RecSciPod S01E17 full transcript
Timestamps:
- 0:00 Intro
- 0:57 Thanksgiving science quiz
- 10:39 Ethics study
- 24:15 Turkey study
- 32:40 What did you learn today, outro
Intro
Tirth: Tsk tsk. No, you know I’m a TV lover.
Lu: You are?
Tirth: Extra special TV is for me.
Lu: Welcome everybody to another episode of Recreational Science, the podcast where we explore creativity in science by examining some of the funniest, wackiest, and most provocative studies ever done. I’m Lu.
Tirth: And I’m Tirth. Listeners, once upon a time, there was a forest, a deep, dark, unexplored forest. There were two bright-eyed, bushy-tailed scientists who went into this forest to explore. This forest, of course, is the forest of knowledge, of science. And the two scientists are Lu and me. So please come join us on this forest exploration journey.
Lu: And we promise a very good time to be had by all.
Tirth: That’s right. That’s right.
Lu: Great. Great. Great.
Lu: Well, Tirth, it’s Thanksgiving. Got any Thanksgiving plans?
Tirth: Yeah. I’m going to hang out with my family, you know. Eat some turkey.
Lu: Oh, good.
Tirth: My cousins, they’ll come visit me. And it’s going to be a good time. Then I’m going to St. Louis to see my fiancée, who definitely exists.
Lu: Oh, does she? I see. I see. Cool.
Tirth: What about you? Are you going to Texas?
Lu: No, no, no, no, no. It’s too much too long of a trip.
Tirth: Too long of a trip?
Lu: Yeah, to stay for like two days. Plus, I’m actually on call. I’m on call this entire next week.
Tirth: Hold up. What kind of call do you have in pathology? Tell me. What do you do?
Lu: We get, you know, lots of interesting things.
Tirth: Oh, yeah? Tell me about two of them, two interesting things.
Lu: Please. Please. There’s so many things. It’s hard to pick just two.
Tirth: Why is the sodium low?
Lu: If someone needs an emergency autopsy, you know, they might die without it, you know, they come to us.
Tirth: They might die without the autopsy, right, right. Hey, I thought you weren’t that kind of a pathologist.
Lu: Every pathologist knows all pathology. We’re very highly trained individuals.
Tirth: Oh, what a field. Because not every neurologist knows all neurology, you know.
Lu: Yeah. Yeah. Makes sense.
Tirth: We stay in our lanes.
Lu: No, not us. We get called for lots of things, very important things.
Tirth: Wow. Wow. Look at you. Saving lives.
Lu: That’s right. Yeah.
Tirth: We should all aspire to be you.
Thanksgiving science quiz
Lu: Hey, uh, I’m blanking on this. What is the name of the organization that Jimmy Carter like famously worked with?
Tirth: Oh, Habitat for Humanity.
Lu: Habitat for Humanity. Right. What do they do? They build houses for the homeless or the poor or some…?
Tirth: All of the above. My understanding is if you’re like in an area that was stricken by a hurricane, you know, they may go help build homes. Also for poor people too, but all of this. Why?
Lu: Well, Tirth the other day while I was out volunteering with the local chapter of Habitat for Humanity – they build houses for the homeless, you know, which happens to be a big problem in the Bay Area, which you probably don’t know about because you only care about yourself, but not me.
Tirth: No, no, please.
Lu: I’m a man who – we talked about this – I’m a very, very giving man.
Tirth: Electric car, yeah.
Lu: Exactly. Thank you. Thank you for bringing that up.
Tirth: Yes, of course.
Lu: So I go volunteer once a week, at least.
Tirth: Very noble, very noble of you.
Lu: Well, I was building this house, you know, hammering away, because I’m very good at hammering…
Tirth: Bob the Builder.
Lu: Please, please.
Tirth: All right, sorry, continue. I shouldn’t, I shouldn’t mock a noble effort. Well, what’s wrong with me? What is wrong with me? What is wrong with me?
Lu: I ask myself that every day.
Tirth: Please go ahead. Please tell me about your noble endeavors, Lu.
Lu: Well, I was hammering away at this, at this house that I was building by myself, you know, because I’m a very skilled, very skilled carpenter.
Tirth: Very strong.
Lu: This man came up to me, the man who the house was…
Tirth: The beef man? No, it’s a different man.
