Search Content

Displaying results 84651 - 84700 of 87950

Sunday sermon: part of the in-crowd

The world is divided, runs the old joke (which I heard when it wasn't so old), into two kinds: those who divided the world into two kinds, and those who don't. [There's actually an interesting feature of the history of logic here that... never mind. Later.] We all, or very nearly all, like to divide the world into those who are like-minded to us and those who are not. It is not just a matter of religion, but of sport, music, politics, ethnicity, and tastes in literature. And although we do not express it out loud, we think that we have chosen the best of all these alternatives. Of course…

A quote: the role of philosophy in science

Craig Miller dropped by and we got to reading some Locke, as visitors to my office are wont to find themselves doing: The commonwealth of learning is not at this time without master-builders, whose mighty designs, in advancing the sciences, will leave lasting monuments to the admiration of posterity: but every one must not hope to be a Boyle or a Sydenham; and in an age that produces such masters as the great Huygenius and the incomparable Mr. Newton, with some others of that strain, it is ambition enough to be employed as an under-labourer in clearing the ground a little, and removing…

Nietzsche and evolution

The Cafeteria is Closed has a very nice little discussion of whether Nietzsche was properly the foundation of German nationalism and anti-Semitism, answering, with documentary support, no to each claim. Given the recent slurs on evolutionary theory as the foundation for Nazism and the holocaust, it's a good point to make. But is Nietzsche even a "Darwinist" (a term only the Discovery Institute, or as we like to call it, DIsco, seems to use these days, as it has no real meaning)? He certainly accepted that evolution occurred, and he managed to avoid some of the sillier philosophical claims…

Alberto, Al, and what a neuron from George W might have said after Katrina

Arlene, Bret, Cindy, Dennis, Emily, Franklin, Gert, Harvey, Irene, Jose, Katrina, Lee, Maria, Nate, Ophelia, Phillippe, Rita, Stan, Tammy, Vince, Wilma, Alpha, Beta, Delta, Epsilon, Gamma, Zeta... Not exactly the makings of another Children's Alphabet Picture Book. Rather, these are names of the 27 hurricanes/tropical storms given by the World Meteorological Organization in 2005, the first time in history, where letters of the Greek alpabet had to be used when the predetermined names had run out. A few days ago, the first such storm of the 2006 hurricane season, named Alberto, rumbled and…

Judith Curry sticks her neck out

There aren't too many working climate scientists out there arguing that the release of the University of East Anglia emails may end up being a good thing. But that seems to be what Judith Curry of the Georgia Institute of Technology is arguing. Over at Collide-a-scape, Keith Kloor has posted an email exchange with Curry, who lays out her problems with the state of climate science, the IPCC and a few individuals, ostensibly in hopes of generating some sincere soul-searching and reflection that results in improvements to both the climatology community and the way it communicates with the public…

Hummers vs. Hybrids Redux: On Corporate Research

The entry that I posted on research challenging the idea that Hummers are worse for the environment than hybrids has sparked a great deal of contreversy and criticism. I cannot say that I find this entirely surprising. There have been several very reasonable criticisms related their failure to publish their methods and their assumption that hybrids will have a significantly shorter operating life than Hummers. (They assert that the average operating life of a Hummer is 300,000 miles while the average operating life of a Prius is 100,000 miles.) Specifically with respect to the operating…

Newly-published evidence supports innocence of the Tripoli Six (Benghazi Six)

We last spoke in September about the case of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor unjustly imprisoned in Libya for the inconceivable charge of intentionally injecting 426 children with HIV at Al-Fateh Hospital in Benghazi. These health care workers are guilty of nothing other than volunteering as medical missionaries to care for ill children in an underserved medical system. Increasing evidence is suggestive that the workers are scapegoats for the poor medical conditions existing at the hospital that likely led to the spread of HIV across pediatric patients. Nature has now…

Infants as young as six months respond to words differently from other sounds

There is a growing body of evidence that very young children -- too young even to talk -- still know plenty of words. When our kids were very young, it was quite clear that they knew the meanings of many more words than they could actually produce. When they couldn't speak at all, they understood words like "Mommy," "bottle," and "diaper." When they were older and could say those words but not complete sentences, they understood more complicated phrases like "go into the kitchen and bring me your sister's sippy cup." But is there something special about words? Or could babies learn to…

