct would be more effective if informed by a more thorough understanding of the problem's etiology. (396)
If you know what causes X, you ought to have a better chance of being able to create conditions that block X from being caused. This seems pretty sensible to me.
Yet, the authors note, scientists, policy makers, and others seem perfectly comfortable speculating on the causes of scientific misconduct despite the lack of a well-characterized body of relevant empirical evidence about these causes. We have plenty of anecdata, but that's not quite what we'd like to have to ground our knowledge claims. Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...... Read more »
Davis, M., Riske-Morris, M., & Diaz, S. (2007) Causal Factors Implicated in Research Misconduct: Evidence from ORI Case Files. Science and Engineering Ethics, 13(4), 395-414. DOI: 10.1007/s11948-007-9045-2
- March 29, 2010
- 04:28 PM
- 575 views
Shrink Shrank Shrunk
by Jan Husdal in husdal.com
A missed classic? Perhaps, because after reading this article I realized that this in many ways is a seminal paper. Rachel Mason-Jones and Dennis Towill are not unknown to me, and I’ve come across their names time and again, but this is probably the first time I delved more deeply into their research and their [ ... ]... Read more »
Mason-Jones, R., & Towill, D. (1998) Shrinking the supply chain uncertainty circle. IOM Control Magazine, 24(7). info:/
- March 28, 2010
- 11:40 AM
- 899 views
Transportation – the forgotten staple
by Jan Husdal in husdal.com
What a difference a title makes. I only found this article because it was referenced in another article. Why? Because it never occurred to me to search for articles on “risk” using “uncertainty” as a keyword. Bummer. Risk is undeniably linked to uncertainty, but I have never made that mental connection and never [ ... ]... Read more »
Rodrigues, V., Stantchev, D., Potter, A., Naim, M., & Whiteing, A. (2008) Establishing a transport operation focused uncertainty model for the supply chain. International Journal of Physical Distribution , 38(5), 388-411. DOI: 10.1108/09600030810882807
Bask, A. (2001) Relationships among TPL providers and members of supply chains – a strategic perspective. Journal of Business , 16(6), 470-486. DOI: 10.1108/EUM0000000006021
- March 28, 2010
- 08:27 AM
- 305 views
The State of the Art
by pm in The Poor Man's Smart Bomb
Crenshaw, M. (2007). “Explaining Suicide Terrorism: A Review Essay” Security Studies, 16 (1), 133-162 DOI: 10.1080/09636410701304580
This article by Martha Crenshaw was one of the reasons I got into my research topic. It was an important piece of analysis, pulling together the various strands which comprised an emerging area of research and injected a good deal [...]... Read more »
Crenshaw, M. (2007) "Explaining Suicide Terrorism: A Review Essay". Security Studies, 16(1), 133-162. DOI: 10.1080/09636410701304580
- March 27, 2010
- 10:15 PM
- 1,176 views
How hard is it to clean up the scientific literature?
by Janet D. Stemwedel in Adventures in Ethics and Science (Sb)
Science is supposed to be a project centered on building a body of reliable knowledge about the universe and how various pieces of it work. This means that the researchers contributing to this body of knowledge -- for example, by submitting manuscripts to peer reviewed scientific journals -- are supposed to be honest and accurate in what they report. They are not supposed to make up their data, or adjust it to fit the conclusion they were hoping the data would support. Without this commitment, science turns into creative writing with more graphs and less character development.
Because the goal is supposed to be a body of reliable knowledge upon which the whole scientific community can draw to build more knowledge, it's especially problematic when particular pieces of the scientific literature turn out to be dishonest or misleading. Fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism are varieties of dishonesty that members of the scientific community look upon as high crimes. Indeed, they are activities that are defined as scientific misconduct and (at least in theory) prosecuted vigorously.
