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Parasite Correlated With World Cup Success
mahiskali writes "A parasite commonly found in cats, Toxoplasma gondii, has an unnerving relation to World Cup victories by country. (This parasite was discussed here twice in 2006.) Toxo can be found in almost every type of mammal, from rats to humans. The overall goal of the parasite is to end up in a feline stomach, which is the only place it can reproduce. In other mammals, humans for example, the parasite heads for the brain. It is estimated that nearly 1/3 of the human population has a latent Toxo infection, with individual countries having infection rates varying from 6% (Korea) to 92% (Ghana). Countries with greater incidence of this parasitic infection in their populations tend to win more World Cups than those without. The article, written by a Stanford University neuroscientist, goes on to try out various rationales for such a correlation, ranging from increased testosterone to increased dissent of authority — all symptoms of a Toxo infection. Now we just need to find a parasite that causes an inability to referee properly, and we'll have this whole World Cup business all sorted out."
Fortunately here in the States we don't have to worry about such dangerous things as world cup victories.
Mr. KDawson,
To correctly link to a text only version, use the MySlate feature found here, select your story, press view story, and link the new link. That way thousands of users will not have to press "cancel print".
thanks,
-Everyone
Link without the print:
http://www.slate.com/Apps/MySlate/action/read.aspx?action=read&ids=2259350&sortmethod=false
We should start a new Slashdot and return control to the geeks. It actually wouldn't be that hard to get some users to
Sorry for shooting for the obvious, but the old trope about correlation and causation seems exactly in order here.
... which is what the author seems to imply, despite the headline.
Do any of these parasites modify your voice timbre and give you glowing eyes and create in you a desire to build healing sarcophagi?
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
Most countries participating in the World Cup are parasites.
We've just come back from Tommy's funeral and you are talking about a skag deal?
The author of this article should watch out that he doesn't start to be classed with, e.g., Randy Thornhill. Thornhill just loves publishing sensational stuff about various correlations.
Oh, yeah, and before I forget... there's an xkcd for that....
Correlation and causation can coexist. In fact, causation implies correlation. However, those who know their predicate logic know that the converse is not necessarily true.
...Is this from the same group of scientist that claim parasites are responsible for EVERYTHING?
Those who fail to understand communication protocols, are doomed to repeat them over port 80.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation
Please help metamoderate.
A bit OT, but I thought it was a fact worth mentioning:
The most common carrier of Toxoplasma gondii are cats. When a cat with Toxo injures a rat (but does not kill it) it usually passes the infection to the rat. The effect of the parasite on rats makes them slower and far easier for predators (like cats) to catch/kill them. Which, in turn, passes the parasite on to the cat. The cat then takes a swipe at a rat...and so on ad infinitum.
The parasite uses the natural predator/prey relationship to keep itself alive.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
I think this XKCD cartoon about correlation vs. causation is one of my favourite.
Struggling to find a day everyone can make? WhenShallWe.com
The author does not actually have any test data on the soccer players. He just used the rates of parasite infections in the countries competing and correlates them with World Cup wins. A proper study would test the players themselves. This was not done. Some big assumptions are made instead.
http://www.motorcyclenews.com/MCN/News/newsresults/General-news/2010/June/jun0810-The-pill-that-could-cure-you-of-motorcycling/
So, did I ever mention I'm a biker? hahaha
My abilities are only limited by my imagination
Even the correlation is not absolute here.
TFA mentions that Korea has the lowest infection rate in the world. Both Koreas qualified for this Workd Cup, while some 170+ other countries didn't.
TFA also mentions Ghana has the highest infection rate. They are already out of this Cup, have never won any.
Let's sing the "Correlation is not causation" song!
In humans, the infection causes pundits to see patterns everywhere much like that guy from A Beautiful Mind, who was eaten by a cat if I recall correctly.
Both the article and the summary state state such absurd and horrific suppositions, an association with the presumed arian supremacy is the first thought and actually the last as I dismissed this story and will try to forget it.
The last part clinches it for me. Toxo infection does NOT confer enhanced motor skills or athletic ability. Quite the contrary. Perhaps the preceding sentence is an influence, but that isn't easy to determine. And toxoplasmosis is awful. My best friend cauaght it from her parakeet, or maybe the cat, when she was 11 years old, and she was yellow and jaundicy and sickly for years, even with treatment. The CDC http://www.cdc.gov/toxoplasmosis/ comments that it is the 3rd highest cause of food-related deaths in the US.
tempus fugit
Countries with greater incidence of this parasitic infection in their populations tend to win more World Cups than those without.
