RecSciPod S01E19 full transcript
Timestamps:
- 0:00 Intro
- 3:12 Hate caller follow-up
- 7:59 The rich history of self-experimentation
- 16:42 Lego swallowing study
- 23:23 Beard study
- 36:11 What did you learn today, outro
Intro
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, the sea is angry, the waters are choppy and treacherous. But fear not, Lu and I are here at the helm of this ship. We will get you safe and sound on your search for knowledge, the treasure chest that we call knowledge.
Lu: I’m feeling seasick.
Tirth: Okay, fine. Never mind. I’m in charge. Lu is throwing up.
Lu: Good. Tirth, it’s the best time of the year.
Tirth: It is.
Lu: Do you agree?
Tirth: I agree, man.
Lu: The most wonderful time of the year.
Tirth: That’s right.
Lu: December 25th is a special day. It’s the birthday of a very special person, someone who changed the course of human history.
Tirth: Absolutely.
Lu: Is that right? Do you know who it is?
Tirth: I think you’re talking about Jesus Christ.
Lu: No. Please, Tirth. Sir Isaac Newton. Sir Isaac Newton, Tirth.
Tirth: What? No, he wasn’t.
Lu: Born on December 25th.
Tirth: No, he wasn’t.
Lu: Don’t you read Neil deGrasse Tyson’s tweets?
Tirth: I do. He talks about how the earth goes around the sun.
Lu: This was one of his tweets from like 10 years ago.
Tirth: I had no idea, man. That’s crazy.
Lu: He trolled everybody. Trolled all the Christians. Yeah. Take that, Christians.
Tirth: Wow. Fighting the fight.
Lu: Neil deGrasse Tyson.
Tirth: Yeah.
Lu: What a man.
Tirth: What a man. Hey Lu, I would argue December 26th is also a very important day.
Lu: December 26th. Why is that?
Tirth: For those who celebrate.
Lu: Is it Boxing day?
Tirth: It’s Festivus, I believe.
Lu: Oh, for the rest of us.
Tirth: Yeah. It’s a good day. I’m pretty sure it’s December 26th, but our listeners can correct me if I’m wrong. It’s the airing of grievances.
Lu: And feats of strength, right?
Tirth: Yeah, very important. It’s not just grievances. Yes, feats of strength.
Lu: Too bad you don’t have any strength.
Tirth: Please. In fact, right before we started recording, I was in the gym. I was throwing down some heavy weights, showing people up.
Lu: Were you? What exercises did you do?
Tirth: Today was back day, so a lot of back-related exercises.
Lu: Like what? Name one.
Tirth: Bicep curls.
Lu: Okay.
Tirth: You know, my favorite, you know.
Lu: Back to the med school Tirth workout days. Biceps all day every day.
Tirth: All day every day.
Lu: Chest day? Biceps. Back day? Biceps. Leg day? You know you’re doing biceps.
Tirth: All day every day.
Lu: Wow. Yet they never seem to grow. How odd.
Tirth: Please, they’re massive.
Lu: How much are you curling these days? 10 pounds? 12 pounds?
Tirth: No, please, that’s too much. You gotta be responsible. Reasonable, 5 pounds.
Lu: I see. Oh, okay. You’re going for tone. You’re going for high reps, low weight.
Tirth: Yeah. Listen, listen. I’m getting older. I wanna protect those tendons, you know?
Lu: Makes sense, yeah, the bicep tendon.
Tirth: Plus, I don’t need to prove anything to anyone, okay? I’ve done it all.
Lu: You’re a man who has everything. Is that right?
Tirth: I have a lot of things. I’m blessed.
Lu: You have a lot of things.
Tirth: I’m blessed.
Hate caller follow-up
Lu: Well, I have a question for you, Tirth. Since you’re a man who has a lot of things, do you have any answers to our conundrum from last episode as to the identity of the hate caller? Did you ask your dad? Was it your dad?
Tirth: I don’t know for sure. I think we’re on the right track though.
Lu: Did you check your parents’ house for a burner phone?
Tirth: I haven’t been yet. I’m going next week.
Lu: Well, Tirth, let me save you the trouble. Your dad called me, actually…
Tirth: Oh? No…
Lu: After listening to last episode. He did. Very nice man, by the way. Very nice. He said it wasn’t him.
Tirth: And you believe him?
Lu: Of course. He said he would never do such a thing because he loves his podcast.
Tirth: He does.
Lu: And you know, I’m his favorite part of the podcast, he told me.
Tirth: Not me? His own son?
Lu: No, please.
Tirth: Oh.
Lu: No, no, no, no. He said he’s always wanted a son who’s a doctor. So…
Tirth: I see. I see.
Lu: Did you know this?
Tirth: I do know this.
Lu: And he said neurologists are not doctors.
Tirth: He said that?