You would hope that one consequence of identifying scientists who have made dishonest contributions to the scientific literature would be that those dishonest contributions would be removed from that literature. But whether that hope is realized is an empirical question -- one taken up by Anne Victoria Neale, Justin Northrup, Rhonda Dailey, Ellen Marks, and Judith Abrams in an article titled "Correction and use of biomedical literature affected by scientific misconduct" published in 2007 in the journal Science and Engineering Ethics. Here's how Neale et al. frame their research:
Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...... Read more »
Anne Victoria Neale, Justin Northrup, Rhonda Dailey, Ellen Marks, & Judith Abrams. (2007) Correction and use of biomedical literature affected by scientific misconduct . Science and Engineering Ethics, 5-24. info:/10.1007/s11948-006-0003-1
- March 27, 2010
- 10:02 PM
- 665 views
Relationship Breakdown Aggravates Male Suicide
by Ultimo167 in Strong Silent Types
Ide et al. (2010) think that we have much to learn about the psychosocial context in which relationships wither, and suicidal behaviours become a prominent concern.... Read more »
Ide, N., Wyder, M., Kolves, K., & De Leo, D. (2010) Separation as an Important Risk Factor for Suicide: A Systematic Review. Journal of Family Issues. DOI: 10.1177/0192513X10365317
- March 27, 2010
- 05:59 AM
- 688 views
Ménage à trois – the good, the bad and the ugly
by Jan Husdal in husdal.com
No, it’s not what you perhaps think it is...hidden affairs and luscious constellations in the supply chain. Well, maybe it is, depending on your point of view. What it technically speaking is about, in boring laymen terms is this: The 9 archetypes of buyer-supplier-relationships in triads. ... Read more »
CHOI, T., & WU, Z. (2009) TRIADS IN SUPPLY NETWORKS: THEORIZING BUYER-SUPPLIER-SUPPLIER RELATIONSHIPS. Journal of Supply Chain Management, 45(1), 8-25. DOI: 10.1111/j.1745-493X.2009.03151.x
- March 26, 2010
- 11:09 AM
- 516 views
Does Contact Cure Mental Illness Stigma?
by Ultimo167 in Strong Silent Types
A brief overview by West et al. (2010) on mental illness stigma, in which the authors call for more focused research to improve understanding of this most unpalatable social problem.... Read more »
West, K., Hewstone, M., & Holmes, E. (2010) Rethinking 'Mental Health Stigma'. The European Journal of Public Health, 20(2), 131-132. DOI: 10.1093/eurpub/ckq015
- March 25, 2010
- 06:20 PM
- 696 views
Humanitarian aid is better when decentralized
by Jan Husdal in husdal.com
Humanitarian operations rely heavily on logistics in uncertain, risky, and urgent contexts, making them a very different field of application for supply chain management principles than that of traditional businesses. Decentralization, pre-positioning and pooling of relief items are key success factors for dramatic improvements in humanitarian operations performance in disaster response and recovery. So say [ ... ]... Read more »
Gatignon, A., Van Wassenhove, L., & Charles, A. (2010) The Yogyakarta earthquake: Humanitarian relief through IFRC's decentralized supply chain. International Journal of Production Economics. DOI: 10.1016/j.ijpe.2010.01.003
- March 25, 2010
- 01:30 PM
- 934 views
Prayer, but not belief in the afterlife, reduces anxiety of sick people
It's clear that stressful situations can bring out the religious in people. What's not clear is whether turning to religion actually helps to relieve anxiety.Even less well understood is which, if any, aspects of religion are effective. Does the social support that comes with attending religious meetings help, or some other religious activity, or is it some facet of belief itself?Terrence Hill, at the University of Miami, and colleagues have looked at this using data from the US General Social Survey. Basically, they were looking to see what aspects of religion correlated with anxiety (health warning: these are just correlations. The effect could go either way).Unfortunately they don't tell us whether religious people are more or less anxious than the general population. But they do show that, after correcting for other factors that can affect anxiety (gender, wealth, ethnicity, etc), more religious people are a little bit less anxious(Even after including a number of demographic factors in their model, including religion, they could still only explain about 12% of the variation in anxiety between people - so clearly the major causes of anxiety lie elsewhere.)What they found was that church attendance was linked to a very small reduction in anxiety. Belief in the afterlife was linked to a somewhat larger reduction.However, people who believe that human nature is fundamentally perverse and corrupt (as opposed to basically good) tended to be slightly more anxious.With prayer, the results were more complex. What they found, first of all, was that people who prayed more often were neither more nor less anxious than people who don't pray.Digging a bit further, they found that prayer has different effects in different people. In people who have poor health, or whose finances have recently worsened, prayer significantly decreased anxiety. In people without these problems, prayer was linked to more anxiety.There was a similar interaction with belief in the afterlife and financial decline. Remarkably, however, belief in the afterlife did not reduce anxiety more in people whose health was poor. Perhaps they were not looking forward to meeting their maker!On a more serious note, this supports other evidence which suggests that religious beliefs are particularly valued by people looking for support in this world, rather than by hopes for a happy afterlife.Ellison CG, Burdette AM, & Hill TD (2009). Blessed assurance: religion, anxiety, and tranquility among US adults. Social science research, 38 (3), 656-67 PMID: 19856703 This article by Tom Rees was first published on Epiphenom. It is licensed under Creative Commons.
