13 Things That Don't Make Sense (29 page)

BOOK: 13 Things That Don't Make Sense
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7. THE WOW! SIGNAL

p. 97

the likely characteristics of an alien communication
:
Nature
184, no. 4690 (1959): 844.

p. 100

We are living at a time of extraordinary progress
: Catalog at:
http://exoplanets. org/planets.shtml
.

p. 100

scientists announced they had discovered three planets
:
Nature
441 (2006): 305.

p. 101

6EQUJ5 was the signature of a signal
: See
http://www.bigear.org/6equj5.htm
.

p. 102

Occasionally something interesting
: See
http://www.bigear.org/wow20th.htm
.

p. 103

He called it a day of infamy
: See
http://www.bigear.org/JDK-Infamy.htm
.

p. 108

“You wouldn’t believe cold fusion unless”
: See
http://www.seti.org/about-us/ faq.php
.

8. A GIANT VIRUS

p. 113

The bacterium was in fact not a bacterium. It was a giant virus
:
Science
299 (2003): 2033.

p. 113

Raoult subsequently admitted
: M. Peplow, “Giant Virus Qualifies as ‘living’ Organism,”
Nature
News Service, October 14, 2004.

p. 115

Woese published a paper
:
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
87, no. 12 (1977): 4576.

p. 117

Mimivirus was proving to be a gold mine
:
Science
306 (2004): 1344.

p. 118

Bell came up with a rather surprising hypothesis
:
Journal of Molecular Evolution
53 (2001): 251.

p. 119

Mimivirus, he says, is the missing link
: G. Hamilton, “Half Virus, Half Beast,”
New Scientist
, March 25, 2006, p. 37.

p. 119

“the world’s leading source of genetic innovation”
: L. Villarreal, “Are Viruses Alive?”
Scientific American
, September 2004, p. 96.

p. 120

one-hundred-foot boat called
Sorcerer II: The project’s Web page is
http://www.sorcerer2expedition.org/version1/HTML/main.htm
.

p. 120

around 10 percent of them
:
Emerging Infectious Diseases
11 (2005): 449.

p. 120

a study in France
:
Microbial Pathogenesis
42 (2007): 56.

p. 120

a technician in the Marseille lab
:
Annals of Internal Medicine
144 (2006): 702.

p. 121

It is called a
reovirus:
Science
282 (1998): 1332.

9. DEATH

p. 122

a young researcher from the University of Georgia
: W. Gibbons, “How Long Do Blanding’s Turtles Live?”
Ecoviews
,
http://www.uga.edu/srelherp/ecoview/ Eco25.htm
.

p. 123

“a sharp challenge”
: B. Yeoman, “Can Turtles Live Forever?”
Discover
magazine, January 6, 2002, p. 61.

p. 124

“sheer, wanton, head-in-bag perversity”
:
Behavioral and Brain Sciences
17, no. 4 (1994): 616.

p. 124

With great insight, he proposed a mechanism
: P. Medawar,
An Unsolved Problem in Biology
(London: H. K. Lewis, 1952), p. 1.

p. 124

In 1957 George Williams expanded
:
Evolution
11 (1957): 398.

p. 124

Then, in 1977, Tom Kirkwood
:
Nature
270 (1977): 301.

p. 125

“highly controversial
”: BBC Reith Lectures, 2001, transcript at:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith2001/lecture3.shtml
.

p. 125

Thomas Johnson and David Friedman joined
:
Genetics
118 (1988): 75.

p. 125

some of their colleagues accused them
: G. Hamilton, “Clock of Ages,”
New Scientist
, April 19, 2003, p. 26.

p. 125

Caenorhabditis elegans
worms
. . .
up to six weeks
:
Nature
366 (1993): 461.

p. 126

“organism envy”
:
Science
308 (2005): 1875.

p. 126

The group was headed . . . fifty-one scientists
:
Journals of Gerontology Series A: Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences
57 (2002): B292–B297.

p. 126

“No intervention will slow”
:
Journals of Gerontology Series A: Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences
59 (2004): B573–B578.