Lu: Not real doctors. Yeah, he said this. He said all of this.
Tirth: Did you correct him? Did you correct him?
Lu: No, I agreed with him. We all know neurology is not a real medical field. We all know this. We’ve established this.
Tirth: Some say it’s the ultimate medical field.
Lu: No, please. Anyways, he did mention you. He said, you know, he wishes you would shave your beard.
Tirth: He did?
Lu: It looks ridiculous.
Tirth: No.
Lu: He said that he wishes you would present more interesting studies than octopuses playing with test tube caps. You know, we had a very interesting conversation. A very, very fruitful conversation. He also said that he really wishes that we would talk more about medicine. Again, he’s always wanted a son who’s a doctor.
Tirth: Uh-huh, right. So what did you say?
Lu: Well, I agree. I think we should talk more about medicine. Because you know, we’re both, well, one of us is a physician scientist. We won’t say who. The other one is…
Tirth: He’s a hanger on.
Lu: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. He said if we talk a little more about medicine, it would make him really happy this holiday season. It will be the ultimate gift for him…
Tirth: I see.
Lu: As a father.
Tirth: I see. I see.
Lu: So I figured maybe we should discuss one of the most proud, rich and longest traditions in medicine. Because you know, medicine is full of traditions.
Tirth: Oh, yeah. Steeped. Steeped in tradition.
Lu: Steeped. This particular tradition is one of the proudest. Can you guess what I’m talking about?
Tirth: Match Day.
Lu: In the practice of medicine.
Tirth: Oh, practice of medicine.
Lu: In the medicine and medical sciences.
Tirth: Oh, oh, okay.
Lu: I’ll give you a hint. It’s something we’ve alluded to on this podcast a few times, but never openly discussed.
Tirth: Uh-huh. Um, I would say gifts, gift receiving.
Lu: Oh, in medicine?
Tirth: Like, you know, patients bring you gifts.
Lu: Interesting. I’ve never been offered a gift by one of my patients.
Tirth: Maybe because your patients are not alive.
Lu: I’m surprised, Tirth, actually, that with your poor, poor bedside manner that you’ve been offered gifts by your patients.
Tirth: Oh, no, I didn’t say I was offered gifts. It’s just something I know happens to other people. No, no, no, no, no. I don’t want to spread any misconceptions.
Lu: Right. Because you have very poor bedside manner. Is that correct?
Tirth: No, I have excellent, excellent bedside manner.
Lu: No, no, no.
Tirth: Patients will…
Lu: I’ve seen you in med school. Please, Tirth. Can I tell the story of your bedside manner in med school to our audience, to our listeners?
Tirth: Sure, sure. I’m an open book.
Lu: I’m going to do it anyways.
Tirth: Go ahead.
Lu: Listeners, listeners, Tirth, in med school, you used to have a catchphrase. “You want some of this?” That was his catchphrase. I kid you not. “You want some of this?” You’ll say it all the time. I don’t know why it was his catchphrase, but that was it. In fact, he would end every single patient visit by saying, “you want some of this?” I’ve seen this, right? Tirth, you can confirm. I’ve seen this.
Tirth: It rings a bell. It rings a bell. Yes, it rings a bell.
Lu: You would be interviewing these nice sweet little ladies. You’d be like, “okay, Mrs. Johnson, blood pressure looks good today.”
Tirth: Chest pain.
Lu: “Chest pain is a lot better. Labs came out clean. We’re going to try to get you out of the hospital today.” Then you say, “look at this,” as you gesture up and down your body, “you want some of this? You want some of this?”
Tirth: Those were the days, man.
Lu: And you know, these sweet little ladies, they’d be confused, right? They’d be like, “oh, oh, no, no thank you.” But you would insist. You’d be like, “I know you want some of this. I know you want some. Come get you some, come get you some,” you’d say.
Tirth: I got a talking to, I got a talking to.
Lu: That’s how you ended every single patient interaction back in med school.
Tirth: That’s right.
Lu: Do you still do that?
Tirth: No, no, no. Like I said, I got a talking to, you know.
Lu: Oh, okay. Good.
Tirth: I thought I was building rapport, but no, apparently not.
Lu: “Come get you some.” Very odd.
Tirth: That’s what I was told, so I stopped. Sadly.
The rich history of self-experimentation
Lu: What are we talking about?
Tirth: Oh, we’re talking about traditions in medicine.
Lu: Oh, proud traditions in medicine. One of the proudest, longest, richest traditions in medicine is self-experimentation. Would you agree?
Tirth: Oh, yes. Oh, absolutely. Sorry, I should have thought about this.
Lu: This is something we’ve alluded to a lot. We’ve often wondered whether the authors we’re mentioning in the studies, performed the studies on themselves.
Tirth: Yes, absolutely.
