It's always sunny in Tatooine

Since the weather is going to be in the 60s today (plus the fact that our normal meeting spot is being taken over by about 600 people), we’re meeting outside in our old spot in Harvard Yard, today at 3pm. More details on the location here.

Come and join us to discuss cognitive dissonance and Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me), and don’t forget to bring a snack! See you there!

Gallium Spoons: Only for hardcore fans of heavy metal (poisoning)

Last time, at the Boston Skeptics’ Book Club: Discovery. Mayhem. Profiteering. Arrogance. Science! All of these points and more were involved in the discovery and use of elements on the Periodic Table.

The Disappearing Spoon is divided up into five parts:

1. “Orientation: Column by Column, Row by Row.” This section discusses the basics of the table and how the geography is the key to decoding the properties of the elements. We take a trip to the town of Ytterby in Sweden, the proverbial Galapagos of the Periodic Table because of the ample supply of distinct minerals and Lanthanides. Also, we learn that antimony used to be used as a laxative pill, and it was so robust it was actually retrieved afterwards and passed down through family generations. Yum!
2. “Making Atoms, Breaking Atoms.” This chapter starts off with a discussion that can be summed up by Carl Sagan: “We are all star stuff contemplating star stuff.” Then it transitions into how science and the elements were used as weapons of war. One particularly ruthless scientist, Fritz Haber (a man who converted from Judaism to Lutheranism to benefit his career), developed chemical warfare and bombs for the Nazis in WWII, including the infamous Zyklon B (used in gas chambers during the Holocaust). Finally it concludes with the rabidly anti-science (among other things) John Birch Society and how American scientists envied the allegedly more scientific Russian Marxists. But there’s a twist! The Marxists actually did not believe in genetic theory and in fact shipped dissenting scientists off to work as mining slaves.
3. “Periodic Confusion: The Emergence of Complexity.” The theme of this section was the impact that the elements can have on our human physiology. The cadmium sludge disaster at the Kamioka Mines killed many rice farmers because cadmium can replace many minerals in one’s body and cause broken bones and kidney failure. Silver and copper are antimicrobial because they disrupt the metabolism of microbes. Also: How tastebuds work!
4. “The Elements of Human Character.” Did you know that Marie Curie named the element polonium as a political statement to show her controversial (?) support of her home country Poland? Neither did most people alive at the time she named it. And so, the theme of this section is how the elements have been viewed and used in popular culture. One fun story involves Nazis looking for illegal gold and Neils Bohr dissolving some gold Nobel Prize medals (given to him for safekeeping) so that he wouldn’t get caught. (After the war, his lab precipitated the gold out and had it recast.) Other stories include: A possible theory behind the “Midas Touch” legend; Robert Lowell, the famous manic-depressive poet, and lithium; and how the man who discovered x-rays thought he had gone insane once he saw the bones in his hand. Fortunately, in the last story, he uses his wife to confirm that she can see bones too, so he knows he’s not crazy. However, she thinks she’s just seen a death omen. But hey, all for science, right?
5. “Element Science: Today and Tomorrow.” This section explores how modern scientists endeavor to discover new elements in the table by applying extreme or different forces to current elements. For example, subjecting some elements to extreme cold can cause them to form a new atomic layout (as one unfortunate South Pole expedition found out when their tin-soldered oil cans broke apart at the seams and leaked all over their food). There’s a bit of discussion on the people who work for the Bureau of Standards and Measurements (who are the gold standard of anal-retentiveness)., and the mystery of scientific constants, which may not always be as constant as we once thought.

If you’re looking for some science, history, and tales of adventure, this book is definitely worth a read. The biggest complaint about this book at our discussion table was that it (like most of the science books we’ve been reading) jumps around a little too much chapter by chapter, although that probably is to be expected in a book that covers the diverse history of every single element in the Periodic Table. I enjoyed the historical tidbits and tales of nefarious scientists moreso than the actual science.

Our next book is Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson. We are meeting up on Saturday, April 30 at 3pm in our normal meeting spot in the Harvard University Northwest Building (check previous posts for pictures and address). If, however, the weather is going to be beautiful (none of this sunny-with-a-cold-breeze shit we’ve been getting), I’ll post an announcement and we’ll meet up on Harvaaahhd Yaahhd, where we met in the summer. Bring yourself, bring a snack, and of course bring a book suggestion to add to our list!

