H/T Radley Balko.
This Kathryn Schulz/The Wrong Stuff blog post provides an insightful interview with clinical researcher Barry Marshall, the 2005 Nobel Prize winner who, along with colleague Robin Warren, proved that up to 90 percent of peptic ulcers are caused by a bacterium and not by stress as medical “wisdom” had long held.
The entire interview is interesting, but the most fascinating part is where Dr. Marshall explains the difficulty of attempting to persuade the scientific establishment to abandon the conventional wisdom about ulcers even when he could provide clinical evidence that the conventional wisdom was wrong. As with much of the progress in medical research over the past 50 years, Marshall’s breakthrough in changing the conventional wisdom emanated from Houston:
When and how did you start to convince people?
Part of it had to do with David Graham, who was chief of medicine at [Baylor College of Medicine], in [Houston] Texas, and a thought leader in gastroenterology. Graham started off as a real skeptic but quickly turned around. To his credit, Graham never said that I was wrong. He said, "I don’t know, and I’m going to find out." And a couple of years later, he said, "I’ve checked it out and it looks pretty good, it looks like it could be true."
And then in 1993 or ’94, the NIH had a consensus conference, and Tachi Yamada summed it up. Yamada is currently the head of [the Global Health Program of] the Gates Foundation; he’s a very, very smart guy, and he said, "Looks like it’s proven: Bacteria cause ulcers, and everybody needs to start treating ulcers with antibiotics."
It was just like night and day after that. The whole thing just went ballistic.
So, why do we cling to conventional wisdom even in the face of compelling evidence to the contrary? Is embracing the truth not as important as being comfortable with the beliefs – regardless of whether they are right — of what we want to be the truth or what those we live with believe is true?
In our ongoing series of innovative commercials, Cindy Crawford reminds us of how good those old Pepsi commercials were.
That’s what this NY Times reviewer calls Waiting for Superman, the much-anticipated documentary on the failure of the U.S. public school system. Here are the John Heilemann/New York Magazine, the Lloyd Grove/Daily Beast and John Nolte/Big Hollywood reviews (h/t Craig Newmark).
Watch and think about this one, folks. It’s for our children and grandchildren.
Journey through Canyons from Metron on Vimeo.
The fascinating culture of Texas A&M University football has been a frequent topic on this blog over the years. So, when a current student posted the following dilemma on an Aggie message board, hilarity ensued:
[A professor] scheduled a test on Thursday the 30th from 6-8. When we told him there is a game (Texas A&M vs. Oklahoma State) that night, he just laughed. Here are a list of options I have, please offer any advice.
- Take the test quickly and watch second half
- Record game and start from beginning when I get home, roommates would not be happy
- skip test
- fake illness
- actually get sick and go to quack shack for a university excused absence
- drop the class
Help me out TexAgs.
My favorite response came from an alum who got kicked out of class for bringing Reveille, the collie that is the Aggie mascot, to the class. He advised the professor upon leaving:
"This is your class and I will respect your rules, but please know that you are more expendable to the university than this dog."
Special business interests commonly use governmental power to stifle competition. Nevertheless, you really couldn’t make this example up (H/T Jeff Miron):
The folks who deliver beer and other beverages to liquor stores have joined the fight against legalizing marijuana in California.
On Sept. 7, the California Beer & Beverage Distributors gave $10,000 to a committee opposing Proposition 19, the measure that would change state law to legalize pot and allow it to be taxed and regulated. [. . .]
“Unless the beer distributors in California have suddenly developed a philosophical opposition to the use of intoxicating substances, the motivation behind this contribution is clear,” Steve Fox, director of government relations for the Marijuana Policy Project, said in statement.
“Plain and simple, the alcohol industry is trying to kill the competition. Their mission is to drive people to drink.”
Amazingly, the alcoholic beverage distributors don’t realize that one of the unintended consequences of the misguided drug prohibition policy is that illegal drugs are often much less expensive than legal alcoholic beverages.