Countries where children grow up diving into the turf and rolling around faking injuries tend to have more children with Toxo.
More evidence that Canada has better health care than the US!
I explicitly release the above into the public domain.
What is the chance that people catch toxo from practicing football? Ball rolls in cat-feces; the players touch the ball.....
Toxoplasmosis negatively affects intelligence and makes you a jock. Assuming I'm right, how do I get cured ?
Let's get infected!
Toxoplasma gondii, the great (×30) grandfather of Hypnotoad.
TOXO FOR THE WIN!
Toxoplasma gondii is a really interesting parasite. It has a sexual and an asexual reproductive phase, depending on what it has infected. The sexual phase occurs in cats' stomachs, at which point eggs are released in the cat's feces, where they gestate until something eats them. The asexual phase occurs in just about everything else, where it forms cysts in the muscles and the brain of the host. And that's just how it reproduces... the cysts in the brain do all sorts of crazy stuff to the animals its infected.
It's contracted by eating catshit containing the eggs, or meat with Toxoplasma cysts. A cat that tracked through its own shit then clawed a rat might pass it on, but probably not.
Fry: Of all the parasites I've had over the years, these worms are among the... hell, they are the best.
since western countries know that correlation == causation, we should start infecting our players with this parasite for the love of our country.
Now we just need to find a parasite that causes an inability to referee properly, and we'll have this whole World Cup business all sorted out.
That would probably be Onchocerciasis.
Have gnu, will travel.
Now we know why they go crazy, riot, burn, and pillage when their teams win. Futball fans are craay-zie.
Lots of diseases and parasites that flourish in the less-developed countries have been wiped out (or nearly so) in more-developed countries. There are more less-developed countries in FIFA than there are developed countries. So the correlation should probably hold true for malaria and other parasites, as well as for things like education and poverty.
Edith Keeler Must Die
because they idolize players, because Toxo scrambles the brains of the population, making it hard for them to understand that soccer is just a game!
How about ohplease or maybe even spareus!
absolutedrivel would be good too, though I'd rather not see this sort of trast on /. at all. I can dream, can't I?
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
The Netherlands is less developed? Germany is less developed?
Tale a look at the Semis group, Germany, Spain, Netherlands, Uruguay.
This parasite is quite abundant in the more developed nations.
That doesn't really explain why Ghana has so far won no World Cups.
...for FIFA team training tables?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
So Lucas didn't even come up with the force on his own, just a silly name for the soccer parasite. ;-)
I don't buy the article's conclusions. Ghana has cats? fine. Turkey has mucho cats everywhere! A cat might even shit on your head while you eat in a fancy restaurant in Taksim. All middle eastern countries have oodles of cats, afaik. Yet they suck ass at soccer?
Germany is a dog country, very few cats here. Brazil doesn't have street cats like Turkey either. etc.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
True, though this isn't particularly one of them, since it hasn't been "essentially wiped out" in more developed countries.
So?
I'm not sure how you make the leap of logic here. Virtually every country in the world is in FIFA, but the ones that tend to win the most World Cups aren't particularly the least developed. In order from most to least, the countries that have won the World Cup at least once are:
Brazil (5),
Italy (4),
Germany (3),
Argentina (2) and Uruguay (2),
England (1) and France (1)
All of them are in the top half in terms of GDP/capita in the world, and the ones in Europe are in the top 15% or so (varies by which ranking you look at; Italy falls a little out of that range in some.)
I'm all for the print link on sites that abuse readers, but if an article is worth reading and discussing, shouldn't we give them a little credit and link to the real article?
You know, because people do link to print versions so much, most put lots of ads on those too now. I'm surprised this one didn't.
Selah.ca. Pause, and calmly think on that.
FTFA: "Finally, it's possible—likely, even—that the correlation between Toxo infection and World Cup success is a coincidence, or that it reflects some other common trait among successful soccer nations. Maybe it helps to have raw meat in your diet, and Toxo is just a side effect?"
Correlation is not causation...but in this case it might be.
If I remember properly, when mice are infected with this parasite they become more aggressive and less fearful. And more likely to be eaten by a cat.
When you think about it, if you go back a million years or so being more aggressive would also make a person likely to be eaten by a cat.
Obviously we should do tests on the athletes to see if they've dosed themselves with toxoplasma in order to win the competition.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
And it isn't locked into a particular platform. You know, those crazy ideas that are come from those new-fangled fads all the crazy kids are into, with their bell-bottom jeans and their "Yeah yeah yeah".
The Invisible Hand of the Free Market is what punches workers in the nuts.