... Read more »
Ellison CG, Burdette AM, & Hill TD. (2009) Blessed assurance: religion, anxiety, and tranquility among US adults. Social science research, 38(3), 656-67. PMID: 19856703
- March 25, 2010
- 11:08 AM
- 856 views
What is the impact of strict population control?
by Dave in The Daily Monthly
We’ve discussed some of the problems with increasing population, particularly in poorer countries. But what do attempts to deal with those problems look like?
China has implemented a notorious “one-child” policy since 1979 — over thirty years. While most people agree that this policy is a serious violation of human rights, the example of China is [...]... Read more »
Hesketh T, Lu L, & Xing ZW. (2005) The effect of China's one-child family policy after 25 years. The New England journal of medicine, 353(11), 1171-6. PMID: 16162890
Zhu, W., Lu, L., & Hesketh, T. (2009) China's excess males, sex selective abortion, and one child policy: analysis of data from 2005 national intercensus survey. BMJ, 338(apr09 2). DOI: 10.1136/bmj.b1211
- March 25, 2010
- 09:35 AM
- 784 views
How Men Respond to Sexual Victimisation
by Ultimo167 in Strong Silent Types
Weiss (2008) discusses some of the similarities and differences in how women and men experience sexual victimisation. That includes the fact that men are less likely to report having been abused to police, their emphasis on fighting back against male perpetrators, and in certain situations, blaming alcohol for their temporary loss of masculine control. ... Read more »
Weiss, K. (2008) Male Sexual Victimization: Examining Men's Experiences of Rape and Sexual Assault. Men and Masculinities, 12(3), 275-298. DOI: 10.1177/1097184X08322632
- March 24, 2010
- 06:27 PM
- 531 views
How Blind is Double-Blind?
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
There's a rather timely article in the current American Journal of Psychiatry: Assuring That Double-Blind Is Blind.Generally, when the list of the authors' conflicts of interest (550 words) is nearly as long as the text of the paper (740 words), it's not a good sign, but this one isn't bad. Perlis et al remind us that if you do a double-blind placebo controlled trial:The blind may be compromised in a variety of ways, however, beginning with differences in medication taste or smell. Of particular concern may be the emergence of adverse effects, particularly when those adverse effects are known to be associated with a specific medication ... Indeed, when the degree of unblinding is assessed in antidepressant trials, multiple reports suggest that it is extensive: at least three-quarters of patients are typically able to correctly guess at their treatment assignment. The point of a placebo-controlled trial is that neither the patients nor their doctors know whether they're getting the placebo or the real drug. Hence the strength of the placebo effect should be the same in each group, allowing the "real" drug effect to be measured.But if the drug causes side effects, as pretty much all do, then people could work out which group they're in by noticing whether they're feeling side effects or not. This might enhance the placebo effect in the drug group, and make the drug seem to work better than it really does. Or it might not. But the possibility that it might is worrying.This is called the active placebo effect. It's why I'm skeptical of claims that scopolamine and ketamine have rapid-acting but short lived antidepressant effects. I may be wrong, but while both of these drugs have been shown to work better than placebo, both have very pronounced subjective effects, so there's no chance the blind will have been intact.Whether the active placebo effect also underlies the efficacy of established antidepressants like Prozac is very controversial. There have been 9 trials comparing antidepressants to active placebos, i.e. drugs that have similar side effects to antidepressants and that should therefore help to preserve the blind. (The active placebos were all atropine which is basically the same as scopolamine.)The trials were reviewed by antidepressant critic Joanna Moncrieff et al who found that the overall effect size of antidepressants vs. active placebos was d = 0.39. That's not very high, although it's not too bad, and ironically it's actually higher than the effect that Moncrieff's friend and fellow Prozac-baiter Irving Kirsch found in his famous 2008 antidepressant vs. sugar pill placebo meta-analysis, d=0.32. So if you take that seriously, the active placebo effect plays no part in antidepressant efficacy. However the active placebo trials are mostly small and old, so to be honest, we don't really know.