Lu: Please. A man came up to me, the man whose house I was building. He said, “hey man, thank you for all you do for this world. Thank you for your podcast.”
Tirth: Wow.
Lu: Big fan of the podcast. And then he said, “you know, given it’s Thanksgiving, would you mind sharing some Thanksgiving facts, science facts, to us, the listeners?”
Tirth: Wow.
Lu: I was like, sure.
Tirth: Yeah. That sounds like a great idea.
Lu: Wouldn’t you agree, Tirth?
Tirth: Yeah. This man sounds like a great, he’s a super fan, huh?
Lu: Yes. Absolutely.
Tirth: Hey, do you think he would want autographed pictures of us? I’m happy to send him a headshot.
Lu: No, no, no, no. He doesn’t like you. He specifically said he prefers me over Tirth. He made that very clear.
Tirth: Okay, I see. Okay, no pictures for him then.
Lu: No, no, no. But I did assemble some facts about Thanksgiving, science facts, specifically about the Thanksgiving dinner.
Tirth: Oh, okay.
Lu: So, look, this isn’t a quiz, Tirth. Don’t get nervous. This is simply a set of questions that I’m going to ask you.
Tirth: Isn’t that what a quiz is?
Lu: No, please. And because you’ve done so poorly on our prior sets of questions, including the multiple-choice ones, I thought I should make this one easier for you. So it’s true or false.
Tirth: So kind. True or false? Just 50% chance, a coin flip.
Lu: 50% chance that you’re going to get them right.
Tirth: Beautiful. I love it.
Lu: Ready?
Tirth: Hit it.
Lu: Science facts about the Thanksgiving dinner. True or false: People get sleepy after a Thanksgiving meal because of the large amounts of tryptophan in Turkey.
Tirth: False.
Lu: Ah, why do you say that?
Tirth: I actually looked into this. I’m not even kidding. They did some studies in the 70s where they gave people different types of amino acids, and the conclusion was that it’s not really like the amount of tryptophan you would need to feel sleepy. You can’t get that from the amount of meat most people are going to eat. People think it’s probably the carbs that you eat on Thanksgiving that make you sleep.
Lu: Yeah, It’s just overeating and eating a lot of carbs. If you ingest pure tryptophan on an empty stomach, it does get converted into melatonin that could make you sleepy, but that’s not what happens during Thanksgiving. Very good.
Tirth: It’s the mashed potatoes and other things.
Lu: Very good. Starting off on a good foot. Is that the…?
Tirth: Extremely strong note
Lu: For a change.
Tirth: I want this noted.
Lu: For a change. All right. True or false: Turkeys should be thawed before frying.
Tirth: Oh, yes. True.
Lu: True?
Tirth: Yes.
Lu: Ah, very good. Correct again.
Tirth: I think they can explode if you just throw in…
Lu: Yes. When the ice meets the really hot temperature, hot oil, it will absolutely explode because it’s going to get converted into…
Tirth: Steam, basically.
Lu: … into water and steam, like immediately.
Tirth: Like this.
Lu: Very dangerous. Take note, if you’re going to fry a turkey…
Tirth: I think there’s a YouTube compilation of turkeys exploding in drums and things like that.
Lu: Oh, we’ll include a link.
Tirth: Okay.
Lu: True or false? Yams are a type of sweet potato.
Tirth: True.
Lu: Wrong.
Tirth: What?
Lu: False.
Tirth: I always thought they were sweet potatoes. They’re not?
Lu: Yams and sweet potatoes diverged actually a long time ago. In terms of like the scientific classification system, the closest thing they are is that they’re both angiosperms or flowering plants. That’s how far back they go.
Tirth: That’s like saying that humans and bees are alike.
Lu: I mean, within the clade of angiosperms, they’re kind of related, but yeah, they’re quite different, actually, which I thought was interesting.
Tirth: Wow, I’m very surprised. Big taxonomy strikes again.
Lu: Exactly. True or false: Onions release a chemical called Lachrymatory Factor Synthase, LFS, that causes eye irritation and tearing.
Tirth: Just by the sheer number of technical terms used here, I’m going to say true.
Lu: Very good. It is true. LFS.
Tirth: Thank you. Didn’t know that.
Lu: Oh, but you still said true… okay, interesting. I’m going to change that to incorrect, because you admitted to not knowing, you admitted to guessing.
Tirth: That’s not what the quiz is for. Come on.