Lu: There are a lot of pros to self-experimentation, right? You can get results quickly. You don’t have to recruit or pay volunteers.
Tirth: You don’t have to do any IRB, just consent.
Lu: Exactly. Bypass IRB approval. We’ve mentioned IRB, Institutional Review Board.
Tirth: Multiple times.
Lu: Every institution that does research has them. They got to approve the ethics of studies on humans. But there are also cons to doing self-experimentation. One con is you will absolutely get in trouble with the IRB.
Tirth: You would.
Lu: When they find out.
Tirth: Yes.
Lu: Oftentimes, the experiments are poorly thought out.
Tirth: Yes.
Lu: Rushed and very dangerous. Then often there is a lack of controls.
Tirth: There’s a lot of bias too, right? There’s a very strong inherent cognitive bias.
Lu: Yeah. But one would argue, one could argue, that self-experimentation is the only form of true informed consent, right? Who knows about the experiment better than you?
Tirth: The risks, the benefits, the pitfalls.
Lu: And I think for this reason, five Nobel laureates have conducted self-experimentation.
Tirth: I know at least two.
Lu: Let me tell you some examples, famous examples throughout history of self-experimentation. In 1987, Barry Marshall famously suspected the link between the bacteria H pylori and gastritis. What experiment did he do to prove this link to Tirth?
Tirth: He basically drank the bacteria H pylori. And then he, I think they either looked for ulcers or some sort of like basically duodenal disease.
Lu: He got diagnosed with gastritis. And then he took an antibiotic.
Tirth: And then he cured himself, right.
Lu: And of course he had to do this multiple times.
Tirth: Right. Because you can’t just do one trial. It could just be by chance.
Lu: He won the Nobel Prize for this work back in 2005.
Tirth: That’s right.
Lu: Here’s another example. In 1956, Werner Forssmann shared the Nobel Prize in Medicine for developing heart catheterization. What experiment did he do, Tirth?
Tirth: He actually catheterized himself. I actually read a book on this, Lu. It’s called The Man Who Touched His Own Heart, and it talks about this. It’s actually very impressive.
Lu: Yeah. In 1929, he hypothesized that a catheter could be inserted directly into the heart, to like, deliver drugs or like contrast for imaging, measure blood pressure directly. But people at the time thought this might actually kill you. No one dared to do it. This was 1929. So here’s the story. You probably know this, but he convinced the OR scrub nurse Gerda Ditzen to assist him. She agreed to assist, but only if he performed the catheterization on her, not on himself, which she agreed to, but then he tricked her and strapped her to the operating bed and pretended to anesthetize her arm. But he actually anesthetized his own arm and then inserted a catheter into the vein in his elbow. But of course he didn’t have a cardiac catheter at the time, a heart catheter, right? So what catheter did he use?
Tirth: Oh man, did he use a urinary catheter?
Lu: He did. Yeah. He used a urinary catheter.
Tirth: It’s just absolutely insane. Like these are, these guys are nuts.
Lu: When he got it in, he released the scrub nurse and asked her to call in the x-ray department. He was twice dismissed from his university hospital for doing this.
Tirth: I think when he won the Nobel Prize, he was like, like a country doctor. He was a town doctor.
Lu: Yeah, he was.
Tirth: He basically was not even in academia at that point.
Lu: Okay. Here’s another example. Around 1886, Nicholas Senn, a Swiss-American surgeon and future president of the American Medical Association, tested the use of hydrogen gas as a way to diagnose intestinal perforation. How did he test this, Tirth?
Tirth: Did he – I’m going to make a guess – did he stick it up the rectum?
Lu: Inject hydrogen gas into his rectum? Yeah.
Tirth: Oh my God.
Lu: Yes, he certainly did. He injected six liters of hydrogen gas into his intestinal tract. And then they had a manometer to measure the pressure, make sure it’s stable, indicating no perforation of the intestines.
Tirth: Wow.
Lu: According to Wikipedia, “Senn had previously carried out this experiment on dogs to the point of rupturing their intestines.”
Tirth: Oh my God.
Lu: Yeah. Still did on himself. Brave man.
Tirth: Brave. Absolutely reckless.
Lu: All right. Here’s another example. In 1769, William Stark wanted to find the cause for scurvy, which we now know as being caused by the lack of vitamin C in the diet. Vitamin C you get from fruits and vegetables.
Tirth: Uh-huh.
Lu: He figured though it was due to like diet, poor diet, but didn’t know what diet will cause scurvy. So he devised an experiment where he began just by eating bread and water, and then add other foods one at a time. I think the point was he’s going to give himself scurvy with the bread and water and then add other foods to see which ones will cure it. Which I don’t know if I understand correctly, but that’s not the way I would do this.
Tirth: No.
Lu: I would probably start with a normal diet and remove one fruit group at a time…
Tirth: Exactly.