Study finds some thoughts really do require language

I don't need words to think about the shape of a car, or how to throw a football, or the taste of a chocolate chip cookie. In fact, things like that are probably easier to think about without using language. That's why the strong form of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis -- that language is necessary for conscious thought -- doesn't hold up. But even if language isn't required for some domains, it's still possible that it is required for certain types of mental processes. It may even be required for some thoughts that aren't obviously related to language. Some research suggests that understanding…

Synesthesia more prevalent than originally thought

This is a guest post by Jonathan Leathers, one of Greta's top student writers for Spring 2007. Take a look at this word: MONDAY What color do you see? Red? Blue? While you may see nothing unusual, some people report being able to perceive colors associated with different days of the week when they are written down or heard in conversation. This ability is attributed to a phenomenon known as synesthesia, previously thought to be extremely rare. In synesthesia, the human brain interprets one set of sensory stimuli in terms of another; in other words, two senses cross. But synesthesia goes…

Should we ban term papers and embrace plagiarism?

In a recent opinion piece appearing in the Washington Post, Jason Johnson argues that in today's cut-and-paste world, the term paper is becoming irrelevant: Today I plagiarized multiple documents at work. I took the writing of others and presented it to my supervisor as if it were my own. It was an open secret that my entire report, written "by Jason Johnson," had been composed by others and that I had been merely an editor. Instead of a reprimand, I was rewarded with a post-briefing latte. In the fast-paced world of today, Johnson claims, no one has time to worry about who the real "author"…

Amazing demo of what we remember visually, and why

What types of images are you more likely to remember over the short-term? Pleasant? Bright? Arousing? Disturbing? One method of testing short-term visual memory is to flash a rapid series of pictures, then ask viewers which ones they saw. The pictures are shown so quickly that it's impossible to remember them all. Click on the image below to view a movie (Quicktime required). Wait for the entire movie to load, then watch it. You'll see 12 photos rapidly flash by. Play it twice, but no more. Other than the first and the last one, did you remember any? I'll put a quick test below (fair warning…

Cool visual illusions (with animations!), and an effort to explain why they occur

The cafe wall illusion has the dramatic effect of making a straight line appear slanted: That's right, the line is precisely horizontal. It was created by Akiyoshi Kitaoka, one of the world's foremost authorities on visual illusion, who is also a wonderful artist. In addition to the hundreds of other illusions he's created, he's posted an entire page of illusions all based on the cafe wall effect. But why does the line appear to be slanted? It must have something to do with the juxtaposition of light and dark patches, but what exactly? Take a look at this more elaborate illusion which…

Dropping SAT scores: A plausible explanation

The local newspaper here in Charlotte was aghast that SAT scores (a test used to help determine college admissions in the US) fell in North Carolina this year, even though the article goes on to point out that nationwide the scores dropped even more. So what's up? Are schools letting the kids down? Is the new test harder (this year a writing section was added, though the format of the remainder of the test remains the same, and the writing section isn't included in comparisons)? The College Board, which administers the tests, claims that the difference can't be attributed to the longer tests…

Violence in sports fans

We've written a lot on Cognitive Daily about the relationship between violent video game play and real-world aggressive behavior. While we feel the evidence showing that playing violent games does cause real aggression is compelling, a frequent critique of our analysis is that other activities, such as competitive sports, may also lead to violence. "Should we ban football?" the commenters opine. We've replied that football is a separate issue which doesn't negate the video game evidence. (For the record, we don't think we should ban violent video games, and the incidence of head injuries and…

There's never a shortage of smarm among evangelicals

There has been a recent rash of publicized suicides by young gay people who have been bullied and intimidated and shamed by their peers…and we're also getting a rash of Christian apologetics by the blind bigots of homophobia who simultaneously declaim their pious regrets that these poor children of God couldn't find their way to redemption, while continuing the slander of damning their sinning lives. It's hard to get more unctuously hypocritical than the odious Albert Mohler, who whimpers 'think of the children!' while protesting that as good Christians they must condemn the sin, and he sadly…

The impact of foggy goggles on sensation and perception

I've been an avid skier for over 25 years -- but I didn't start using goggles until very recently. Under the overcast Washington State skies, they didn't seem to be necessary. But now that I live in North Carolina, skiing is usually done under sunny skies on artificial snow; goggles are a must. As a person who also wears glasses, however, the experience can be frustrating -- any time I stop for more than a few seconds, my goggles, glasses, or both will usually fog up -- the goggles rely on airflow to keep from getting foggy. In this situation, I'm left with two choices: proceed with impaired…