Video evidence of a ghost? Alien hand syndrome? Clear and poorly acted fraud? Clearly all equal possibilities!

Last Book Club meeting, we discussed Joe Nickell’s Adventures in Paranormal Investigation. (Spoiler alert: All alleged paranormal activity was discovered to be fake or misjudged.) This book is actually a collection of his articles from the magazine Skeptical Inquirer and so it didn’t have the normal flow of a book. Each chapter was written decently, but it was full of Skeptic 101 material (The legend of the Crystal Skulls, Peter Popoff’s Ministry of Fraud, dowsing, crop circles, etc.), so it wasn’t a book that I enjoyed reading  but it is an excellent primer for anyone new to the movement who previously believed in these things.

Even though the title of the book mentions Adventures and Investigation, the book lacked both. A few chapters were written in a way to include the actual investigation process (“Abraham Lincoln’s Spirit Writing”), and the author did do a little traveling, but too many chapters were just frank discussions of beliefs that people have. There is a chapter about the castle that may have inspired the naming of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and there is another chapter about people who celebrate The Day of the Dead, no investigations involved (not that any were necessary).

I’m not completely down on this book though. Clearly the author takes many of these claims seriously because he doesn’t want to think of himself as someone who solely debunks, which has the (unintentional?) effect of making a few of the chapters very humorous. For example, in “The Case of the Alien Hand,” a green, hand-like artifact was found in some hay and presented to the author for investigation. He notes that the skin is stretchy, green, and smells like latex, and he has very detailed photos showing manufacturing defects from the latex-coating process. He concludes that the hand probably belonged to a plastic ghoul and was caught up in a piece of farm equipment before ending up in the hay. I think it took me longer to read this chapter than it would have to find a green hand and proclaim its artificial origin.

Our next meeting is Saturday, March 26th at 3pm in our normal meeting spot in Harvard. We’ll be discussing The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements by Sam Kean.

And for all you who like to read the following book the month before, I have a surprise for you: Here is the official Book Club list, take a look and let me know what book we should read next! Or suggest a new one if it’s not listed! Even if you have never made a meeting before, make a suggestion! (OK, I’ve reached my exclamation point quota for the week. Maybe!)

While you’re out this weekend enjoying the first signs of New England Mud Season, come stop by Harvard and chat with the Boston Skeptics’ Book Club! We are meeting at the Northwest Building at Harvard (as usual) at 3pm on Saturday, February 19th (tomorrow!) to discuss Adventures in Paranormal Investigation by Joe Nickell. And if you’re so inclined, bring a snack!

Don’t be shy if you haven’t been able to come before or if you haven’t finished (or read) the book. You can often fake your way through a meeting as long as you can come up with a tertiarily-related Star Trek reference! All new members are welcome.

Human Bender: The Ultimate Self-Experimenter

Last week, the Boston Skeptics’ Book Club met outside for the last time before the upcoming eight months of winter to snack on an endless variety of cookies and pasta salad and to discuss Who Goes First? The Story of Self Experimentation in Medicine by Lawrence K. Altman. This book is excellent for anyone who wants to know the history of science, because many scientists have dabbled in self-experimentation and there are a lot of interesting stories about how modern treatments came into being.

Some chapters in the book droned on a bit (the parasite chapter was rather disappointing unless you enjoy reading about the many ways scientists have ingested flukes), but the good news is that most chapters were no longer than 20 pages and they each covered a different topic, so you can skip through the boring chapters if you want to get to the good stuff.

The book went over areas of self-experimentation including: the origin of the Rabies vaccine (and how Louis Pasteur is not technically a member of the prestigious Pasteurian Club); heart surgery using a catheter (the scientist experimenting with this one had to literally fight off the x-ray tech trying to yank the catheter out); experimentation with different forms of anesthesia (including how to cure a morphine addiction with cocaine); the yellow fever experiments (and more black vomit and other bodily excretions than you can imagine); how scientists deprived themselves of nutrients to develop wartime rationing diets (and why our junk food is so fortified with vitamins); the glory days of science when lab-grade LSD was free to scientists (for research only, of course); and how scientists were able to determine the cause of food poisoning (and the unfortunate “kitten food-poisoning test”).

This book was written in the late 80′s but most of the science is still solid. You can really only tell it’s dated by the optimistic mention of an HIV vaccine being developed and ready before the year 2000.