Lu: Until I got scurvy.
Tirth: Yes, yes.
Lu: But he did it this way, kudos to him. So anyways, after two months of bread and water, he got really weak and had to start adding other foods like milk, olive oil, roast goose, which sounds very delicious, fatty foods. Five months after he started this, he was just eating honey puddings and Cheshire cheese. Honey puddings and Cheshire cheese. That was his entire diet. Tirth, what happened to him eight months after he started this experiment?
Tirth: Did he get scurvy?
Lu: He got scurvy after two months, actually.
Tirth: Oh two months. Eight months after this, he probably died of a coronary heart attack or something.
Lu: He did. Just as he was about to add fresh fruits and vegetables to his diet, he died.
Tirth: Oh my God. Right before he could find the cure.
Lu: Very bad timing.
Tirth: Very bad timing.
Lu: Don’t think he learned anything from that, unfortunately.
Tirth: No. Waste of a life, sadly.
Lu: Very sad. We shouldn’t be laughing. Very noble people, self-experimenters. All right, last one for you. In July 1944, Dr. Claude Barlow wanted to see whether parasitic worms that cause schistosomiasis found in Africa might be able to infect snails here in the US and therefore spread schistosomiasis to the United States.
Tirth: Through snails, specifically.
Lu: Yeah, because that’s the intermediary host. So he wanted to get these worms back to the US. But he couldn’t mail the infected snails back. So he did the only thing he could. What was it?
Tirth: He ate them?
Lu: Yes. Yes, he did.
Tirth: Oh my god. So wait, so he flew there, he ate them, and then he flew back to America?
Lu: Yeah. I don’t know if he flew, actually, this was 1944.
Tirth: Maybe he took a boat. I don’t know.
Lu: Maybe he took a boat.
Tirth: Oh, God.
Lu: He swallowed 200 of the worms that caused schistosomiasis. And came back to the US. As you might guess, got horribly sick.
Tirth: Very sick.
Lu: Very, very sick.
Tirth: Very sick. Yes.
Lu: And get this, he eventually passed 4,630 eggs in his semen.
Tirth: Oh, my God.
Lu: And 200 eggs in his urine.
Tirth: Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on. He was collecting his semen?
Lu: Yes. That’s the point. He wanted the eggs. He collected and counted all of them.
Tirth: Wow. That’s dedication.
Lu: Unfortunately, the US government did not allow him to research on the eggs. And so all of this was for naught.
Tirth: Oh, my God. Brave man, though.
Lu: A year and a half later, he finally cleared of the parasites.
Tirth: That’s horrible. Horrible.
Lu: Brave man, though.
Tirth: Brave man. Kudos.
Lu: All right. Any final thoughts on self-experimentation, Tirth, this proud history?
Tirth: These are badasses, man.
Lu: Yeah, we can never be at their level.
Tirth: I can only hope that 50 years from now, that they’ll talk about me as a self-experimenter.
Lu: Very good.
Tirth: I’m working on it.
Lu: Should we move on to some funny studies, Tirth? What do you think?
Tirth: Let’s do it.
Lu: Alright.
Lego swallowing study
Lu: Tirth, question: what was your favorite childhood Christmas present or any present?
Tirth: Oh, any present. Bicycle. Easy.
Lu: Very nice. How old were you?
Tirth: My first bicycle, probably five or six. I remember it was like this red bicycle. Red is my favorite color.
Lu: Training wheels?
Tirth: Yeah, for some period of time. But as I recall, I was pretty quick to graduate from training wheels.
Lu: I find that hard to believe. I’ve seen you try to ride a bike before. It’s not pretty.
Tirth: I’m a beast.
Lu: No, no, no. My favorite were Legos. I love Legos.
Tirth: That’s a good one.
Lu: Very fun toy. I love building stuff, you know?
Tirth: Yeah.
Lu: Working with my hands because, you know, I’m a real man. Unlike you.
Tirth: Tinkerer, tinkerer.
Lu: Yeah. In a way, in a sense, in a sense. But you know, I was thinking the other day, Legos are probably not great toys for kids because they’re small.
Tirth: They can eat them.
Lu: Easily, easily swallowable.
Tirth: Choking hazard, big choking hazard.
Lu: Yeah. Choking hazard and they can swallow them. And what happens to the Lego then, right? What happens to the kid if you swallow a bunch of Legos?
Tirth: Yeah.
Lu: So it turns out kids eat stuff all the time that they shouldn’t. A coin is actually the number one thing that kids eat. They’re thought to be pretty harmless, unless they’re eating like coin batteries, which are very, very dangerous and medicines and stuff like that. Otherwise, pretty harmless. But you know, the parents always worry and would bring their kids to the ED. Did you have any case like that?
Tirth: I did, more than once when I was in med school and it was coins.
