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Scientists' Success Or Failure Correlated With Beer
mernil sends in an article from the NYTimes that casts a glance at a study done in the Czech Republic (natch) on what divides the successful scientists from the duffers. "Ever since there have been scientists, there have been those who are wildly successful, publishing one well-received paper after another, and those who are not. And since nearly the same time, there have been scholars arguing over what makes the difference. What is it that turns one scientist into more of a Darwin and another into more of a dud? After years of argument over the roles of factors like genius, sex, and dumb luck, a new study shows that something entirely unexpected and considerably sudsier may be at play in determining the success or failure of scientists — beer."
That plus the Czechs actually have very nice beer as well. Give me a proper Buvar Budweiser any day of the week, especially over that American junk that stole its name.
It is bad.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Actually, the summary is kinda misleading in that it doesn't say that they actually discovered an _inverse_ correlation. The _less_ beer you drink, the more likely you are to have your work published in some peer reviewed journal.
So basically what it says is: altered states won't actually make you more creative. Or at least not alcohol and not in science.
So basically put down the bong, lay off the booze, and get some honest sober work done, if you're in science. Maybe being drunk and/or stoned off your arse works for arts, I wouldn't know, you may stick to that myth for now. But if you want to discover the next particle, apparently nothing beats having the neurons working normally, without other crap interfering with your synapses and clouding your judgment.
Can't say it's that surprising, really. I can even imagine how if you're, say a painter, you could get the colourful vision for your next painting while you're on acid. But science is less about crazy ideas and more about maths, evaluating those ideas based on critical cause->effect thinking, and the like. And it's getting more abstract by the year. And I can tell you first hand, that at least being drunk (no idea about other altered states) doesn't really help you with maths and logic. _Maybe_ being too drunk to draw a straight line helps when painting some modern art stuff, but not with science.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Slightly more informative wikipedia entry for this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budweiser_trademark_dispute
No one did jump to any conclusion except you and the journalist. The researcher specifically states that this does not explain any causation, it's just an interesting coincidence. But maybe you didn't RTFA.
c++;
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_beer_consumption_per_capita
A monkey is doing the real work for me.
I've got to call shenanigans on this so-called study! It's quite obvious that the sample size is so puny that any relationship you could possibly get out of this is virtually insignificant and meaningless! If the only scientists you surveyed were Czech ornithologists -- bird watchers -- so much for the rest of the world!!!! Next time, try surveying a few chemists from other countries -- your results may differ. I happen to know a few biochemists with quite respectable publication lists (and grants, too :-) that could quite easily drink the authors of the study under the table any day of the week,...
We have known for a long time that alcohol consumption is not good for those gray cells. Is our culture so alcohol addled that these blunt truths can't otherwise be common public knowledge ?