Lu: Next question. True or false: The first gravy boat ever invented, named the Argyle, was invented by the Seventh Duke of Argyle, John Kempo, born 1723, died 1806. The Argyle has an internal chamber filled with hot water to keep the gravy warm. True or false?
Tirth: True.
Lu: True?
Tirth: Yeah. It has to be him.
Lu: The Seventh Duke of Argyle invented the Argyle.
Tirth: Yes.
Lu: It was named after him – the Argyle…
Tirth: Yeah.
Lu: You’re right, it is true.
Tirth: Yeah. It’s like the Earl of Sandwich. The sandwich is named after him.
Lu: This man one day said, I’m tired of cold gravy. I’m going to do something about this.
Tirth: England is the land of cold gravy. So this man is a genius.
Lu: Yes. Genius. That’s correct. Okay. Next one. True or false: The perfect pie crust, according to mathematicians, requires one part water and 3.14159 parts of flour. True or false?
Tirth: Well, true in one sense. So I’ll say true.
Lu: Come on, Tirth. False.
Tirth: It’s pi. Pi is right there. Pie crust.
Lu: One part water, three parts flour. 3.14159? That’s a math joke. That’s a math joke.
Tirth: That’s why I said it.
Lu: It’s false. Three parts flour. Two parts butter. Jesus, Tirth.
Tirth: I thought this was one of your ChatGPT jokes.
Lu: Come on. No, please. Please. Legitimate sources.
Tirth: Oh, right.
Lu: Next one. True or false: There are shortcuts for making good mashed potatoes. True or false?
Tirth: False. Mashed potatoes are sacred. Cannot take shortcuts.
Lu: Very good. There aren’t shortcuts for making good mashed potatoes. A lot of people, you know, they get lazy, try to use the food processor to make mashed potatoes.
Tirth: No, no, no.
Lu: They must be hand mashed using a masher or a riser because the food processor will break all the cells and they will release too much starch. You know, it will get very sticky.
Tirth: Nothing’s the same. You don’t want that.
Lu: No, no, no, no. Very good, Tirth.
Tirth: Yeah, thank you.
Lu: You did not too bad on that.
Tirth: I’m a big fan of Thanksgiving, man. You know, what can I say?
Lu: The pie one, though, got you. I don’t understand what happened there.
Tirth: Oh, you tricked me there.
Lu: Should we move on to science, Tirth?
Tirth: Okay, let’s do it.
Lu: Some scientific studies?
Tirth: Yeah.
Ethics study: are ethicists ethical?
Lu: Tirth, the topic I want to discuss today is ethics. Are you an ethical person, Tirth? Do you think?
Tirth: Listen, Lu, here’s how I think about ethics, okay? Who are we to judge what is ethical and what is not?
Lu: I see. Okay, I’m going to stop you right there. Tirth, back in grad school, you used to proclaim that ethics are shackles that the weak place on the strong. Do you remember this?
Tirth: I have no recollection.
Lu: Okay, let me jog your memory. You used to roam around the hallways, screaming at the top of your lungs, that ethics are the shackles that the weak place on the strong…
Tirth: Are you sure you’re not mistaking me for one of our other classmates?
Lu: … while hoisting a copy of Machiavelli’s The Prince. Do you remember now?
Tirth: Yeah, it’s coming back, man.
Lu: You used to do this all the time.
Tirth: What can I say? It’s coming back.
Lu: Do you think yourself as an ethical man?
Tirth: Yes, I think of myself as an ethical man.
Lu: Oh, you do?
Tirth: Yes. However, reiterating, who are we to judge what’s ethical and what’s not?
Lu: Well, it’s by definition it’s a human thing, right? So humans should be the ones determining this.
Tirth: Maybe, maybe not. But I think I’m ethical in my own way.
Lu: Well, I disagree. I disagree. Refer back to your actions during grad school.
Tirth: Hey, I would say that’s ethical too. I’m making people think deeply about ethics. In medical school, we’re all so busy. We’re all so busy learning about, you know, physiology and histology and I don’t know, other ologies. I forgot. It’s been a long time.
Lu: We’re not reading Machiavelli enough.
Tirth: No.
Lu: They should have a course.
Tirth: They should. Along with that book, The House of God. It should be required readings from medical students.
Lu: Very good. Very good. Unlike you Tirth, I’m a very ethical man.
Tirth: Oh, I wouldn’t expect anything less.
