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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."
In many research groups it is common to go out and have a few beers once a paper has been accepted. So this should lead to a positive correlation between beer consumption and research output. However, it is likely that among Czechs these paper beers do not have a large effect on their overall consumption (they drink even more beer than Germans).
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Women in Denmark have larger breasts than women in Canada. There are more moose in Canada than in Denmark. So more moose means smaller breasts.
Statistics are like miniskirts; they show a lot but hide the most important facts.
Not completely true.
Beer is the drink of Northern Europe, wine is the drink of Southern Europe. The UK and Europe as a whole tend to aspire to Southern Europe; the Mediterranean diet and reverence for the classical world. This has created the image of wine = good and rich, beer = bad and poor.
simon
As a professional scientist who travelled a lot between universities in Europe, USA and Japan, I can say the following:
a) Correlation does not imply causation. Some regions are generally poorer, meaning their universities get less money, they attract less good scientists, etc. And these regions also have higher alcohol consumption. And so observation that alcohol consumption anti-correlates with scientific achievements doesn't necessarily imply that drinking makes you bad scientist.
b) I just moved from UK to USA and the amount of alcohol people drink in UK is completely unheard of in USA. Basically, we used to have three British pints 4 times a week. Properly drunk. In USA I can convince my colleagues to have one beer (over two hours!!) once a week. And yet, UK is THE most scientifically successful country per dollar spent.
c) My feeling is actually the opposite: alcohol acts as a social lubricant and many personal frictions can get dissolved that way. After two pints, the guy who you hate so much for having more papers than you, suddenly seems an ok chap. People are more likely to speak about their work, share opinions on papers, don't be secretive about future projects, etc. This effect must have bigger positive impact than negative effects of drinking.
Oh, yes oh, yes oh, yes!
Also: How many scientists have not been pushed into obsession because lack of companionship? You know Newton never married and never had a girlfriend. He didn't have too many friends either I think. So could not some of his work have been created by a man that had nothing else to do? By someone who is desperately fighting the loneliness that comes creeping up anytime he closes the book?
I have written some of my best things (granted, I'm still just studying for a BS) on a saturday or a friday night. You simply have so much more uninterrupted time to get very heavily into something you are working on. The downside is, of course, loneliness.
Actually, American versions of Pilsners, while evolving towards lightness, didn't become insipid until after Prohibition. When Prohibition was repealed, Americans were ready to drink anything. Only a few breweries left, which had survived selling malt for malted milk and root beer, provided a thirsty nation with beer that you could drink a lot of, very quickly.
I've done a bit of home brewing, and the funny thing is that an American style beer is actually an extremely difficult style of beer to make. Replacing much of the malt with rice means that you end up with a very light flavor. The tiniest off flavor is immediately detectable. Get anything wrong with the fermentation, or the water, or the storage and it tastes really bad.
In contrast, I've made Russian Imperial Stouts that have a starting specific gravity so dense the hydrometer wouldn't go into the wort, it just sat on top. Practically speaking, the wort was syrup. While the recipe is complicated in that it has lots of stuff in it, it's actually quite easy to succeed with. You could probably brew it with swamp water, and the three types of malt plus roasted buckwheat would beat the swamp muck taste into a mere "peaty overtone".
When I started homebrewing, wife was afraid I was going to turn into an alcoholic, but in fact there are easier ways to get drunk than spending a day mixing sticky ingredients in carefully sterilized equipment then nursing a yeast culture for weeks before you get something minimally drinkable. I got interested in brewing for its chemistry-set aspects; I'd been mucking around with sour dough and yogurt, and moved onto brewing as a logical next step.
The thing is, I still don't drink very much, and I give away most of what I make. For myself, I'd bottle my beer in six ounce bottles if I could, since I'm more interested in the flavor and feel of the beer than its effects. But I do know a lot more about what is a good beer and what is a bad beer than before. And American "Pilsners" are not bad beers, they're just uninteresting beers (and they certainly aren't the same thing as "real" Czech style pilsners). Since, when I am thirsty, I prefer water to beer, and when I am drinking beer, I prefer complex to simple, I don't bother with beers like Bud. But they have their place; I've heard them called "lawnmower beers".
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