*A point that's often overlooked is that a drug could have an active placebo effect via having a "real" psychoactive treatment effect. Diazepam (Valium), for example, has basically no peripheral side effects at all: unlike scopolamine it doesn't cause dry mouth, nausea, etc. But it is a tranquillizer; it causes calmness and, at higher doses, sleep. They're pretty noticeable. So if you were to give a depressed person Valium and tell them that it's not only a tranquillizer, it's an antidepressant, then the active placebo problem would arise.In fact, any active drug will also produce active placebo effects - almost by definition, if you think about it. These may be hard to disentangle from the "real" effects. Say you're anxious about giving a speech so you take some diazepam hoping to feel calmer. A short while later you feel the lovely warm tranquillizing feeling setting in. Phew, you're calm now, anxiety's gone, the speech will be no worry. That thought might well be tranquillizing in itself. In other words the anti-anxiety effects of diazepam are partially driven by active placebo responses due to... the anti-anxiety effects of diazepam.*This leads onto another point. Suppose a drug has a genuine effect which improves some of the symptoms of a disease. Does that drug "treat" that disease? In a weak sense, yes, and it might be a helpful drug, but it's not a specific treatment. Morphine's very helpful in cancer, because it treats pain, but it doesn't cure cancer. Likewise insomnia is a symptom of depression, but we feel that in order to qualify as an antidepressant a drug has to treat the core symptoms: mood, anxiety, etc. rather than just being a sleeping pill.But suppose someone suffered from low mood and you gave them a treatment which stopped them feeling any moods or emotions. That solves their low mood problem: no mood, no problem. But is that a specific treatment for depression? It's a bit of a grey area, but many would say no.Many people say that this is exactly what SSRI antidepressants do: they blunt your emotions. That doesn't mean they're not helpful in depression: a lot of people find them very useful. I did. But then are they really "antidepressants", or just anti-mood? SSRIs are the drugs of choice not just for depression but also most anxiety disorders, and OCD, etc. In fact they work better in OCD than they do in depression, relative to placebo. So are SSRIs actually anti-obsessives that happen to be helpful in some cases depression? Good question.Here's Chris Rock on the issue of non-specific effects...*Perhaps an ideal clinical trial of a psychiatric drug should have 4 groups: the drug you're studying, another psychotropic (e.g. Valium), an active placebo with purely peripheral side effects, and sugar pills. But even then, if the antidepressant did better than the other 3 groups, a die-hard skeptic could say that maybe it just more effectively causing non-specific sedation, or blunting, or whatever, than the Valium. Ultimately, a randomized controlled trial can never prove that a psychotropic drug has a specific as opposed to a non-specific effect.So where do we stand? Does that mean we don't know what drugs do? No - unless we're some cloistered soul who only reads papers as opposed to talking to people, reading subjective reports, or taking drugs themselves. I know what alcohol does, not because I've read papers about it, but because I've drunk it. I've also been depressed and taken antidepressants, and for what it's worth, in my experience, some of the drugs currently marketed as antidepressants do have a specific anti-depression effect, although others don't. Overall, though, my view is that we know surprisingly little about what antidepressants actually do.Perlis RH, Ostacher M, Fava M, N... Read more »
Perlis RH, Ostacher M, Fava M, Nierenberg AA, Sachs GS, & Rosenbaum JF. (2010) Assuring that double-blind is blind. The American journal of psychiatry, 167(3), 250-2. PMID: 20194487
Moncrieff J, Wessely S, & Hardy R. (2004) Active placebos versus antidepressants for depression. Cochrane database of systematic reviews (Online). PMID: 14974002
- March 23, 2010
- 11:34 PM
- 733 views
Wastelands
by Journal Watch Online in Journal Watch Online
Electronic garbage in developing countries expected to increase
... Read more »
Yu, J. et al. (2010) Forecasting global generation of obsolete personal computers. Environmental Science , 2147483647. DOI: 10.1021/es903350q
- March 22, 2010
- 10:29 AM
- 785 views
Counselling, Conflict, Men and Abortion
by Ultimo167 in Strong Silent Types
Coyle et al. (2009) discuss how the lack of appropriate preabortion counselling, and conflict over the decision-making process, can lead to distinct psychological symptoms in women, and in men.