Whoops. Wow, was that the wrong article for this comment. Parasites and soccer. Carry on...or should I say carrion?
The Invisible Hand of the Free Market is what punches workers in the nuts.
Obligatory xkcd.
Fixed that for you. :)
Don't try and be all karma-whory, just post the damn XKCD link
Oh, I see now... some of you needed to find an excuse for not... winning the World Cup. Riiiight...
"The overall goal of the parasite is to end up in a feline stomach," If that's the case then you'd expect populations which tend to own more cats (or more Ferrel cats) would have a higher percent. It also goes to reason that if you have more money you are more likely to have a pet (at least within the US) so we have more then just this isolated percent, we have money, percent of population owning cats, and raito of wild cats to people.
Hmmm, that must mean the French infection rate is 105%
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
It's highly correlated with being from Ghana.
Also, very very strong correlation between being male and winning the World Cup. Compared to being female.
Wonder why that is?
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
You know, if you just masterbated immediately then you wouldn't persuade yourself to buy into all the sex-toy hype to manipulate the prostate gland which could increase the waste of time from 15 minutes to 4 hours. At least, I read "polishing the rocket" meaning you are a dildo fanatic. If you are horny, just rub four off as soon as possible or you will build a career in stimulating your genitals. Trust me, Anonymous, because I know...
It's called blindness...
wake up and hold your nose
1> Enroll child in soccer league.
2> Get child a cat. Make child clean the litter box.
3> Child becomes soccer phenom.
4> PROFIT!!!!
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
This pretty much THE case (esp. this cat bacteria which is very famous and mentioned multiple times all over the place) of a very interesting semi-symbiotic phenomena (host more aggressive ? more manly ? drawbacks also ? intriguing).
Also, what always, kinda, shocks me is that, how no sufficient effort exist to really go in-depth about the bacterial influences on populations, and esp. on human population.
I really think some bacteria are akin to hive-existence, having their agenda, methods, and the means to implement them. They make up an appreciable portion of biosphere and should be studied with much greater vigor.
Seeing as some bacteria influece our perceptions of the world directly by manufactoring certain neurotransmitters, etc ?
I have nothing to lose but my bindings.
Maybe the parasite causes sufferers to hallucinate, and so they perceive the sport as vastly more interesting than it really is.
I mean, there's got to be a reason why the world goes bonkers over this dull, mindnumbing event, right?
On the rare occasion I watch this sport I think to myself, "This is what it must feel like to not give a crap about hockey."
Maybe it's because I'm not interested in working out centuries-old military conflicts and the grudges of my ancestors by tossing a bottle into the face of an oppsing fan?
It is nice to the websites in which we are linking (the Slashdot effect can be taxing), and not every user views Slashdot from a computer or high-speed internet connection, [insert joke here about portable devices].
We should start a new Slashdot and return control to the geeks. It actually wouldn't be that hard to get some users to
Does it also give me a world class soccer player's physique?
How is this science? A slate article siting the economist?
This is a classic example of potentially the ecologic fallacy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_fallacy) In brief you have aggregate exposure data and aggregate data about the population and correlate them. From this data you don't have any idea if the exposed people are affected by the condition understudy.
(Anyone here have toxo serologies on the world cup teams?) Clearly there are no other differences between these countries besides their rate of toxo infection.:) See confounding (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confounding).
All this stuff about toxo changing the development of society is entertaining speculation but no data is presented here to make it more than that. There are lot's more plausible pathogens for this (eg tuberculosis, malaria, HIV )
Population level correlations are best used for hypothesis generation, they are not reliable tests of same in most circumstances.
Causes women to be promiscuous, and men to become irritable and stupid.
Given the non-discriminating nature of promiscuity, the end result is the entire human race will become stupid, irritable, and fucked. But what's new?
Or else the women will tend to be promiscuous with other women, which means that the population will drop, men will be bread out of the race, and women will start parthenogenating all over the place, leading to an entire planet of horny women.. wait.. it's an alien plot! We're being bred for a purpose..
"Certainly, there are caveats."
RTFA and you'll see there's no real correlation. Good attention getter, that's all.
Hey, Slashdot, Thanks for all the fish!
Interesting. My inference is that wealthy countries can both afford more cats, and also fund better soccer (cough football cough) teams. What little I know about toxo wouldn't support a direct A -> B causal relationship.