Lu: For instance, I don’t let my friends piggyback off my Costco membership to go into Costco.
Tirth: Wow. Okay.
Lu: I don’t do it. No, it’s unethical. When I’m shopping at Costco, sometimes I partake in the free samples, but I never take more than one of the same sample. And when I do enjoy a free sample, I always take a minute to seriously consider buying the product. Always take a minute.
Tirth: And then how often do you actually buy the product?
Lu: Please, please. That doesn’t matter. It’s about the effort. I would, you know, grab hold of the product, make a comment about how good it is, and then stare intently at the product, and then decide not to buy it.
Tirth: Okay.
Lu: It’s about the effort. You wouldn’t know you’re not very ethical. And then, you know, on my way out of Costco, I don’t go to the food court unless I’ve spent at least $100 at Costco.
Tirth: I see.
Lu: Because that’s their loss leader, you know?
Tirth: It is.
Lu: They can’t afford everybody eating there without buying stuff.
Tirth: No, no, they can’t. They can’t. But $100 at Costco is like two items and your at $100, you know?
Lu: Yeah. Well, still, better than most.
Tirth: It is a good amount of money.
Lu: Same thing goes for the rotisserie chicken. I don’t ever buy more than two rotisserie chickens. And only if I’ve spent at least $100 at Costco. It’s another loss leader.
Tirth: Right, right. Because you need all that chicken for your muscles, I guess.
Lu: Of course. You know it. Costco, as you see Tirth, presents many ethical quandaries, many temptations Costco has. Not for me. I’m a very, deeply ethical man.
Tirth: And disciplined mentally.
Lu: Exactly. But for morally loose individuals such as yourself, a trip to Costco can present quite the ethical minefield.
Tirth: It does, which is why I try not to go as much.
Lu: Makes sense.
Tirth: It’s got nothing to do with how busy the parking lot is or how little time I have, you know. It’s more so, it’s a minefield.
Lu: Okay, shut up about Costco, Tirth. Now, as perhaps the most ethical man in the world, I often think about whether other people around me are ethical. Do you think about this? Because we’re both academics, would you say other academics are ethical for the most part?
Tirth: I think so.
Lu: Yeah.
Tirth: I would say for the most part, yes.
Lu: I would say scientists are pretty ethical.
Tirth: Yeah, for the most part, I agree.
Lu: But how would you test this scientifically?
Tirth: I mean, I think one way is to do with the questions you asked me. You pose a bunch of questionnaires to a bunch of scientists. But a lot of these questions don’t have a right or wrong answer.
Lu: It’s hard to score the questionnaires, right?
Tirth: It is.
Lu: So here’s how you actually do it, Tirth. You go to the library and see what categories of books are missing from the library. If math books are more likely to be missing…
Tirth: …mathematicians are not ethical because they’re keeping library books.
Lu: Yeah.
Tirth: I see.
Lu: So the study that I’m going to present today did this exact thing. The question the study asked specifically is, are ethicists ethical?
Tirth: Oh, very meta. Who watches The Watchman?
Lu: Exactly. The study is titled, “Do Ethicists Steal More Books?” It was published by Eric Schwitzgebel in 2009 in the journal Philosophical Psychology, which is a very good journal.
Tirth: Great journal.
Lu: Again, the question is, are ethicists more ethical than other people? Which you might think, yeah, of course, because they study ethics, right? And if you study ethics, you’re more, you know a lot more about ethical dilemmas.
Tirth: You’re more cognizant.
Lu: You’re more cognizant, exactly, of right and wrong. And maybe also people who are drawn to studying ethics are maybe just more, they just have higher morals, generally.
Tirth: More righteous to begin with, and that’s why they went into the field of study.
Lu: Exactly. So it seems like an obvious question. But as a good scientist, this man, Dr. Schwitzgebel, decided to investigate and went to several libraries and checked whether ethics books are more likely to be missing. So he generated a list of titles, book titles that really only ethicists should check out.
Tirth: They’re like very specialized books?
Lu: They’re very specialized. Exactly. And the way he did this is he got a long list of philosophical books from a philosophical book review article, and then had an ethics professor sort them into three different categories: Ethics books, non-ethics books, or don’t know.
Tirth: Spoken like a true philosopher.
Lu: Yeah. And then he removed from these lists, he removed the popular books, the books that are more likely to be checked out by hobbyists.