Who Goes First? was an enjoyable read and it would actually make a great supplemental textbook for a college class because it really went through the process of science without sounding like a boring lecture about the Scientific Method. Many of these scientists were interested in the Why and How, and they viewed self-experimentation as a necessary evil to find their answers. The scientists had different reasons for why they did what they did, but the mostly boiled down to: reliability (because they could control everything in their lives); dependability (many of them had fine observational tools); the sense of adventure; developing a sense of empathy for their patients/future experimenters; self protection (if you’re in an area full of malaria, you want to be the one who has first access to the vaccine); convenience (no committees to approve, no forms to sign); and experience (in their own specific scientific field).

There are a few problems with self-experimentation though, and a big one is that it’s difficult to design an experiment with proper controls and to account for the placebo effect. In fact, some of the scientists died in vain because the data they produced did not actually prove their hypothesis. Another issue is that most of the self-experimenters were men, thus scientific facts gained from the experiments may not always be true for women. An example of this issue is in one of the later chapters where a man and woman were experimenting with loss of salt through sweating, and when they determined that women did not sweat as much as men (and therefore didn’t lose as much salt), they decided to move forward with male-only subjects, so their data was not representational of the general public. Lastly, if one is going to self-experiment, one needs to document everything and have a good, observational partner. The chapters mainly focus on the successes of self-experimenters and how lucky many of them were to elude death in their trials, but the last chapter does mention scientists who weren’t so lucky, even if they took what they thought were proper safety measures.

Next book club is on November 6th at 3pm and the location is TBD (although it probably will be near Harvard, we are ironing out some details with a place that we have in mind). We will be reading World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks. If you don’t think this book is science or skepticism related, well, it’s Halloween and zombies are relevant to almost anything. Zombies eat brains. Scientists work with brains. Skeptics use their brains. It’s a natural connection!

The book sneak preview for the meeting after the next one is: Packing for Mars: The Curious Life of Science in the Void by Mary Roach. See you next time!

Just a quick reminder that the Boston Skeptics’ Book Club is meeting up this Saturday at 3 pm to discuss Them: Adventures with Extremists by Jon Ronson. There’s been a slight change of venue and we’re going to be in Harvard Yard this time, and here is a map of where we’ll be, with a giant green pepper marking our meeting spot (click to enlarge):

(Yes, that’s a giant green pepper, it was the coolest brush I could find in my open-source photo editing software, plus it’s totally appropriate since we’re having a picnic this time.)

In case you can’t make it out, it’s across from the Tanner Fountain (looks like a bunch of mist rising up from a circle of rocks) between the Harvard Science Center and the Sanders Theatre. There’s a little grove of trees (seen in the background here) and we’ll set up there with our books and our food. Bring whatever food you want–I’ll be bringing some plates, utensils, cups, and probably a fruit of some sort but everything is welcome as long as you bring yourself! We get at least one newcomer per meeting, so don’t be shy. The weather should be beautiful, and who wouldn’t want to hang out with a bunch of nerds skeptics on a Saturday afternoon anyway? Look, I even made it a Facebook event this time so you can RSVP!

Media Bonus: Here is the link of Jon Ronson at one of our Pub events. He starts talking about his extremist adventures at 5:54 and shows a video of the Cremation of Care at 17:00. Enjoy!

If I only had a brain...

This past Saturday, the Boston Skeptics’ Book Club met in the park (on a very lovely day) to discuss An Anthropologist on Mars by Oliver Sacks. There were seven different stories about individuals with interesting neurological conditions:

• A painter who went totally colorblind after a car accident and had to relearn his new “leaden” world
• A man who lost the ability to form memories past 1968 due to a benign brain tumor (which also made him blind and completely unaware of the fact that anything was wrong with him)
• A blind man who regained his sight after 50 years, only to be unsettled by what he was seeing
• A surgeon with Tourette’s whose tics disappear when he is operating
• An artist so obsessed with his childhood town that he was able to paint it from memory 30 years later from a 3-D model he had constructed in his head
• A young autistic artist (and other autistic prodigies)
• Temple Grandin, who talks about her “squeeze machine” and her own theories about how people with Asperger’s actually function and see the world

The book was only about 300 pages, and while some book clubbers enjoyed the stories about the individuals as described by Sacks, the overall consensus was that Sacks could have delved deeper into some of the mechanisms behind the neurological conditions. He went on in great deal about the ways that the brain can interpret color (as in the case of the colorblind painter), but he only touched on what may have been going on in the case of the artist who had a photographic memory of his childhood town (he alluded to epilepsy but that was about it). We were also curious about the surgeon with Tourette’s:
What exactly caused his tics to disappear during surgery? Was it because he was in the mindset of a surgeon or did his tics disappear only if he was in a routine (i.e. not a surgical technique that he just learned).