... Read more »
Coyle, C., Coleman, P., & Rue, V. (2009) Inadequate Preabortion Counseling and Decision Conflict as Predictors of Subsequent Relationship Difficulties and Psychological Stress in Men and Women. Traumatology, 16(1), 16-30. DOI: 10.1177/1534765609347550
- March 21, 2010
- 02:21 PM
- 909 views
Accepting chronic pain
by Adiemusfree in Healthskills: Skills for Healthy Living
How willing are you to have persistent pain? Can you accept pain without fighting against it? If you were told your pain was going to be there forever, would you avoid important activities or would you start to get back into life again?
Recently I reviewed about 200 questionnaires completed by people attending the [...]... Read more »
Fish, R., McGuire, B., Hogan, M., Morrison, T., & Stewart, I. (2010) Validation of the Chronic Pain Acceptance Questionnaire (CPAQ) in an Internet sample and development and preliminary validation of the CPAQ-8. Pain. DOI: 10.1016/j.pain.2009.12.016
- March 20, 2010
- 08:01 PM
- 926 views
Did world religions help bring about complex societies?
This is a long post, but hang on in there because it's worth it. There's a wonderful paper just out in Science that sheds new light on a mystery of human behaviour: why do people sometimes do good deeds even when they gain nothing from it.Some forms of altruism can be easily explained by evolution, but evolution can't explain why people are sometimes generous to completely anonymous strangers. This new study may have found a solution: it isn't something inherent to our nature, but rather something that we learn to do.You might have seen something of it already - it's featured on several newswires. I'm not going to go into detail on the headline results, because you can find them elsewhere (Wired magazine has a nice write up, for example).What interests me most about this study is the link they found religion. But first, here's a quick overview of what they did, and the major finding. The heart of the study was a standard battery of economic games designed to test their subject's understanding of fairness:In the 'Dictator Game' Player 1 is given a fixed pool of money (equal to 1 day's wages), and can share as much (or as little) as she likes with Player 2. In the 'Ultimatum Game', Player 2 is given the chance to reject offers that she feels are insultingly small.In the 'Third Party Punishment Game' a third player is given some money as well, and she can spend some of it to punish Player 1, if she thinks that the offer to Player 2 is too small.Now, the logical thing to do in all these games is to hold on to all your money. You have nothing to gain by sharing (the games are anonymous), and all that happens is that you go home with less. However, what usually happens is that people do share some money (usually not 50%, however!).What makes this new study unique is that they've put together data from the world over, including the rather marvellous Hadza (you can see the locations on the map). Then they compared how much people contributed with what kind of society they lived in.They found that contributions were smallest in societies that did not have a market economy (e.g. hunter gatherers). And they found that punishment was lowest in societies formed of small groups.This potentially resolves the conundrum! What it suggests is that anonymous altruism is not part of our evolutionary make up, but instead is something that we learn from the society around us. The reason big, complex societies can exist is that we drum it into our kids that they must be fair and kind to strangers (against their natural instincts).So what's the connection with religion?Well, they also showed that, in two out of the three games, the anonymous contributions were higher in those groups that had converted from tribal religions (in which gods do not enforce morality) to follow a 'world religion' (in practice, either Christianity or Islam).On the face of it, this is supports the idea that 'world religion' is a cultural adaptation to allow the formation of complex societies. The invention of all-seeing, morally concerned god increases the honesty in anonymous transactions, and thus allowing large, integrated communities to develop.When you look at the history of religions, it's clear that the development of religious ideas has progressed in tandem with the increasing complexity of society. Robert Wright has written a book on the idea, and in the supplementary material they give a nice summary of the parallels.It all sounds very plausible. However, it's not quite that simple, for a whole host of reasons.First is the problem that a 'world religion' may be a cause, not a consequence, of a complex society. A world religion is essentially one that's popular over large geographic area. However, the exchange of ideas that always goes together with the