Tirth: Just random people like wanting to read about…
Lu: Your recreational ethics book readers, for instance.
Tirth: Counterpart to our show, yeah.
Lu: So he looked at the status of these titles at 13 US and 19 British academic libraries.
Tirth: Okay. Right off the bat, I like that he’s looking at two countries.
Lu: Yes.
Tirth: That’s great.
Lu: For the non-ethics books, 0.9% of them were missing from these libraries. For the ethics books, 1.3% were missing.
Tirth: So 0.4% difference.
Lu: Almost 50% difference. And this was actually statistically significant because the sample size is quite high. It’s like 130 titles at 32 libraries.
Tirth: Right. Yeah.
Lu: What do you think?
Tirth: I want to ask a couple of clarifying questions. Does he say like, are these large libraries that he’s visiting?
Lu: These are academic libraries at colleges and universities.
Tirth: Okay. Got it. And then he physically, so he looks up the record, then he physically goes and sees how many copies there are…
Lu: No, these, the records are available online.
Tirth: Oh, like if they’re missing or overdue,
Lu: If they’re missing or overdue. Yep.
Tirth: Wow. Okay. This is interesting. I have an alternate hypothesis though.
Lu: Oh, please.
Tirth: What if these books are being checked out by people who are trying to be more ethical? But they are still figuring…
Lu: They’re less ethical people to begin with.
Tirth: Yes. But they want to better themselves, you know?
Lu: That’s very possible. Very possible. But these are more like academic ethics titles. He chose obscure ones.
Tirth: That’s true.
Lu: They’re not popular titles. But I think that’s a good point because the author then spoke to some ethics professors about this and they were like, maybe it’s not the ethicists checking these books out. Maybe it’s law students and law professors, you know, those dirty lawyers who are responsible for this.
Tirth: When all else fails, blame the lawyers, man.
Lu: Those dirty, dirty lawyers.
Tirth: Frickin lawyers.
Lu: Good for nothing lawyers.
Tirth: Nobody likes them.
Lu: So to see if this is the case, he only checked these books at law libraries. Libraries at law schools.
Tirth: Very diligent.
Lu: And found that the same ethics titles there were less likely to be missing than at general libraries.
Tirth: So it’s not the lawyers for once.
Lu: So it’s probably not the lawyers.
Tirth: Wow. Wow. Okay. Now let me ask you this, Lu. Do you think it was ethical of the ethical professor to blame this on lawyers?
Lu: It’s always ethical to blame the lawyers for everything. Let them figure it out.
Tirth: Catching strays.
Lu: So then he asked, okay, so these are more like modern, obscure books. What about the classic ethics books? The big titles. So he got a bunch of ethics titles written before 1900 and did the same thing. For the non-ethics, classic non-ethics titles, 1.5% were missing. For the ethics titles, 2.8% were missing.
Tirth: Oh, wow. Almost twice as high. Wow. Okay.
Lu: He also had a third category, Nietzsche titles.
Tirth: Just Nietzsche?
Lu: Just Frederick Wilhelm Nietzsche. You know, the guy who was like, the ubermensch must not be questioned. The ubermensch can do whatever he wants. That guy, yeah. Because he is an ethicist, but he condemned conventional morality.
Tirth: Yes, he did. Yes.
Lu: So, he has his own separate category. 5.6% of his books were missing.
Tirth: This I’m not surprised about at all.
Lu: 5.6%.
Tirth: Yeah. Incredible.
Lu: So, non-ethics, 1.5%. Ethics, 2.8%. Nietzsche, 5.6%.
Tirth: Off the charts.
Lu: Yeah. Why do you think this is? Why do you think this is?
Tirth: I think people who-
Lu: Do you think ethicists are more likely to steal books?
Tirth: No. I think… I still think maybe, you know, here’s another alternative hypothesis, because, you know, as I said, I want to see the good in people, right? I think they’re keeping the books because they’re really trying to learn ethics. And it’s so hard, you know, that they just need to keep at it, and they can’t return the books.
Lu: I think the author of this article should have consulted you when writing up this article, because he also gave a bunch of what he called confounding factors, alternate explanations for why ethics books might be missing.
Tirth: Let’s hear them.
Lu: It could be that, like you said, the ethics books are more beloved. People want to keep them because they love them so much.
Tirth: Yeah. They’re mementos of the academic library.