Lu: Yeah, the parents get super worried. They’re worried about, you know, complications this might cause. And also they always ask, how long will it take for this to pass?
Tirth: How long should we keep looking for poop, sorting the poop out?
Lu: This question is a question addressed by the study I am presenting today: how long does it take for Legos to pass if a kid swallowed them?
Tirth: Legos specifically?
Lu: Yeah, Legos specifically.
Tirth: Nice.
Lu: Because there’s been zero literature on this topic prior to this study.
Tirth: Crucial, it’s a burning question.
Lu: Yeah.
Tirth: We need answers.
Lu: The study is titled “Everything is Awesome: Don’t Forget the Lego.” This came out after the Lego movie, obviously.
Tirth: Colon’s an unintended pun right there.
Lu: Oh, that’s very good. This was authored by a group of six pediatricians from Australia and the UK. It was written on behalf of Don’t Forget the Bubbles, which is a pediatric educational website that these six people met on.
Tirth: Interesting.
Lu: It was published in 2018 in the Journal of Pediatrics and Child Health.
Tirth: Great journal.
Lu: Very good journal. So they recruited six participants from a pool of health care professionals working in pediatrics aged 27 to 45. Three of them were men, three were female. Six participants, Tirth. Each participant ingested the head of a Lego mini figure, which is about 10 millimeters. They ingested them in the morning between 7 and 9 a.m. And then searched their poops after each bowel movement for the Lego head. Very simple. Very simple experiment.
Tirth: Yeah.
Lu: How many bowel movements do you think it took to find the Lego head?
Tirth: All right. Probably two.
Lu: That’s correct. The average is two. Couple of ones, couple of threes, one two, and then one male participant failed to find the Lego head. He searched for two weeks and did not find the Lego head. To better quantify this, to better quantify this, they came up with something called the Found and Retrieved Time score, F-A-R-T score.
Tirth: No, no, no no.
Lu: I believe that’s pronounced fart. I’m not clear. This is the number of days it took to find the Lego head, which ranged from one to three days. Average about 1.7 days.
Tirth: That makes sense. Yeah. So like on average, like one bowel movement a day.
Lu: Prior to the experiment, the participants were evaluated for their Stool Hardness And Transit score. S-H-A-T score. Believe that’s pronounced…
Tirth: Yeah, this is a family friendly pod.
Lu: So higher score means more frequent, more loose bowel movements. The important thing is the SHAT score did not change pre-ingestion of the Lego head versus after. Meaning no real complications.
Tirth: Yeah, yeah. It was like fine. It was basically like a normal thing.
Lu: Well, let me ask you, do you think there is a correlation between the SHAT score and the FART score? Again, FART is how long it took the Lego to pass. SHAT is how frequent the bowel movements are and how loose the bowel movements are.
Tirth: Yes. I would say there should be. I would say the higher the SHAT score, the longer the FART time, I guess, would be.
Lu: It would make sense. Actually, I think they were underpowered to find a significant correlation.
Tirth: Yeah only six people and then one person couldn’t even find it. So only five, really.
Lu: Exactly. So here’s something interesting, Tirth. Remember how I said there were six authors on this study?
Tirth: Oh, wait, this is them?
Lu: It’s not explicitly stated. But let me read you some clues that hint strongly that this is self-experimentation.
Tirth: Nice. Let’s go.
Lu: The introduction to the article ends with, “there has been a noble tradition of self-experimentation in the field of medicine.”
Tirth: There we go. Nice.
Lu: “With that in mind, the authors felt that they could not ask anything of their test subjects that they would not undertake themselves.”
Tirth: Oh, nudge nudge, wink wink. Nice.
Lu: They also said in the results section that the population studied could not be blinded to the study outcomes. Also, this was an international multi-center study of six people.
Tirth: That’s a clue. That’s a clue right there.
Lu: The authors are from the UK and Australia. And then also at the end, they advised that parents should not be counseled to search for the object in the stools as it is difficult to find. In fact, a clinician with a Ph.D. couldn’t even find it. What do you think? Is this self-experimentation, Tirth?
Tirth: Oh yeah, absolutely, man. Absolutely. They made it as clear, you know, without saying it outright.
Lu: Six pediatric physicians took it upon themselves to answer this age-old question that every parent asks in the ED.
Tirth: And they sorted through their poop, man.
Lu: And they sorted through their poop.
Tirth: That’s dedication.
Lu: Very noble. Brave, noble people.
Tirth: We salute you.
Lu: Absolutely.
Tirth: Yes.
Lu: Any other thoughts, Tirth?
Tirth: No, no, this was fun. We need more people like them.
Lu: I have just a couple of criticisms, and they acknowledge this as well. They used adults instead of children. And also they do not provide any IRB information. No IRB improvement information included.
Tirth: Gee, I wonder why.