exchange of goods will inevitably bring about a convergence of beliefs to create a 'world religion'.So you would expect a complex, diverse society to develop some kind of syncretic belief system - a 'World Religion'. And that belief system would inevitably encapsulate the social norms of the complex society that created it. People create a god in their image.Suppose, for example, that countries with more parasites end up with more fractured societies that are naturally less trusting of strangers. After all, strangers could bring with them disease. Surprisingly, studies have found that this is exactly the pattern you see - people living in high parasite regions are less open to strangers and have more fractured religions (Fincher & Thornhill, 2008). These societies, with their tribal rather than world religions, would naturally be less co-operative in anonymous games.Perhaps moralising gods moralising gods are not required for complex societies. After all, the Romans and Greeks managed created large, complex societies despite having a pantheon of gods who were not exactly paragons of virtue.And the reality is that, in modern societies at least, non-belief is correlated with less corruption and more trust. Social norms, rather than god beliefs, seem to be of primary importance.As support for the hypothesis that 'world religions' promote pro-social behaviour, they quote the work of Shariff & Norenzayan. That was a small study which found that, in a similar economic game, subliminal religious primes (i.e. a quick flash of a religious word) were marginally more effective in believers than non-believers.However, they also showed that non-religious primes were equally effective, and also that without the priming both religious and non-religious were equally pro-social. What's more, other studies (Randolph-Seng & Nielsen, 2007, Ahmed 2009) have shown that pro-social effects of religion are all about the situation, rather than the beliefs.Put these findings together, and what you get is the strong suggestion that the way to encourage pro-social behaviour is to remind people about their cultural training (religious or otherwise). The more you reinforce a social norm of co-operation, the more people will co-operate.Now, that doesn't rule out a role of religion in stabilising societies. In fact, I'm inclined to that that there must be a link. But it is fearsomely difficult to prove, and it's clear that whatever the link is, it's much more complicated than it appears at first sight.I'm going to leave you with one other niggling anomaly from the paper. Remember that 'world religion' was associated with more pro-social behaviour in only two out of the three games? Maybe you were wondering which was the one out?Well, the game that was the 'Third Party Punishment' game. This is the game in which Player 1 should give more money if they fear that Player 3 might spend some cash to punish offers that were too low. It's a particularly relevant test because third party intervention to enforce the rules is a crucial feature of complex society.Unlike the other two games, being Christian or Muslim had no effect on Player 1's offers. What makes this doubly fascinating is that this is the only game in which wealth and income affected Player 1's decisions.The authors suspect it might be that the introduction of a 'judge' reduces the intrinsic motivation. In other words, the offers players make depends on what they think the judge will approve of, rather than what they themselves is fair.However, I couldn't help but be reminded of another study that looked at punishment behaviour in a similar game. They examined a cross-section of relatively high income countries, and found high levels of co-operative punishment, and low-levels of anti-social punishment, in the least religious societies (Copenhagen and Melbourne).Conceivably, if you don't believe that there is a god on hand to enforce the rules, you might just be motivated to do it yourself!... Read more »
Henrich, J., Ensminger, J., McElreath, R., Barr, A., Barrett, C., Bolyanatz, A., Cardenas, J., Gurven, M., Gwako, E., Henrich, N.... (2010) Markets, Religion, Community Size, and the Evolution of Fairness and Punishment. Science, 327(5972), 1480-1484. DOI: 10.1126/science.1182238
- March 20, 2010
- 03:00 PM
- 734 views
Absinthe Fact and Fiction
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