Dennett and Ruse, Redux

PZ and Jason Rosenhouse are blogging about this testy email exchange between two of evolution's top defenders, Michael Ruse and Daniel Dennett. I don't fully grasp how or why these emails got out--it doesn't seem like something that should have happened (although frankly, they're not actually all that salacious anyway). But I would like to wade through a few of the issues they raise. PZ and Rosenhouse have an interesting reaction to one argument by Michael Ruse that I find fairly persuasive (although it's stated rather hyperbolically here): that Dennett and Richard Dawkins are "absolute…

It's Official: Bush Will Pull a Gingrich

A while back I blogged about an idea floated by Morton Kondracke: That George W. Bush should try to become the "science" president by emphasizing, in his State of the Union speech, themes of global scientific competitiveness and the need to ensure that the good old USA is leading the pack. Well, it now seems official: According to the Boston Globe, in his speech tonight Bush plans to highlight Norman Augustine, a former Lockheed Martin CEO who "last year led a congressionally mandated National Academies team that issued a report warning that America is 'on a losing path' in the global…

Of Hype and Adult Stem Cell Research

The anti-research types get a lot of mileage out of arguing that embryonic stem cell research has been hyped. In general, I think they greatly overstate the case, but we must admit--and I certainly do--that some pro-research statements have been made that are really beyond the pale. Perhaps the most outrageous example, of course, is Jonathan Edwards' statement during the 2004 campaign that If we do the work that we can do in this country, the work that we will do when John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve will get up out of that wheelchair and walk again. Note to John: You…

Could all babies be synesthetes?

Take a look at the following movie. Your job is to identify which ball appeared to make the noise in the final frame. (click to play): If this seems confusing now, it should be cleared up by the end of this post. You can register your result in this poll: Synesthesia, as we've discussed before, is a rare condition. Synesthetes are people who perceive stimuli presented in one mode (often corresponding to one of the five senses) with a different mode. It's a remarkable ability, manifesting itself in a variety of different ways -- seeing "auras" around friends, or associating a sound or even…

Athletics and drug abuse

My favorite bike shop has a photo of bicyclists lighting up cigarettes for each other as they rode along during a 1920s stage of the Tour de France. After getting over our astonishment that they can actually manage to light cigarettes without even getting off their bikes, we look at the photo today and think "how could those riders not know what those cigarettes were doing to their lungs?" Surely today's athletes know that using drugs ranging from nicotine to alcohol to cocaine can seriously impair their ability to perform in competition, don't they? Supporters of scholastic athletics point…

Words of encouragement and exercise

With my high school reunion coming up, memories just seem to well up out of nowhere. One of the most powerful was that of my cross-country coach's booming voice yelling "stride, Munger, stride!" across the track. I wasn't the best runner on the team, but whenever I heard that voice, I'd always start running faster. Sometimes when I'm out for my morning run, I wish I still had my coach's voice to urge me on. I've never had any doubt that verbal encouragement helped me perform better on the track, but I have wondered what exactly about the encouragement is helping. Does it just increase my "…

Do we have momentum in our heads?

Take a look at the following two movies. Your job is to determine whether the yellow square is moving faster in the first movie or the second movie. If you're like me, you're probably cynical enough to guess that they were moving at the same speed. But if you're honest and you just go with your initial impression of what you're seeing, it's hard not to perceive the second movie as much slower than the first one. What you're witnessing is Michotte's launching effect paradigm, first observed in 1946 by Albert Michotte: when two objects collide, we ascribe the motion of the second object…

Why are cell phones so dangerous for driving?

It has been known for some time that cell phones can lead to driving accidents. After watching the behavior of some other drivers on the road, I'm sometimes surprised that there aren't more cell-phone-related accidents than there already are. With well over 100 million cell phone users in the U.S. alone, the problem isn't going to get any smaller. Until recently, there has been some dispute about exactly why cell phones are unsafe for drivers. Two high-profile studies in the 1990s suggested that any manual manipulation of devices in a car, including not only dialing a cell phone, but also…

A video game to increase your self-esteem

Ivan Pavlov, the Russian psychologist and surgeon of legendary ability (his Nobel prize is for medicine), was perhaps most famous for his experiments with dogs. Performing a tricky procedure to implant a saliva-measuring device in dogs' necks, he then trained them to recognize when food was coming. First he'd ring a bell and bring the dog food. Dogs would begin to salivate when the food arrived. After a short training period, dogs would begin salivating when the bell was rung, even if Pavlov never brought the food. This technique, now universally referred to as classical conditioning, works…

Who still believes in magic?