Lu: Or maybe ethicists are poorer, and therefore more likely to steal books because they don’t have money to buy books.
Tirth: So, they’re like Jean Valjean from Les Mis.
Lu: Or maybe they’re richer. Maybe they’re richer and don’t mind paying the fee that comes with returning a book late.
Tirth: Wow. In fact, they may think it’s ethical to donate money to the library.
Lu: Oh, maybe. Yes. Or maybe ethics books are more difficult to read, and so people hold on to them for longer.
Tirth: Yeah. Just like I said.
Lu: Or maybe they’re easier to read, and people enjoy reading them. So, they take them to the cafe, take them to the beach, you know, and they just leave them and lose them…
Tirth: Ah.
Lu: All these are possibilities. And also, also, maybe ethics books are more likely to be borrowed by the ethicists’ friends and spouses, and they’re the ones not returning the books. It’s not the ethicists’ fault.
Tirth: No, no. It’s their spouses and their friends, the people they’ve chosen to associate themselves with.
Lu: These are the alternative hypotheses that the author gave.
Tirth: Some are compelling.
Lu: What do you think?
Tirth: Some are compelling. I think he should go visit beaches, man. You know, you see those guys with metal detectors on the beach, looking for gold or whatever. This guy should go look for books.
Lu: Ethics book detectors. Well, to be fair, he does note that none of these seem believable. But…
Tirth: I see.
Lu: But fun to mention. Final thoughts, Tirth?
Tirth: So he thinks that ethicists are stealing books, then.
Lu: Look at the data, man. Look at the data.
Tirth: Data don’t lie.
Lu: Data don’t lie.
Tirth: Ball don’t lie. Data don’t lie.
Lu: So I have one criticism. An ethics professor sorted the book titles, and then the author also had a research assistant help him collect the data from the libraries, from the library websites.
Tirth: Okay.
Lu: But he’s the only author on this article.
Tirth: So where’s the research assistant?
Lu: Yeah. Is this an ethical issue, you think?
Tirth: 100%.
Lu: There’s not even an acknowledgement section. No acknowledgement.
Tirth: That’s wild. I mean, even in like our sciences, if we get like cell lines, we acknowledge people.
Lu: Unethical.
Tirth: Wow. I’m seeing a trend here. Yeah.
Lu: Final thoughts?
Tirth: You know what they say? They say gamekeepers make the best wardens. So maybe that’s what’s going on here. Oh, wait, sorry, poachers…
Lu: What does that mean?
Tirth: Sorry. Poachers. You know what they say? Poachers make the best wardens. So meaning, if you’re a thief, you’re going to be a better cop, because you already know how the thief is thinking.
Lu: Oh, because you know how the thief, oh, I see. So, oh, so you think that more unethical people, like you were saying earlier, are more likely to become ethicists.
Tirth: Yeah.
Lu: Because they want to know more.
Tirth: Yeah. And then they’ve already been over on the dark side, you know, but they can’t give up the whole, they can’t give up everything about the dark side.
Lu: I see. I see.
Tirth: Food for thought.
Lu: Yeah.
Tirth: Nice paper, man.
Lu: Libraries, like Costco, full of ethical boundaries, full of temptations.
Tirth: Minefield.
Lu: Minefield, minefield. Ethical minefield.
Tirth: Indeed.
Lu: All right, Tirth, I turn it over to you.
Turkey study: turkeys on treadmills
Tirth: All right. So my paper today is actually related to Thanksgiving, very topical.
Lu: Oh, very good.
Tirth: In fact, it’s about turkeys, which I think are the spiritual national birds of America.
Lu: I see. Yeah.
Tirth: The bald eagle, of course, is the official national bird…
Lu: But it really should be the turkey. I’ve heard that argument made before, yeah.
Tirth: You know, spiritually speaking, I think culturally too, they occupy this special place in American hearts and minds.
Lu: Big goofballs.
Tirth: In fact, they’re the only birds a president actually pardons every year. I haven’t heard that with chickens, nor with any other bird or animal. Anyway, in light of this, this paper celebrates the importance of turkeys in understanding human physiology and human biology. Let me ask you this: do you think turkeys are similar to humans?
Lu: In a sense, sure.
Tirth: In what sense? Can you tell me in what sense? What do you think?
Lu: In the sense that, like humans, there’s white meat and dark meat.