Absinthe is a spirit. It's very strong, and very green. But is it something more?I used to think so, until I came across this paper taking a skeptical look at the history and science of the drink, Padosch et al's Absinthism a fictitious 19th century syndrome with present impactAbsinthe is prepared by crushing and dissolving the herb wormwood in unflavoured neutral alcohol and then distilling the result; other herbs and spices are added later for taste and colour.It became extremely popular in the late 19th century, especially in France, but it developed a reputation as a dangerous and hallucinogenic drug. Overuse was said to cause insanity, "absinthism", much worse than regular alcoholism. Eventually, absinthe was banned in the USA and most but not all European countries.Much of the concern over absinthe came from animal experiments. Wormwood oil was found to cause hyperactivity and seizures in cats and rodents, whereas normal alcohol just made them drunk. But, Padosch et al explain, the relevance of these experiments to drinkers is unclear, because they involved high doses of pure wormwood extract, whereas absinthe is much more dilute. The fact that authors at the time used the word absinthe to refer to both the drink and the pure extract added to the confusion.It's now known that wormwood, or at least some varieties of it, contains thujone, which can indeed cause seizures, and death, due to being a GABA antagonist. Until a few years ago it was thought that old-style absinthe might have contained up to 260 mg of thujone per litre, a substantial dose.But that was based on the assumption that all of the thujone in the wormwood ended up in the drink prepared from it. Chemical analysis of actual absinthe has repeatedly found that it contains no more than about 6 mg/L thujone. The alcohol in absinthe would kill you long before you drank enough to get any other effects. As the saying goes, "the dose makes the poison", something that is easily forgotten.As Padosch et al point out, it's possible that there are other undiscovered psychoactive compounds in absinthe, or that long-term exposure to low doses of thujone does cause "absinthism". But there is no evidence for that so far. Rather, they say, absinthism was just chronic alcoholism, and absinthe was no more or less dangerous than any other spirit.I'm not sure why, but drinks seem to attract more than their fair share of urban myths. Amongst many others I've heard that the flakes of gold in Goldschläger cause cuts which let alcohol into your blood faster; Aftershock crystallizes in your stomach, so if you drink water the morning afterwards, you get drunk again; and that the little worm you get at the bottom of some tequilas apparently contains especially concentrated alcohol, or hallucinogens, or even cocaine maybe.Slightly more serious is the theory that drinking different kinds of drinks instead of sticking to just one gets you drunk faster, or gives you a worse hangover, or something, especially if you do it in a certain order. Almost everyone I know believes this, although in my drinking experience it's not true, but I'm not sure that it's completely bogus, as I have heard somewhat plausible explanations i.e. drinking spirits alongside beer leads to a concentration of alcohol in your stomach that's optimal for absorption into the bloodstream... maybe.Link: Not specifically related to this but The Poison Review is an excellent blog I've recently discovered all about poisons, toxins, drugs, and such fun stuff.Padosch SA, Lachenmeier DW, & Kröner LU (2006). Absinthism: a fictitious 19th century syndrome with present impact. Substance abuse treatment, prevention, and policy, 1 (1) PMID: 16722551... Read more »
Padosch SA, Lachenmeier DW, & Kröner LU. (2006) Absinthism: a fictitious 19th century syndrome with present impact. Substance abuse treatment, prevention, and policy, 1(1), 14. PMID: 16722551
- March 20, 2010
- 07:38 AM
- 853 views
Does Child Sexual Abuse Cause Homosexuality?
by Ultimo167 in Strong Silent Types
Wilson and Widom (2009) add to the literature on links between having been a child abuse survivor and sexual orientation in adulthood. For a variety of possible reasons, they demonstrate that a 'tentative' link does exist between childhood sexual abuse and homosexuality, but only for men.... Read more »
Wilson, H., & Widom, C. (2009) Does Physical Abuse, Sexual Abuse, or Neglect in Childhood Increase the Likelihood of Same-sex Sexual Relationships and Cohabitation? A Prospective 30-year Follow-up. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 39(1), 63-74. DOI: 10.1007/s10508-008-9449-3
- March 20, 2010
- 01:06 AM
- 507 views
Men Suffer for Too Much Small Talk
by Ultimo167 in Strong Silent Types
Mehl et al. (2010) have started to tease out the possibility that deeper, more thoughtful conversations lead to greater happiness. I can't help thinking what this might mean for men, since most of us were raised on the masculine ideal that bland small-talk is the only way to go.... Read more »
Mehl, M., Vazire, S., Holleran, S., & Clark, C. (2010) Eavesdropping on Happiness: Well-Being Is Related to Having Less Small Talk and More Substantive Conversations. Psychological Science. DOI: 10.1177/0956797610362675
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