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Scientists' Success Or Failure Correlated With Beer
Posted by
kdawson
on Wed Mar 19, 2008 04:34 AM
from the malt-does-more-than-milton-can dept.
from the malt-does-more-than-milton-can dept.
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."
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Submission: The success or failure of scientists spells beer. by Anonymous Coward
[+]
Science: Beer-Drinking Scientist Debunks Productivity Correlation 130 comments
austinpoet writes in with a blog post debunking the theory we discussed a few days back that scientists' beer consumption is linearly correlated with the quality of their work. Chris Mack, Gentleman Scientist and beer drinker, has analyzed the paper and found it is severely flawed. From his analysis: "The discovered linear relationship between beer consumption and scientific output had a correlation coefficient (R-squared) of only about 0.5 — not very high by my standards, though I suspect many biologists would be happy to get one that high in their work... Thus, the entire study came down to only one conclusion: the five worst ornithologists in the Czech Republic drank a lot of beer."
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teh goggles... (Score:5, Funny)
Oddly enough, that finding carries over to Hookers, as well.
Re:teh goggles... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:teh goggles... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:teh goggles... (Score:5, Insightful)
You'll find plenty of company at the faculty lounge.
Just ask for Bruce:
"Immanuel Kant was a real pissant
Who was very rarely stable.
Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar
Who could think you under the table.
David Hume could out-consume
Wilhelm Freidrich Hegel,
And Wittgenstein was a beery swine
Who was just as schloshed as Schlegel.
There's nothing Nietzsche couldn't teach ya'
'Bout the raising of the wrist.
Socrates, himself, was permanently pissed. "
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Re:teh goggles... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Ale, man; ale's the stuff to drink
For fellows whom it hurts to think!
Look into the pewter pot
To see the world as the world's not
Etc. Ah, Housman :-)
Dan Aris
Re:teh goggles... (Score:5, Funny)
Oddly enough, that finding carries over to Hookers, as well
But not Governors
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what is cause and effect? (Score:5, Insightful)
because the correlation just means 3 things:
1) they are unrelated
2) more drinking => bad scientist
3) bad scientist => more drinking
Re:what is cause and effect? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:what is cause and effect? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:what is cause and effect? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think they picked two things that don't go well together and blamed the lack of one for the existence of the other. I've seen some evidence that shows good artists are all depressed whackjobs. Of course theoretical physicists have had some social issues too. There are correlations to other things, but we don't quite understand what they are. I think the human brain/body has a lot to do with the chemicals floating around inside it, and definitely when you remove the chemicals they stop working but exactly how they all interact is still a bit more mysterious than saying beer has a direct effect on good science.
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Re:what is cause and effect? (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:what is cause and effect? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
scientists are a very weird cast and most of them have been stuck to pre-adolescent personality development stages. So they identify their scientific persona with their own self and unable to distinguish between th
Re:what is cause and effect? (Score:5, Insightful)
It boils down to this: successful scientific workhorses simply don't have the time to socialize.
I am sure that this can be extrapolated to other professions as well -- especially anything that demands a lot of concentration.
On the upside highly successful scientists doesn't regret being singletons, after all they are successful because they are passionate about what they are doing, so no sacrifice here I'd say.
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Re:what is cause and effect? (Score:5, Insightful)
On the flip side though if you are always obsessing about your projects then you are probably missing some important piece of the puzzle that you would get if you just slept or if you let your mind switch gears. I know I was exhausted and making bone-headed moves at work. Then some friends came to visit for 5 days, we partied it up and at the end of it I went back to work and did some pretty darned amazing work. Stuff I thought I couldn't do just came easy to me.
Sometimes a little distance is a good thing, and beer helps you get that distance rather quickly. Of course many people cross the fine line between drinking too much, causing you to be unproductive.
I'd say balance is always a good thing, just like a little exercise helps you clear your mind allowing you to concentrate better than if you'd just sat there for 18 hours straight coding.
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Re:what is cause and effect? (Score:5, Funny)
Repeat after me:
Coroloshn...
Corrorro...
Corrorashnisnotcausashn.
There. I sssayed it.
:)
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Exactly (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Exactly (Score:4, Informative)
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Beer, is there anything it can't hurt? (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Beer, is there anything it can't hurt? (Score:4, Funny)
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Beer, is there anything it can't hurt? (Score:5, Interesting)
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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Re:Beer, is there anything it can't hurt? (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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Re:Beer, is there anything it can't hurt? (Score:5, Funny)
I prefer not to answer that because it is well known that people like you are prone to violence due to your stunted intellect.
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Living proof (Score:4, Funny)
No surprise here really.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:No surprise here really.. (Score:4, Interesting)
E.g., smoking a cigarette makes you feel better, among other things, because it blocks MAO-B. So basically your normal "reward" pathways in the brain get unbalanced by blocking the part which pulls your mood back down to the baseline. But _very_ soon the brain chemistry starts to compensate by producing more MAO-B. Oops. Now you feel shitty without a cigarette, and eventually you need them even to get you back to the baseline.
Alcohol works much the same, and is a pretty addictive thing.
Now drinking a couple of beers a day won't give you Delirium Tremens [wikipedia.org] when you're sober. But that's just a matter of nuances. Your brain chemistry hasn't deviated _that_ far from the baseline, but it has deviated a little anyway, if it regularly has to compensate for alcohol intoxication. So, yes, you won't be as impaired as someone who's gotten to the delirium tremens point, but you'll be a little impaired anyway.
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It actually works that way, yes (Score:4, Interesting)
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
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Paper beers (Score:5, Interesting)
Pfft. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Pfft. (Score:5, Informative)
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Groan (Score:3, Funny)
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!
WWFD? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
ignobel. (Score:3, Funny)
Yay for statistics (Score:5, Interesting)
Statistics are like miniskirts; they show a lot but hide the most important facts.
Re:Yay for statistics (Score:4, Insightful)
The article's inverse correlation between beer and success is inside a single country, and seems to be among scientists of only one science. Extending the conclusion to apply to the world and all kinds of science is admittedly a stretch, but not as bad as your example.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Tell that to Niels Bohr (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Many problems with that study (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Many problems with that study (Score:5, Interesting)
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Optimal level (Score:3, Funny)
But what about the Ballmer Peak [xkcd.com]?
Re:More fun; Better results! (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:More fun; Better results! (Score:5, Funny)
Enjoying a little beer tonight, are we?
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
RTFA, it's the opposite (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Re:RTFA, it's the opposite (Score:4, Interesting)
Personally I would not be surprised to see that it is alcohol consumption rather than beer that is the problem. Alcohol is a poison that some individuals consume readily and it would not surprise me a bit to discover that it has long term affects on the body and mind. I suspect it has more to do with the brain than science specifically but the effect may be subtle and show itself more readily in a hard thinking field like science.
As for other drugs, I wouldn't make the wild leap to assume that anything that causes euphoria is bad for you. Last time I looked it was still completely preposterous that many medications list euphoria as a NEGATIVE side effect.
There are all kinds of things that it is coming to light are probably good for our brains in small doses. Nicotine, Caffeine, Cannabis, and even MSG all have negative effects at high doses and positive effects at low doses. Amusingly, MSG in high doses (which isn't much for msg) mass murders brain cells and yet we use buckets of it in our food, where Cannabis has no known permanent effects on the brain and we throw people in prison for possessing it. The difference? Euphoria of course.
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