This book is a fun read, even if it raises more questions about the science of neurology than it answers, but it still provides an interesting perspective on how others see the world and deal with their particular conditions.

Our next book is Them: Adventures with Extremists by the utterly awesome Jon Ronson. Until now I’ve only heard his segments on This American Life, but if his books are anything like those then they should be very compelling. We’re planning on meeting at the Boston Commons Harvard Yard (ed–slight change of venue) this time, weather permitting, on August 28th at 3 pm. Also, this time we’re making it a picnic! Because nothing goes better with a good book than some strawberries and cheese (or John’s coffee). Please let us know what you’re bringing in the comments. And of course, bring yourself, no matter what stage of the book you’re at.

For those of you who want a head start on the book after this one, we will be reading a book suggested by our own skeptic Kerry: Who Goes First: The Story of Self-
Experimentation in Medicine by Lawrence K. Altman.

Poor little guy never had a chance

This post is late for a good reason for once: I’ve been busy the whole week packing up to move to Waltham tomorrow! And I’m exhausted, so please excuse me if my thoughts are a little loopy. Now back to our regularly scheduled blog post.

This past Saturday, the BSBC met up for a beautiful day in the park to discuss all things parasitic in Carl Zimmer’s Parasite Rex. On the surface, parasites are disgusting (to me), but this book goes beyond the surface into the intricacies of parasitic life. In the beginning of the book, Zimmer discussed the origin and history of Parasitology and the history of what exactly scientists thought of parasites. Most scientists despised parasites, either because they were disgusted, thought the parasites were lazy, or feeling smug over their alleged evolutionary superiority, and as a result the science of Parasitology is not as established as other sciences.

Zimmer goes on to write about how parasites figure out where to go in a host and how they evade the immune system so effectively. In fact, labs have started researching the chemicals that parasites use to sooth the immune system because something like that could be used to treat auto-immune disorders (like allergies or Crohn’s Disease) or even help patients who have had organ transplants.

The parasites themselves are interesting, but just as interesting is how different plants and animals have adapted to fight off parasites. For example, sexual intercourse may have evolved as a way to fight off parasites by diversifying the genetics of a population of hosts (versus a population of hosts that reproduce asexually into a series of clones). Also, the book describes how the showiness of males of a given species is directly related to how infected the population is. Some plants, when bitten by caterpillars, will release a chemical that attracts parasitic wasps to kill the caterpillars.

Getting rid of parasites isn’t always desirable. In fact, in a given ecosystem with fish and birds, a parasite might infect a fish and make it flop around on the surface so that it will be easier prey for a bird, the parasite’s desired home. If the parasites were eradicated from the ecosystem, the fish population might thrive, but then the bird population might drop because of the lessened amount of prey. Some scientists are using parasites as a form of “organic” pesticide to tamper with ecosystems, but the results can be as helpful as they can be disastrous.  For example, in Africa the Cassava plant, a primary source of food for many people, was being destroyed by Cassava Mealybugs, so after a little research scientists flew in some foreign parasitic wasps to get rid of the mealybugs and save the day. However, on Hawaii scientists have also brought in parasites to eradicate undesired species, with the after-effect of wanted species being infected and also eradicated.

This book was an interesting read, because the first time I read it I was completely grossed out, but on my second read I really understood how amazing and intricate parasites are (as long as they stay away from me, of course).  And it goes without saying that you probably shouldn’t read this book if you’re going to eat a rare steak soon, or any dish that is especially noodly. I’d probably even stay away from Bubble Tea for a bit. In honor of Parasite Rex, I have composed a haiku:

Blood Flukes mate for life,
embracing and making sweet
love, in your liver.

Did you like the book or did you feel like it was too drawn out, like a Guinea Worm being slowly pulled out of your leg and wrapped around a stick over a period of days? Do you have any haikus or odes to parasites to add? Did the book skip over one of your favorite parasites that you really want to mention? Please leave your thoughts in the comments!