Lu: All right, that’s it. What you got for me?
Tirth: Nice, man. This was fun.
Beard study
Tirth: I got a fun one for you today, man.
Lu: Oh, sounds good.
Tirth: The topic of today’s paper actually is something that is very near and dear to my heart. Actually, one might say it’s very near and dear to my face. It’s something we’ve talked about many times in this podcast, including today.
Lu: Is it the unevenness in your face?
Tirth: Please, please.
Lu: The left half is slightly drooped, which you might wanna get that checked out by the way.
Tirth: Please.
Lu: The listeners can’t appreciate what I’m seeing right now.
Tirth: Physiological.
Lu: It’s physiological drooping of the right side of your face? I see. I see. Interesting.
Tirth: As a neurologist, I would know. I look at faces all the time.
Lu: That’s right.
Tirth: No, no, no, no. But the object or the aspect I’m talking about is beards, of course. Beards.
Lu: Ohh, interesting.
Tirth: No, like I said, we’ve talked about it many times on this podcast, and we’ve also talked about your continued inability to grow one, but that’s okay. I won’t hold it against you.
Lu: We’ve discussed this. I can grow a beard if I want to, and people know that about me. I just don’t because it’s unpleasant. It’s unpleasant to look at.
Tirth: Oh is that right?
Lu: Yeah.
Tirth: I see. I see. Well, Lu, what if I told you that beards have been associated with masculinity, higher reproductive success or implied success, aggression, strength, virility, all through history? Would that change your mind?
Lu: Well, I mean, it’s pretty obvious if you include women in the study, that beards would associate with all those things. Is that what you’re referring to?
Tirth: No, no, no. I’m referring to the… Consider this, some of the greatest people in history, and I’m going to list off a bunch of names to see if this changes your mind about beards. Abraham Lincoln, the greatest American president.
Lu: Good American, good beard.
Tirth: Moses, great beard.
Lu: Very good beard, okay.
Tirth: Santa Claus himself, great beard.
Lu: That’s very true.
Tirth: Very impressive, unbeatable.
Lu: But not very virile, doesn’t have any kids, if I recall.
Tirth: Well, that we know of. Maybe he keeps his life private, we don’t know. Mr. T.
Lu: Ohhh.
Tirth: Great American.
Lu: Yes, yes.
Tirth: Great beard. George Clooney.
Lu: Sometimes, sometimes.
Tirth: The epitome of the salt and pepper, you know. I’ve been compared to George Clooney before.
Lu: Oh because of the gray in your beard, I see.
Tirth: Yeah, exactly.
Lu: But during his height, he was clean shaven. Ocean’s Eleven.
Tirth: That’s true, that’s true. But he’s seen the light.
Lu: Well, as you get older, you lose your jawline. I don’t, because I don’t age. But…and some men, such as yourself, choose to grow beards to hide that fact. Is that correct?
Tirth: No, no, that’s not correct at all. That’s not correct at all.
Lu: If you were to shave today, what would this look like? This would just be neck connected directly to the chin. Is that correct?
Tirth: Please. I have a very well-defined jawline, okay?
Lu: Please, please.
Tirth: We don’t have to get into that today.
Lu: Can I name you some great Americans who don’t have beards, Tirth?
Tirth: Okay, go ahead.
Lu: Bart Simpson.
Tirth: Bart’s a kid. He’s a boy.
Lu: Gabe, Gabe Lewis from The Office. Very good American. Sandra Bullock. Great American. Christina Aguilera, of course. Lady Liberty, probably the greatest American of all time.
Tirth: She’s French, man. She’s a gift.
Lu: Greatest American of all time. A lot of us are immigrants, okay? To this country.
Tirth: So am I, but… Who else?
Lu: Charlie Brown.
Tirth: He’s a boy. You’re basically naming boys and women.
Lu: Batman. Batman.
Tirth: Alright, the exception that proves the rule.
Lu: Superman.
Tirth: Okay, fine.
Lu: The Flash. Martian Manhunter. Captain America.
Tirth: Okay, time out. The Martian Manhunter is literally a Martian. I don’t think he’s American. I don’t think he ever gave up his Martian citizenship.
Lu: No, no, no. I think Mars blew up in that universe.
Tirth: I see. You named fictional people, boys, women.
Lu: And a statue.
Tirth: And a statue.
Lu: Yeah, no beards.
Tirth: Okay, pretty weak evidence, but point taken that there’s a lot of famous…
Lu: Disagree. Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Ruth Bader Ginsburg. No beard. Very great American.
Tirth: Great American. Anyway, to get back on track, the question the researchers asked themselves is, well, what are the potential evolutionary advantages of having a beard? Knowing what we know about beards and hair and its correlation with strength and masculinity in the animal kingdom, is something similar happening in humans and men?
Lu: I see.
