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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."
Scientists' Success Or Failure Correlated With Beer
Oddly enough, that finding carries over to Hookers, as well.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Could it be that they drink more because they are unsuccessfull instead of the inverse?
because the correlation just means 3 things:
1) they are unrelated
2) more drinking => bad scientist
3) bad scientist => more drinking
The study says that beer consumption is inversely proportional to academic success. The more beer you drink, the less likely you are to produce high-quality, well-regarded papers.
It's been long known that beer is the drink of the underclasses. Wine, of course, being the preferred drink of the upper classes. And hard liquor a habit of the dregs of society. Is it any wonder, then, that people who consume beer, being from the lower classes, would be unable to create and innovate at the level that wine drinkers do? No, it only stands to reason that, as Murray 1996 shows, that intelligence is intricately tied to success. Therefore, the lower average intelligence of beer drinkers would necessarily be unable to compete with the higher average intelligence of wine drinkers.
In other words, beer consumption is a symptom, not the cause of the lower quality academic product.
I've never published any peer reviewed papers, and I drink plenty of beer, so it must be true [burp].
One day I read that to 100% restore high-level brain functions, one needs 2 weeks of sobriety. The one who has couple of beers/wine etc each week or two is simply working on suboptimal level if brain is the main tool. It's ok for other workers and maybe CEOs, but not for scientists, where you need as much advantage as you can.
- Arwen, I'm your father, Agent Smith.
- Well, you're just Smith, but my father is Aerosmith!
I really ought to read TFA more often. The reserve turns out to be true, didn't see that one coming..
The reserve turns out to be true
Enjoying a little beer tonight, are we?
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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In order to find out if beer is good or bad for scientists, I have to read the article?
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"It's rather devastating to be told we should drink less beer in order to increase our scientific performance," Dr. Symonds said.
Ok, this is perhaps the most widely disseminated scientific concept among the laity, so to see an "evolutionary biologist" cock it up so readily is pretty disheartening.
All together now: correlation does not imply causation!
sic transit gloria mundi
What Would Feynman Do?
ahh. good to see that next years Ig-Nobels are already hotting up.
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.
He had a house with a faucet that gave fresh beer - just next door to the Carlsberg brewery.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Studies that make these kinds of leaps are generally BS. It could be that the scientists who don't drink AT ALL are the type AA driven types who don't socialize much at all. Or it could be that the ones who like to go drink are lazy. Or it could be some unknown effect of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. The point you make is spot on; the researches need to take a better look at possible causation and not jump to conclusions.
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.
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.
It actually works that way, to a point, yes. If you drink lots and regularly, you build up "alcohol tolerance". I.e., small quantities of alcohol which would make someone else tipsy, just get you back to the baseline. It compensated all right.
The problem is that that compensated state remains so even when you're sober. That's how eventually DT happens. The brain chemistry is "compensated" to work right with a lot of alcohol in the system. Without that alcohol, however, you're fucked up and can even die.
It's, if you will, like compensating for pushing a wardrobe to the right. Hard. So you compensate by slanting it to the left. When that force is applied, congrats, the components cancel out and the wardrobe stays like that. But when that force isn't applied any more, now it falls over to the the left.
That's in a nutshell how you die of DT. It's not the alcohol that kills you, it's the lack of alcohol. At that point your brain has changed so much to keep working when marinated in alcohol, that eventually it became unable to function without it.
That incidentally, also has the following implication for the post-alcohol-impairment I was talking about. It's easy to think "bah, I'm resistant to alcohol. Why, I only even start feeling a little warm after the fourth pint." Congrats, if you're at that point, your brain's equilibrium is now already waay off center. You _will_ have decreased brain power even when alcohol has left your system. In fact, _because_ all alcohol has left your system.
I couldn't care less, actually. Equally, a couple of century ago, mercury was the only known treatment for syphilis. It doesn't mean we should keep doing that. Nowadays we have better ways to deal with that.
Similarly, nowadays we know how to filter and disinfect water. So whatever need for alcohol might have existed, doesn't exist any more.
I'm not proposing to ban either alcohol or tobacco. If you want to nuke your brain, be my guest. I wouldn't even stop you from hanging yourself or playing russian roulette. If you want to, by all means, go ahead.
I'm _only_ saying "don't be surprised if it affects your IQ", really. But if you can live with that, go ahead and drink yourself silly, for all I care
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
But what about the Ballmer Peak?
He's talking about his back-up beer....
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
That's why I'm a writer, not a scientist.
Almost all of the great writers were heavy drinkers.
Woo-Hoo!!
Serving your airship needs since 1995.
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,...
Well ya see, Norm, it's like this... A herd of buffalo can only move as fast as the slowest buffalo. And when the herd is hunted, it is the slowest and weakest ones at the back that are killed first. This natural selection is good for the herd as a whole, because the general speed and health of the whole group keeps improving by the regular killing of the weakest members. In much the same way, the human brain can only operate as fast as the slowest brain cells. Excessive intake of alcohol, as we know, kills brain cells. But naturally it attacks the slowest and weakest brain cells first. In this way, regular consumption of beer eliminates the weaker brain cells, making the brain a faster and more efficient machine. That's why you always feel smarter after a few beers.
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 ?
This is called ecological fallacy.
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