Tirth: Yes, that’s very true. That’s very true. The other thing, you know, if you notice, turkeys, like humans, also walk on two legs.
Lu: Oh, that’s true. But so do basically every bird.
Tirth: Well, some birds will do like these little hops, right?
Lu: Some birds hop on one leg. Yeah, sure.
Tirth: But turkeys will walk. In fact, that forms the basis of today’s paper.
Lu: Oh, okay.
Tirth: The title is, “Physical activity alters limb bone structure, but not entheseal morphology.”
Lu: Okay. Say that again.
Tirth: “Physical activity alters limb bone structure…”
Lu: Limb bone structure?
Tirth: Limb bone structure.
Lu: Like bones in your legs.
Tirth: Yes, yes. But not entheseal morphology. Entheseal here refers to enthesis, which are spots on bones where tendons and ligaments can attach themselves.
Lu: Oh, okay. Okay.
Tirth: This was published in the year 2017 in the Journal of Human Evolution.
Lu: Oh, that’s a good journal.
Tirth: Great journal. Great journal. So, you know, you might wonder, or our listeners might wonder, why are we talking about turkeys and humans? Well, the real basis of the study is if you realize anthropologists, archaeologists, they’re deeply interested in looking at human evolution, human history. And one of the best ways to do this is when you find skeletal remains or fossils or whatever of humans. If you’re doing like digs or whatever, and you can examine and study these humans, and you can form conclusions about what those humans thousands of years ago, tens of thousands of years ago might have been living.
Lu: And the question here is, did humans evolve from turkeys?
Tirth: No, but that could be a question too.
Lu: Oh, it could be. Scientific question.
Tirth: Yeah, but not in this study at least.
Lu: Okay.
Tirth: The point is, a lot of archaeologists have, and paleontologists have noticed that certain skeletal remains of humans have very thick bones, and they have very thick spots where tendons and ligaments attach.
Lu: Oh.
Tirth: And based on this, a bunch of people often conclude that these humans must have been very physically active. That’s why their bones got thicker, and that’s why the spots where their tendons attach is thicker.
Lu: Some humans have thicker parts of their bones compared to others?
Tirth: Compared to other remains. Exactly, exactly. So a lot of people draw the conclusion that these humans must have been physically active, which may mean that this particular group of humans at that spot maybe were economically more prosperous or more developed, whatever. But these authors, they said, “is that even true? Does bone thickness and thickness of the enthesis, does that even relate to physical activity? Or is that just something that just happens randomly?”
Lu: Okay.
Tirth: Now, let me ask you this. If you were trying to test this, how would you do it?
Lu: I would definitely not involve turkeys, if I’m going to be honest.
Tirth: Right. I thought so too. I agree with you on this.
Lu: I’d probably examine post-mortem specimen.
Tirth: Let’s say you take runners.
Lu: Can you take x-rays of runners’ legs?
Tirth: So that’s what they do. They actually do CT scans.
Lu: Okay. CT scans. Very good.
Tirth: But that’s what I would do. I would take humans who are known to be runners or are runners even right now and take CT scans and do it. But they decided to use turkeys.
Lu: Okay.
Tirth: One of the reasons is turkeys and humans both walk on two legs.
Lu: I see.
Tirth: And there’s some evidence to suggest that biomechanically speaking, turkeys have similar gaits to humans.
Lu: I see. And you’re telling me that even though they’re using turkeys, they still decided to do a CT.
Tirth: On turkey legs…
Lu: When they can just…
Tirth: Do it on humans.
Lu: … dissect the turkey legs.
Tirth: Well, they actually do that and then they put that in a CT scan.
Lu: And they put it…. Okay. I see.
Tirth: Perhaps there’s another reason they couldn’t use humans. I don’t know.
Lu: Okay.
Tirth: They also note that there’s another study where some other researchers took a bunch of sheep, strap backpacks on them, and had sheep run on treadmills. And they made the same measurements. So they said, well, sheep actually walk on four legs. We want to do the same thing on something that walks on two legs. So turkeys it is.
Lu: Okay. Okay. Makes sense.
Tirth: So they took a bunch of turkeys, they put them on treadmills, and they had them run at 5.6 miles per hour. Not very fast, but not very slow either. For 30 minutes a day, four days a week, for 10 weeks.
Lu: 30 minutes a day? That’s it?
Tirth: Yeah, that’s it.