Tirth: And specifically, the question they asked themselves is, does the presence of a beard make you better at winning fights?
Lu: Oh, okay. Like boxing matches or street fights?
Tirth: Close, close, close. I think they’re going for the real world implication of street fights, but unfortunately, you can’t really systematically study street fights.
Lu: Oh, they didn’t get a bunch of people to fight each other?
Tirth: I think that’s what they should have done. I think they should have started a fight club. That’s my one criticism right off the bat. But in fact, they studied the one arena, the one avenue in modern life where this sort of fighting is not only encouraged, but is celebrated, UFC.
Lu: UFC, okay, very good.
Tirth: This was published in the year 2018 also, in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior.
Lu: Oh, that’s a good journal.
Tirth: And these researchers are also in Australia.
Lu: Oh, great, fantastic.
Tirth: The land of great science. I think we’ve had multiple papers from Australia.
Lu: Very good science.
Tirth: So they asked themselves the question, like I said, what advantage does a beard give specifically to men with beards? Are they better at fighting and winning fights?
Lu: Okay.
Tirth: So to study this, they looked at 10 plus years of UFC fights.
Lu: Okay.
Tirth: Yeah, they went and looked at all these fights. They looked at the pictures of both fighters for each of these fights at the time of the fight. And then they systematically categorize these fighters as having no facial hair, some facial hair, full beard, and so on and so forth.
Lu: Interesting. Okay.
Tirth: They looked at the outcomes of every single one of these fights. And they also looked at other factors. They looked at the height of the fighter. They looked at the stance, like, are they left or right? They looked at the arm reach. And they put all of this data in a model, and they asked the question, can we find a strong predictive correlation?
Lu: How many matches was this overall?
Tirth: This was over 600 fights.
Lu: Pretty good sample size.
Tirth: A total of 395 fighters. So great sample size. This is one of the better things about the study is that they have a very high sample size.
Lu: Very good.
Tirth: So as I said, they put all of this in a model to try and see if they could find a correlation, if they could see, namely, the question is, does the presence of a beard mean you are more likely to win your fights?
Lu: And to control for other factors like weight, like you were saying, they also included those into the same model, just to account for them.
Tirth: Right. Also the way their model is constructed, they can actually look at individual variables. So they can ask the same question about every single thing they tested. In fact, they can even ask the question, is there a random unaccounted factor that’s responsible for the fight results we’re seeing?
Lu: Oh.
Tirth: And they also let themselves, you know, these guys are good scientists. They also let themselves consider the alternate hypothesis that the presence of a beard could actually make you a weaker fighter, because your opponents can tug on the beard and pull on it and actually gives you a disadvantage.
Lu: Interesting. Whereas their hypothesis is that the beard acts as a cushion. So when they get punched in the face, it lessens the blow.
Tirth: Yeah, that would be on the pro side. Also that they seem more aggressive, so their opponents are more intimidated by them perhaps.
Lu: Okay. And they look like they have a real sharp jawline. That’s also very intimidating.
Tirth: Right. You could get distracted. You know, it’s like, oh, wow, this guy, you know.
Lu: Did they account for the length of the beard?
Tirth: Partially. So they had multiple models they ran. One of the models sort of broke it down by some facial hair, mustache, a full beard, and then other models just collapsed it into a beard or no beard.
Lu: Okay.
Tirth: Let me ask you, before I get into the results, do you want to guess? What do you think?
Lu: I would say that people with beards were worse fighters than people without beards.
Tirth: Why? Why would you say that? Please elaborate.
Lu: Because they’re making up for something. They’re making up for something by growing a beard, you know.
Tirth: What are they making up for?
Lu: You know about this.
Tirth: Can you?
Lu: I don’t have to say.
Tirth: No, I don’t.
Lu: You know what they make up for.
Tirth: I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Lu: Yeah, you do.
Tirth: I think I know what you’re implying. We’ve talked about that too in other studies. Well, sorry to disappoint you, friend.
Lu: No.
Tirth: Actually, they found no effect between beards and their likelihood of winning fights.
Lu: Okay.
Tirth: What they did find – and this is interesting – is there were two factors that were very strongly correlated and predictive in terms of your ability to win fights or not. One of them, not surprisingly, is your reach.
Lu: Of your arms and legs?
Tirth: Just your arms. They’re looking at the arms. And then, in order to actually calculate this, they went to a database and they looked at the reach of every single fighter they looked at. And they fed this into the model. And in fact, they actually quantified this with every one inch increase. It increases the odds of winning your fight by 10%.
Lu: Oh, wow. That’s a fairly strong, fairly strong effect.
Tirth: But there was another factor that was even stronger than everything else they tested. Can you guess what that is?
Lu: Let me guess. Is it weight? That would be the obvious guess.
Tirth: It will be the obvious. No, but actually control for weight classes, right? Cause these guys are all paired up.