...which is the prize for the winners of the Uefa Champions League
The Uefa Cup is the legacy name for the Europa League.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UEFA_Champions_League
Since the 19th century, the number of pirates (as in, maritime piracy) kept decreasing. The global temperature kept increasing. Therefore, according to the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, the decrease in the number of pirates causes global warming. (+ Somalia has the highest number of Pirates AND the lowest Carbon emissions.)
how about the simple answer that in these countries with lower hygiene etc,
you have people more likely to really strive to win through sports etc.
as opposed to rich white people who don't really try unless they're being paid heaps.
So the second most successful world cup nation in history (Italy) has a 'relatively average rate of infection' of 33%. So this stands up how?
I want to excuse Germany here, they definitely do not have a higher toxoplasmosis infection rate, they just are like that...
The obvious correlation is that the other teams got disturbed by the vuvuzelas and played badly. (I havn't seen more than a few minutes, thats all the vuvuzela music I can take)
Infected me with Las Plagas?
From the TFA: "If we set aside the qualifying rounds" ---> "Get rid of the data that doesn't fit our wanted conclusions and then we're set."
You're thinking of midichlorians here.
T.gondii has a better impact on humans:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/parasite-makes-men-dumb-women-sexy/2006/12/26/1166895290973.html
"A common parasite can increase a women's attractiveness to the opposite sex but also make men more stupid, an Australian researcher says.
About 40 per cent of the world's population is infected with Toxoplasma gondii, including about eight million Australians.
Human infection generally occurs when people eat raw or undercooked meat that has cysts containing the parasite, or accidentally ingest some of the parasite's eggs excreted by an infected cat.
The parasite is known to be dangerous to pregnant women as it can cause disability or abortion of the unborn child, and can also kill people whose immune systems are weakened.
Until recently it was thought to be an insignificant disease in healthy people, Sydney University of Technology infectious disease researcher Nicky Boulter said, but new research has revealed its mind-altering properties.
"Interestingly, the effect of infection is different between men and women," Dr Boulter writes in the latest issue of Australasian Science magazine.
"Infected men have lower IQs, achieve a lower level of education and have shorter attention spans. They are also more likely to break rules and take risks, be more independent, more anti-social, suspicious, jealous and morose, and are deemed less attractive to women.
"On the other hand, infected women tend to be more outgoing, friendly, more promiscuous, and are considered more attractive to men compared with non-infected controls.
"In short, it can make men behave like alley cats and women behave like sex kittens""
-Styopa
according to that logic, the Chinese should have a team of 500 people, while the Dutch for example would only have 5 guys on the field.
Or the Chinese would have 100 times as many teams playing for the world cup.
In Asia, they just have very large countries. But each country only sends 1 team. Europe has many small countries. The qualifications generally are in leagues of 5-6 countries, and one or two go through to the world cup.
In many other sports (athletics at the Olympics) it works the normal way, and big countries have more people competing.
"that is because you live in a country which bans online gaming... Go place a bet like most of the Star Wars geeks, preferably over US$1000 , and you will see the game becomes extremely exciting."
While I'm pretty sure that's not true (about banned online gaming), and while I'm not a Star Wars geek, your point only reinforces mine - you have to do SOMETHING (like make large wagers) to make watching football worthwhile. In and of itself, it's unbelievably boring.
I mean. The ball's a soft inflated thing instead of 9 - 10 pounds of hard rubber, the players play on nice soft grass instead of unforgiving stone and neither winner nor loser get sacrificed except in Colombia.
In MY day we played a MAN'S game. We ensured a good pulque supply by spilling the arterial red blood of our ballplayers upon the sacred ritual stones. You darn kids today with your iPhones and your pussy games and your "music". Get off my lawn.
Isn't the correlation best explained by the fact that in countries better at football, kids tend to spend more time outdoor (sometimes kicking ball) and thus are more exposed to Toxo infection?
Actually isn't the article implying that the players have the parasite? Wouldn't that be easy to test for? Who cares about the rest of the population? They're not on the field.
I forget where I saw it (possibly on slashdot) but I read an article that there is some evidence that suggests that Toxo makes Humans more "reckless", and that the percentage of people involved in motorcycle accidents that have Toxo is way above the norm.
So. A freedom bug, eh? But, with that sort of spectrum, shouldn't they be too overwhelmed in in fight clubs, continual riots, and biker's gangs, to have time for collaborative, empathic, attentive, parallel, continuous, multicyclic, dynamic sports like soccer? Maybe it's the antibodies, then?
And what about the steamy relation between dictatorships and soccer? Compared with the diametrically opposite slow axfixiating effect of "marketing commodity" commercialism?
what part of "WORLD" don't you understand? Someone talks about something in general, and you respond with something only about the US? By your logic, English is the most spoken language in the world, and Christianity is the largest religion. Haha!
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com