p. 128


Our predictions were met with disbelief
”:
Citation Classics
, no. 26 (1978): 144, available at:
http://www.garfield.library.upenn.edu/classics1978/A1978FC39200002.pdf
.

p. 128

they had put a gene that activates telomerase
:
Science
279 (1998): 349.

p. 129

a tantalizing secret
:
Nature
448 (2007): 767.

p. 129

their fertility declined
:
Evolution
38 (1980): 1004.

p. 130

increased life span and increased fertility
:
Evolution
45 (1991): 82.

p. 130

female mice shut down
:
Science
190 (1975): 165.

p. 130

As her group point out in a 2003 paper
:
Science
302 (2003): 611.

p. 131

His conclusion was that there was no conclusion
:
Evolutionary Ecology Research
6 (2004): 1.

p. 132

“Biological Aging Is No Longer an Unsolved Problem”
:
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
1100 (2007): 1.

p. 133

common ancestor of today’s species
: W. A. Clark,
Means to an End: The Biological Basis of Aging and Death
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 41.

10. SEX

p. 136

an outstanding exposition of the theory
: R. Dawkins,
Climbing Mount Improbable
(New York, Norton, 1996), p. 75.

p. 136

he again admits defeat
: R. Dawkins,
The Ancestor’s Tale
(London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2004), p. 357.

p. 136

“evolutionary scandal”
: J. Maynard Smith,
Nature
324 (1986): 300.

p. 137

“a kind of crisis at hand”
: G. Williams,
Sex and Evolution
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), p. v.

p. 137

Ernst Mayr added his contribution
: E. Mayr,
What Evolution Is
(London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2002), p. 102.

p. 137

Bringing things right up to date
:
Nature Reviews (Genetics)
8 (2007): 139.

p. 137

“twofold cost
”: Maynard Smith,
The Evolution of Sex
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), p. 3.

p. 138

turned this argument upside down
:
Science
288, no. 5469 (2000): 1211.

p. 139

Autumn’s asexual geckos . . . farther and faster
:
Physiological and Biochemical Zoology
78 (2005): 3.

p. 139

A series of experiments on water fleas
: This and other results discussed in this paragraph are summarized in
Nature Reviews (Genetics)
8 (2007): 139.

p. 140

Graham Bell and Austin Burt showed
:
Nature
330 (1987): 118.

p. 140–141

“a good candidate for the title”
: R. Dawkins,
Independent
, March 10, 2000. –141

p. 141

Water fleas have shown no advantage
:
Journal of Evolutionary Biology
16 (2003): 976.

p. 141

for rotifers, their advantage lies
:
Science
18 (2007): 268.

p. 141

In 2004 Sarah Otto and Scott Nuismer struck another blow against the Red Queen
:
Science
304 (2004): 1018.

p. 143

“hidden in darkness”
:
Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London (Botany)
6: 95.

p. 143

More than a century later
: Maynard Smith,
The Evolution of Sex
.

p. 143

something Kuhn called “a scandal”
: T. Kuhn,
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), p. 67.

p. 144

In some ways the issue parallels
: D. Gale and L. Shapley,
American Mathematical Monthly
69 (1962): 9.

p. 145

wholesale replacement of Darwin’s theory
:
Science
311 (2006): 965.

p. 146

it still stands as a point of contention
:
Evolution
59 (2005): 87.

p. 147

As the biologist Steven Rose pointed out
: S. Rose, “Chat-Up Lines,”
Guardian
, August 21, 2004.

p. 147

In the summer of 1994
:
Proceedings of the Royal Society of London
264 (1997): 1283.

p. 148

more than 450 species
: B. Bagemihl,
Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity
(London: Profile Books, 1999), p. 12.

p. 148

she took the total number of vertebrate species observed
: J. Roughgarden,
Evolution’s Rainbow
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), p. 224.

p. 149

Steven Rose wrote
: Rose, “Chat-Up Lines.”

p. 150

Jerome Wodinsky removed
:
Science
198 (1997): 880.