Lu: Oh, is baldness of the head?
Tirth: No, they should, although I think they should have looked at that. No, I’ll tell you what it is. It’s kind of non-intuitive. It’s actually a random variable, which literally just means that it’s none of the things that they tested for. So it’s like some other factor.
Lu: Okay. Fighting ability, maybe.
Tirth: Which makes sense, right? If you could just reduce a fighter down to one variable, then fighting ability, you would have an advantage against them. So yeah, that’s it. They conclude the study by saying that they didn’t find any evidence that beards give you an advantage in fights. But then they say that this doesn’t mean that in the real world, this doesn’t give you an advantage. They specifically mention that people could be intimidated. They may not want to pick a fight with you.
Lu: That’s true.
Tirth: And then they also say separately that this doesn’t actually test for masculinity or anything like that, you know, or reproductive success. And that used to be studied more. They don’t say how they would do that though. I don’t know if you would need like a control group and have them mate.
Lu: Just ask the UFC fighters, how many kids they have.
Tirth: Yeah, they should. They should. Yeah, just do a survey.
Lu: During the 10 year period, were there any fighters who grew a beard or shaved their beard?
Tirth: They don’t talk about this. They should. Yeah. So then maybe you’re winning a lot and now you start losing.
Lu: And then you shave your beard, you start losing.
Tirth: Oh, that’s great.
Lu: That’d be pretty good evidence.
Tirth: That would be pretty good evidence. Like a crossover effect. By the way, here’s the title of the paper: “Contest Competition and Men’s Facial Hair:Beards May Not Provide Advantages in Combat.”
Lu: Mmmm okay.
Tirth: In a way, I kind of like this. They just put it in the title so you don’t have to read this.
Lu: No need to read this.
Tirth: No need to read the study.
Lu: Don’t pay for the journal subscription.
Tirth: Exactly. They’re good guys, good scientists.
Lu: Very good. All right. Is that it, Tirth?
Tirth: That’s it. Any final thoughts on this?
Lu: I guess one thing they could have done is measure, if they’re thinking that the beards act as a shield of some sorts, a cushion of some sorts, they could have measured the force. They could have gotten a guy and punched him a bunch of times with and without a beard.
Tirth: There is actually a study that did exactly this. I almost presented that study today. But instead of taking a guy and punching him in the face repeatedly, they had a mannequin and put fake, different kinds of fake hair on it.
Lu: Okay. What did they find?
Tirth: They found that certain type of hair does make a difference. It can cushion blows.
Lu: Certain type of hair?
Tirth: Well, they use plucked hair and sheared, basically sheep fur and synthetic carpet-type fur to look at the thickness of the beard, and they found that the thicker fake beard they put on…
Lu: The thicker the beard… It does make enough of a difference to matter in a fight?
Tirth: Apparently, yes.
Lu: Really?
Tirth: But also, it was all simulated. So they had a piston punching this mannequin in the face, basically.
Lu: Okay. This was also not self-experimentation?
Tirth: No, no, definitely not. Definitely not.
Lu: Should have been.
Tirth: Should have been. Yes.
Lu: Good stuff.
Tirth: There you go. I guess we did a surprise second study too. So…
Lu: Bonus for the holidays. Bonus.
Tirth: That’s right.
Lu: A present. A gift.
Tirth: A little gift.
Lu: A gift to our listeners.
What did you learn today
Lu: All right. Well, I guess that brings us to the end of yet another episode of Recreational Science. Tirth, what’d you learn today?
Tirth: Lu, I learned today that if I want to be considered in the pantheon of great scientists, I really, really need to get on a good high fiber diet.
Lu: Oh, high fiber?
Tirth: Yeah.
Lu: I see.
Tirth: So I can… Yeah.
Lu: I see. You’re having problems. Okay. We won’t get into it.
Tirth: No, no, no. What did you learn today?
Lu: I learned that I think it’s time to grow out that beard.
Tirth: Ah, ho, ho, ho.
Lu: I’ve been shaving daily. It’s time to get that up. Just grow out the beard.
Tirth: New Year’s resolution, maybe?
Lu: Maybe, maybe. We’ll see.
Tirth: Welcome to the club, friend. Welcome to the club in advance.
Lu: Oh, thank you. No, no. Just give me a couple of days. Give me a couple of days. You’ll see.
Tirth: Oh, okay. Please send me a picture. Please send me a picture.
Lu: I will. Okay, guys. Thanks for listening to our show. We really hope you enjoyed it.
Tirth: And if you like listening to us, please give us five stars, write us a review, tell a friend, and subscribe on whatever platform you listen to us on. It will help us out a lot.
Lu: That’s right. Happy holidays, guys.
Tirth: Happy holidays. That’s the best gift you can give us.
Lu: Bye-bye.