Lu: Wow. That’s not a lot of walking.
Tirth: No. And four days a week for 10 weeks.
Lu: For 10 weeks? That’s it? Wow, doesn’t sound like… Okay.
Tirth: It’s like three months, less than three months. And as controls, they had the friends or the same littermates of these turkeys that didn’t do any exercise. They just hung out in their little pens all day.
Lu: Oh, okay. They weren’t allowed to freely roam.
Tirth: No, I think they were in a lab setting.
Lu: Oh I see.
Tirth: So at the end of 10 weeks, they took down all the turkeys. They took out their femur.
Lu: Took down? How did they take them down?
Tirth: They don’t mention.
Lu: Was it done humanely?
Tirth: Yeah, that’s what they say. They say everything was done humanely.
Lu: Oh, okay. Good. Yeah.
Tirth: Very humanely. And then they dissected their femur, which is the thigh bone. They put it in a CT scanner. Before I get into the results, do you want to guess what they found?
Lu: Based on the title, I’m going to guess they found that these were a little thicker in the turkeys that walked on the treadmills 30 minutes a day.
Tirth: So the bone was thicker, but not the enthesis.
Lu: Oh, okay. The bone just overall was thicker.
Tirth: Yeah. So they look at the thickness of what’s called the trabecula, which is like the central bone, and that was thicker. But what’s interesting to me is they report that there was no change in the weight of the turkeys that did the exercise versus the weight of the turkeys that didn’t exercise.
Lu: I see.
Tirth: In 10 weeks, no difference.
Lu: That’s a good thing about turkeys. They know how to carry fat. They know how to store fat and meat.
Tirth: I guess it’s good for us at Thanksgiving. Like I said, they noticed some increase in bone thickness. The way they measured it, the difference was 0.3 millimeters and 0.35 millimeters in the turkeys that exercised. They also measured bone volume fraction of the femur, and there was a 2.5 percent increase in the volume of the turkeys that exercised versus the ones that didn’t. Other than this, there was no other difference in any other metrics. The enthesis were not different. So it’s just the bone thickness and the bone volume.
Lu: I see. Very good.
Tirth: So they basically conclude that, hey, anytime you find human remains and the enthesis are thicker, you shouldn’t automatically conclude that they were exercising more. You should look at other things too.
Lu: What do they think is causing the thicker enthesis?
Tirth: They don’t know. They said it could just be a coincidental or…bigger tendons, maybe.
Lu: Bigger tendons, yeah. Very good. What can, since it’s Thanksgiving, what can our listeners take away from this study?
Tirth: I think you already mentioned this. What our listeners can take from this study is that turkeys are very good at storing body fat, which is very good for us at Thanksgiving.
Lu: Yes. Get that plump turkey. It doesn’t mean that they were lazy. So don’t judge those turkeys.
Tirth: No, no, no. Yeah. This is a no-judge zone.
Lu: They could have been exercising all day, 30 minutes a day at least, for 10 weeks. But they’re still fat. It’s just genetics.
Tirth: Yeah. They’re just built like that.
Lu: Do the authors of your paper mention what they did with the remains of the turkey?
Tirth: Sadly, they do not. I can only hope that they had a giant feast for the whole department.
Lu: And do they use cooked turkey legs, femurs, for the study, or raw?
Tirth: No, I don’t think so. I don’t think so.
Lu: It was raw?
Tirth: It was raw.
Lu: What a waste.
Tirth: What a waste indeed.
What did you learn today
Lu: All right. That’s the end of another episode of Recreational Science. Tirth, what did you learn today?
Tirth: Lu, I learned today that if you’re a practicing ethicist and someone points a finger at you, just direct them to lawyers or your wife.
Lu: Blame the lawyers or your wife. Yes. Very good. Or maybe your wife is a lawyer.
Tirth: Yeah, or even better.
Lu: Then it’s definitely her.
Tirth: What did you learn today?
Lu: I learned that if you want to contribute to science this Thanksgiving, after you finish your Turkey, send the bone for a CT.
Tirth: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. America, if you’re listening.
Lu: All right. Well, thank you guys for listening to our show. We really hope you enjoyed it.
Tirth: And if you like listening to us, give us a five-star review, tell a friend and subscribe to us on whatever platform you listen to us on. It will help us out a lot.
Lu: Happy Thanksgiving.
Tirth: Happy Thanksgiving. Bye.