11. FREE WILL

p. 152

There are plenty of other examples
: O. Sacks,
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales
(New York: Summit Books, 1985), p. 8.

p. 152


Man defends himself from being regarded
”: Quoted in
Journal of Consciousness Studies
2, no. 2 (1995): 167.

p. 153

In 1788 the philosopher Immanuel Kant
: I. Kant,
Critique of Practical Reason
, ed. and translated by L. Beck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 2.

p. 153

Libet found that the brain’s preparatory work
:
Brain
106 (1983): 623.

p. 154

That was certainly Libet’s view
: B. Libet, “Do We Have Free Will?” in
The Volitional Brain
, ed. B. Libet, A. Freeman, and V. Sutherland (Exeter: Imprint Academic, 1999), p. 47.

p. 156

Fried grasped this opportunity
:
Journal of Neuroscience
11 (1991): 3656.

p. 158

The students gained a course credit
: “Apparent Mental Causation,”
American Psychologist
, July 1999, p. 480.

p. 158

In these studies, the students
:
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
85, no. 1 (2003): 5.

p. 159

“influence of suggestion”
:
Royal Institution of Great Britain (Proceedings)
, March 12, 1852, p. 147.

p. 159

William James . . . took Carpenter’s baton
: W. James,
The Principles of Psychology
(New York: H. Holt, 1890), p. 526.

p. 160

This, perhaps, is what is most disturbing
: A. Burgess,
A Clockwork Orange
(London: Heinemann, 1962), p. 76.

p. 162

Richard Nisbett and Timothy Wilson showed
:
Psychological Review
84 (1977): 231.

p. 163

“Free will is a fictional construction”
: “In search of humanity,”
Times
(London), December 29, 1997.

12. THE PLACEBO EFFECT

p. 164

“It has brought me great comfort”
: Press release on Sternbach’s death issued by Roche Pharmaceuticals, September 30, 2005.

p. 164

Diazepam is now . . . a “core medicine”
: See
http://www.who.int/medicines/publications/EML15.pdf
.

p. 165

diazepam had no effect on anxiety
:
Prevention and Treatment
6, no. 1 (2003):
v
.

p. 166

“urgent priority”
: Quoted in L. Conboy et al.,
Contemporary Clinical Trials
27 (2006): 123.

p. 167

“I’m going to prescribe you some magnesium”
: L. Spinney, “Purveyors of Mystery,”
New Scientist
, December 16, 2006, p. 42.

p. 167

“some unintelligent or inadequate patients”
:
Lancet
2 (1954): 321.1.

p. 167

According to Ann Helm
: A. Helm, “Truth-Telling, Placebos and Deception,”
Aviation, Space, and Environmental Medicine
, January 1985, p. 69.

p. 167

Danish clinicians . . . ten or more times per year
:
Evaluation and the Health Professions
26 (2003): 153.

p. 167

Israeli doctors . . . prescribed placebos
:
British Medical Journal
329 (2004): 944.

p. 168

“Generally a larger dose”
:
Journal of the American Pharmaceutical Association
41, no. 4 (2001): 523.

p. 170

Asbjorn Hróbjartsson and Peter Gøtzsche had begun
:
New England Journal of Medicine
344 (2001): 1594.

p. 170

much-quoted, never-questioned statistic
:
Journal of the American Medical Association
159 (1955): 1602.

p. 171

In 2003 Hróbjartsson and Gøtzsche
:
Journal of Internal Medicine
256 (2003): 91.

p. 171

researchers from the University of Michigan
:
Journal of Neuroscience
25 (2005): 7754.

p. 172

An editorial accompanying
:
New England Journal of Medicine
344 (2001): 1630.

p. 174

reduced activity in the neurons
:
Nature Neuroscience
7 (2004): 587.

p. 175

Telling patients . . . as effective as injecting 6–8 mg of morphine
:
Nature
312 (1984): 755.

p. 175

cocaine abusers . . . getting something
:
Journal of Neuroscience
23 (2003): 11461.

p. 175

Benedetti and Colloca have already started
:
Nature Reviews (Neuroscience)
6 (2005): 545.

p. 176

his team published a paper
:
Journal of Neuroscience
26 (2006): 12014.

p. 178

One group, led by researchers
:
Contemporary Clinical Trials
27 (2006): 123.

p. 178

An openly administered dose
:
Pain
90 (2001): 205.

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