Yesterday we discussed the difference between children's and adults' beliefs in magic. Today we will continue that discussion, with two more experiments from the same article by Eugene Subbotsky. Adults generally claim they don't believe in magic, but they seem to have a different set of rules for fictional objects. While they understand that a real rabbit can't change into a bird, they believe a fictional dog-bird might just be able to turn into a cat-fish. Kids, on the other hand, seem to have a consistent set of rules for both real and fictional objects. In experiment three, Subbotsky…

Atomic Asymmetry and the Next Generation of Data Storage

One of physics’ greatest tricks is polarization. Take magnets, for example, such as those commonly found on refrigerators holding up shopping lists and Christmas cards. These have the familiar north/south polarization that we can experience as attraction and repulsion. That magnetic orientation persists all the way down to the individual molecules, which actually align to cause the larger-scale behavior. This polar phenomenon is caused by ferromagnetism, a defining quality of some particles that gives them an intrinsic polarity – what scientists call a dipole moment. And remarkably, that…

Tiny Visions: Capturing the Nanoscale in 3D

Building 3D images gets trickier with objects bilions of times smaller. (courtesy Electric-Eye on Flickr) Let's start with a number, by chance a palindrome: 1441. Imagine taking that many photographs of a single object, a soccer ball, say - obsessively capturing it from every angle to expose all the details. Those 1441 images provide all the evidence needed to illustrate and understand the three dimensional structure of that soccer ball. Each shot reveals another curve of the sphere, another line in the checkered pattern, another scuff or scratch along the surface. An adept programmer or…

Replication Tango

There are many complex steps to the dance of DNA replication. And scientists must learn to sway along in order to understand how both healthy and cancerous cells divide. Scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory have begun to learn how to follow the complex molecular choreography by which intricate cellular proteins recognize and bind to DNA to start the replication process. The replication process starts off the same way in every cell. In the cell's DNA, there are defined sites called the "origin of replication." The cell in which the DNA is housed uses a protein called the "origin…

Barack Obama Answers Science Debate 2008

In November, 2007, a small group of six citizens - two screenwriters, a physicist, a philosopher, and Chris and I - began working to restore science and innovation to America's political dialogue in an initiative called ScienceDebate2008. Within weeks, more than 38,000 scientists, engineers, and other concerned Americans signed on, including nearly every major American science organization, dozens of Nobel laureates, elected officials and business leaders, and the presidents of over 100 major American universities. Signers submitted over 3,400 questions and we worked with the leading…

A Dialogue on Framing, the F-Word, and the Future of ScienceBlogs, Part II: Where Do We Actually Disagree?

*** Not An April Fools Entry.*** Well, folks, I am deviating from my original plan in this series of framing posts that I've promised. I had wanted to launch into a long--and, I think, revealing--insider narrative account of how it is that we wound up being this polarized. But that will take me some time to write. People on the last comments thread, though, seem impatient for me to get to "substance." So I thought a slight deviation in my plan would be both more satisfying to them, and also quite illuminating. What follows, then, is a series of premises that, at least to me--not necessarily…

The New Paleobiological Synthesis

A few months ago I had the opportunity to sit down with a professional paleontologist and pick his brain about a few things. One of the questions that I most wanted to ask was about the changing nature of paleobiology. Molecular biology, genetics, evo-devo, and other disciplines appeared to have an increasing presence in discussions of ancient life, and I asked the paleontologist if students of paleontology should strive to receive training in these fields to further expand the scope of paleontology. I could hardly have been more disappointed by the answer. The gist of his response was that…

The Venus effect: What we see in the mirror isn't what would really be there

The Rokeby Venus by Diego Velázquez is a good example of a very common illusion in many paintings: Most viewers would say this picture depicts a woman viewing her own reflection in a mirror. But based on the orientation of the mirror, it's actually physically impossible for her to see her own reflection. Since we can see her face, then if she could see face in the mirror, her head would have to be positioned between us and the the mirror. At best all she would be able to see is us (or rather, the painter painting her picture). Art critics have suggested that there's another problem with…

How, exactly, do sad faces affect our ability to count?