The next book is An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales by Oliver Sacks, described as a book about people who are “differently-brained”, like a surgeon with Tourette’s Syndrome who is plagued with tics except when he operates, a man with memory damage who can’t remember anything past 1968, an artist who gets in an accident and goes completely colorblind, and also a chapter about Temple Grandin (one of my favorite women to read about). Our next meeting will be on Saturday, July 24th at 3 pm, and location is TBD pending good weather.

If you find yourself wanting to come to a BSBC meeting but can’t make it because Saturdays aren’t good, please write your day suggestions in the comments! Now that I am moving closer to Boston and my shift is normal, we may discuss doing something on a weeknight or a Sunday, whatever works for the group.

At the request of one of our BSBC’ers, I’m going to list the book for the meeting after next, in case anyone wants to get a head start on it. It’s going to be Them: Adventures with Extremists by Jon Ronson (I haven’t yet read one of his books but I’m looking forward to it as he is one of my favorite contributors to This American Life).

I just checked the weather and it looks like everything is going to be bright and sunny, so bring your blankets, sunscreen, and a copy of Parasite Rex tomorrow to the Christopher Columbus Park down on the wharf. We’ll meet at 3 pm on the Plaza (same spot as last time).

For anyone who wants a podcast extra, check out this awesome Radiolab episode all about parasites (and the research being done on how hookworms might be a cure for allergies).

Come and have a licely…er, lively discussion about parasites with the Boston Skeptics! Even if you haven’t finished the book, you know you want to come anyway just for the conversation and factoids. (Just leave your uncooked meat at home.)

Last Saturday, we met up in the beautiful Christopher Columbus Park on the Waterfront to discuss The Madame Curie Complex by Julie Desjardins. The book mostly discusses the history of women in science since the 1880s, starting with Marie Curie. The title comes from the fact that Curie was often written about as a super-woman of sorts, who had time to raise her children and also win two Nobels. She was seen as a matronly martyr, even though that stereotype didn’t resemble her life at all. She was reclusive, brilliant, and seemed to prefer science over everything else. She was a Gold Standard of sorts for female scientists, who were supposed to be brilliant but only in a “womanly” fashion. Many early female scientists discussed in this book were seen as helpmeets or assistants to their male superiors. The women were mostly relegated to data collecting positions, as their “female brains” were supposed to be attentive to detail, while the analyzing and problem solving was something more suited to a “male brain”.

The book also discusses Lillian Gilbreth, the woman behind Cheaper By The Dozen, who pioneered workplace efficiency science with her husband and who continued to be a scientist of “domestic arts” (natch) after his death. The chapter about her is full of how awesome she was at managing her time and keeping her house run like a factory. She was portrayed as a mistress of domesticity, even though in reality she never cooked anything herself and had to make up a cake recipe on the fly for a publicity campaign.

The other women discussed in the book are: the women of the Harvard Observatory, the women who worked on the Manhattan Project, Rosalind Franklin, Maria Mayer (Nobel winner for the shell-orbit theory of atoms), Dian Fossey, Jane Goodall, and many more.

Overall, I found the book informative but a little long in some parts. The author really enjoys belaboring some points while not focusing too hard on other points. The Manhattan Project section was a little jumbled and she jumped from scientist to scientist until I couldn’t tell who did what, while the chapter on Lillian Gilbreth went on and on about how efficient the woman was. However, it was still an enjoyable read for me, since I like to read about history, especially with a feminist analysis. Others in the BSBC wanted to learn more about the science that the women were doing but I found the history of institutionalized sexism the most interesting part and the book definitely talked a lot about that.

If you read the book but couldn’t make it to our meeting, leave a note in the comments! I want to find out your opinions, whether you liked it or didn’t. And don’t be shy–come out to our meetings! You don’t have to be a regular (or even finish the book) to join us and have a good time.

Our next book is Carl Zimmer’s Parasite Rex: Inside the Bizarre World of Nature’s Most Dangerous Creatures. Our next meeting date is June 19th at 3 pm, location is TBD for now until we know what the weather is like. If it’s sunny, we’ll meet again at the CC Park, otherwise we’ll probably meet at our usual Border’s Cafe. Come join us for a fun-filled parasitic chat!