Remember this video? A few weeks ago we used it to demonstrate that facial expressions can disrupt the perceptual system in fundamental ways. Actually, because we could only show a few short clips, we weren't able to duplicate the research results found by John Eastwood, Daniel Smilek, and Philip Merikle. But in their, more comprehensive study, although viewers were instructed only to count "upturned arcs" or "downturned arcs," when those arcs formed "faces" with negative expressions, people counted the arcs slower and less accurately. But how exactly do facial expressions disrupt the…

Casual Fridays: Electoral predictions: 538 is the best -- and the worst

Last week we asked our readers to predict the result of the election. How did they do? Out of the 474 people who guessed the results of this year's presidential election, only six got the electoral vote right - 365 votes for Obama (assuming Missouri goes for McCain and Omaha goes for Obama). None of these respondents was accurate on the popular vote, but one anonymous respondent got close, guessing that McCain would get 47 percent (the actual figure was 46.3 percent). Only one person who guessed 365 left his name, so let's give Wayland credit as the unofficial "winner" of our prediction…

Face recognition: We use different methods to identify strangers

When Sarah Palin was introduced to the country, most Americans had never heard of her -- but many people noticed that she looked very similar to the then-more-famous actor Tina Fey. Can you tell which is which? Let's make this a poll: Which one is Sarah Palin? ( polls) We're amazingly good at recognizing the faces of friends and family members. We can even recognize people we know well by viewing point-light displays of them walking. But what about strangers? If we see the same person twice, do we remember them correctly? How accurate are we at determining whether a person matches the…

Why do more Asians have perfect pitch?

Several recent large-scale studies have confirmed a curious finding: Asians are much more likely to have "perfect pitch" than non-Asians. Perfect pitch, more properly called "Absolute pitch," is an extremely rare phenomenon, but it's several times more likely to occur in Asians than in others. Studies have found that only 1 in 1,500 to 10,000 individuals possess absolute pitch. Part of the ability's rarity is due to the fact that it's really a combination of two abilities: pitch-memory -- the ability to remember what a pitch sounds like, and pitch-labeling -- the ability to name a pitch (A, B…

What's more convincing than talking about brains? Pictures of brains!

Not long ago we discussed work led by Deena Skolnick Weisberg showing that most people are more impressed by neuroscience explanations of psychological phenomena than plain-old psychology explanations. Talking about brains, it seems, is more convincing than simply talking about behavior, even when the neuroscience explanation doesn't actually add any substantive details. Now David McCabe and Alan Castel have taken this work on the acceptance of neuroscience to a new level: now they've got pictures! They asked 156 students at Colorado State University to read three different newspaper articles…

From the department of not getting it

Muslims in Saudi Arabia are building a giant clock that resembles Big Ben, but is over six times larger. They want to replace Greenwich Mean Time with Mecca Time as the world standard. As Mohammed al-Arkubi, manager of one of the hotels in the complex, put it: "Putting Mecca time in the face of Greenwich Mean Time. This is the goal." This is a beautiful example of cargo cult science. Big Ben has nothing to do with establishing GMT — it's just a big clock in London. GMT is entirely about establishing a uniform standard reference time. It was set rather arbitrarily to the time at an…

Bridging the blogging gap

How do the conversations that occur on science blogs foster the development of science in academia? While conferences and papers are certainly an important part of the current scientific infrastructure, conversations about those more formal sources of information have always played a pivotal role in the development of science, and according a new paper published by my fellow ScienceBloggers Shelley Batts, Nick Anthis, and Tara Smith in PLoS, science blogs are a good way to extend those dialogs. The paper starts out with two well-known success stories; the rapid rise of Pharyngula to…

Humans to Undergo Speciation?

PZ has already href="http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/10/dont_worry_kids_curry_is_just.php">written about this, primarily to dismiss it as nonsense.  He is correct, but there is one point (or two) that I want to add. Oliver Curry  is described in WIkipedia as an evolutionary theorist as well as a political theorist.  He was granted a Ph.D., on the topic of morality as natural history,  by the Government Department of the London School of Economics.  Apparently, he is fond of saying that humans will divide into two species, approximately 100,000 years from now. The article PZ…

Bush: 'Never really thought about' war

I wonder if he really believes this? If so, he dementia is worse than I thought: href="http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2007/10/bush_never_really_thought_abou.html">Bush: 'Never really thought about' war Posted by Mark Silva on October 5, 2007 President Bush, interviewed “in the room where I make decisions,’’ said that he “never really thought about the decision to put men and women in harm’s way’’ when he was running for president. But the war in Iraq is necessary, Bush said, noting that he has “made a pledge to the American people’’ to settle his dispute with…

InaDWriMo Week 3: And then it all fell apart

Having worked on my writing every day for the first two weeks of November, I concluded last week feeling rather optimistic about InaDWriMo's success in getting me to increase my productivity. But I was also very tired. And in order to make time for writing every single day, I was working longer hours (i.e., seeing less of Minnow) and letting lots of other things slide (i.e., my lectures were terrible and let us not even describe the house). What I didn't realize last Saturday was how close I was to the tipping point... But by Monday morning I was a stressed out wreck, and then a logistical…

InaDWriMo Week 2 Update

It's Saturday again, time for another update of my progress towards this month's InaDWriMo goals. I've been sending myself little daily progress report details, but sometimes it's useful to take stock of the larger picture. For instance, until I sat down to write this post, I'd forgotten that I submitted my latest grant proposal on Monday - that's less than a week ago, and already I've made lots more progress on the next task. So, to review. My goals were to submit a grant proposal (check!), complete major revisions to a paper (in progress!), and get the bulk of data analysis done for my AGU…

6 random things about Alice

I've been tagged twice to tell you 6 random things about me. Here are the rules: The Rules Link to the person who tagged you. Post the rules on your blog. Write 6 random things about yourself. Tag 6 people at the end of your post and link to them. Let each person you have tagged know by leaving a comment on their blog. Let the tagger know when your entry has posted. Number one for me? My favorite holiday is Halloween. :-) It really is. I've loved Halloween best since I was a kid. Okay, kind of because candy was involved. Kind of because I got to spend it with my friends. Now that I'm…

Prizes for generous readers who give to our DonorsChoose Challenge

We got off to a strong start in the Sciencewomen Reader Challenge 2008. In the first 48 hours, we attracted 9 donors who gave a total of almost $400 to our DonorsChoose projects that fund impoverished public school science classrooms. And then we plateaued and our ticker hasn't budged a milimeter in the last few days. Maybe you gave to other DonorsChoose challenges or maybe you thought you'd do it later. But we'd love to see you give a little bit of money to help out our handpicked projects, too. So in order to provide a little extra incentive, Alice, I and the good folks at Yellow Ibis have…

AFNFM: Thoughts on actively waiting before writing

I've taken some of the last week to try to practice what Boice calls "actively waiting" in preparation for writing on a project I've been avoiding. See the project plan here and a discussion about "actively waiting" here. Some of my thoughts on this exercise from the last week are below the fold. Full disclosure: I didn't manage to do the 10 minutes every day, but I think I did it more days than I didn't do it. I think. I found it pretty tough to just sit with my notes "in the moment." I kept worrying that I was "doing it wrong" -- did I have the right notes? Should I open up the old…

Blog Year in Review

I did this last year, and apparently it is to be another year-end tradition. Here are the first sentences to each month's first post. January - September will take you to the old site, but don't forget to come back here eventually. January: While many people went on holiday over the past two weeks, a few people kept their regular blogging habits going strong. (While you were out...(women in science)) Back in the pre-Scientiae, pre-Minnow days when I had the time and energy to keep track of all the women in science blogospheric going-ons. February: I got an email yesterday from chem guy - a…

Science Vault: Multi-Nippled Sheep of Alexander Graham Bell

[This is part of a series I'm doing here on Retrospectacle called 'Science Vault.' Pretty much I'm just going to dig back into the forgotten and moldering annuls of scientific publications to find weird and interesting studies that very likely would never be published or done today (and perhaps never should have.) I'll probably try to do it once a week (and if you have suggestions, please do email me with them.)] Some say that American science is defined by its innovation and creativity, and who better embodies that than Alexander Graham Bell? Inventor of the telephone (strike that, first…