motherfucking DUH

July 22, 2007 10:25 PM

No @#&!, Sherlock: This Week in the Very Obvious.
posted by homunculus (28 comments total)

But for every cry of "Eureka! I've found it!" there are a hundred studies that elicit no more reaction than a simple, "Well, no duh." Yet in their own way, these are equally important: just because something is painfully obvious doesn't mean it'll be acknowledged until a scientific foot soldier demonstrates it in academic form.

That's true, it is important. Imagine if the studies had turned out the other way, that helmets did not help prevent injuries, for example.
posted by delmoi at 10:53 PM on July 22, 2007

I hate things like this. Because you know what, 99% of the very obvious things out there true , but unless you actually test them YOU DON'T KNOW THAT'S THE CASE. That's what makes science, well, science. All the time people run experiments that show the the very obvious... isn't.
posted by aspo at 10:53 PM on July 22, 2007 [2 favorites]

Hmm... low quality science or low quality science reporting?
posted by Artw at 10:55 PM on July 22, 2007

When you do an experiment you can get one of two results:
1) The expected result.
or
2) Something else.

Just because Something Else didn't happen doesn't make it dumb science.

Hell, every moron could tell you that stuff falls down, but we couldn't put people on the moon until we could predict it within very very tight tolerances.
posted by Ookseer at 11:20 PM on July 22, 2007

Clearly if a journalist can broadly predict a result, then carrying out the experiment and gathering precise data on that result is a waste of time.
posted by Artw at 11:25 PM on July 22, 2007

Meanwhile, in the UK, more awful science reporting
posted by Artw at 11:34 PM on July 22, 2007

Speaking of Childhood autism (see Artw's link) a lot of people were saying that Autism was caused by Thimerosal, but it looks like it was taken out of pediatric vaccines in 2002, and autism usually develops around age three. So, if Thimerosal was actually the cause, autism rates would have seen a sharp drop between then and now. Did that happen?
posted by delmoi at 12:12 AM on July 23, 2007

The truth seems obvious after the fact.

Poor Memory Tied to Sleep Woes in Aging Women. Didn't think that was obvious. Maybe they forgot how many cups of coffee they had? ;-)

Funny you should bring the thimoseral and autism thing up delmoi, I was reading up on that exact thing, same link, last night. Wonder if the autism that might be mercury related with thimoserol is different from the Aspergery thing - the "Geek Syndrome"- going down with computer brainiacs having kids in Silicon Valley?
posted by nickyskye at 12:59 AM on July 23, 2007

To be fair, several of these don't seem so obvious to me. Elderly women with memory loss have trouble falling asleep? I'm not sure I would have connected the two. I'd classify a lot of these as unsurprising, but not necessarily obvious. For example, I'm not surprised that abused women have a tougher time finding a job, but if you said "Abused women have trouble doing X," I think I'd be inclined to believe it pretty much whatever X was. But abused women aren't worse off at everything; it's worth figuring out which is which. People second guess others' decisions differently than they second guess their own? Again, not surprising, but I also don't think I'd be particularly shocked to learn that there's a single process of second guessing that people apply both to themselves and others.
posted by tom_r at 1:09 AM on July 23, 2007

Good, level-headed comments in this thread. But I've piped up in a few results-reported threads to counter the prevailing voice of "Well, DUH" to note that an incompatible result would have been at least arguably possible. If hindsight is 20/20, reported science is, apparently, not even worthy of the original experiment.

(even worse are people's attitudes toward risk. If someone does the most foolhardy things, so long as it worked out ok, supposedly those things are no longer foolhardy. "I jumped without a reserve chute." "My uncle smoked till he was 99." "I regularly enjoy 'unsafe' sex and I'm fine". etc. etc.)
posted by dreamsign at 1:10 AM on July 23, 2007

My hypothesis on autism is that it's from all the MSG in our food now. It's hard to avoid the stuff these days. Most prepared food has it, frequenty under 'natural flavors', but there's at least a dozen other ways they hide it. I'm allergic; it messes me up pretty bad mentally, and I can easily see it doing something similar to a subset of the population.

I do not, of course, have the resources to actually test that hypothesis. :)
posted by Malor at 2:25 AM on July 23, 2007

I find it very sad that Wired is doing this. I would have hoped that editors there had a little better grasp on scientific method than this. LOL scientist articles like this belong in the Reader's Digest or the Congressional Record, not Wired.

And the study on Elderly with memory loss and sleep disorders is very interesting to me as my mother has suffered from both of those symptoms.
posted by octothorpe at 5:38 AM on July 23, 2007

er, I'm not really reading this like most of you seem to be doing. I'm reading it more as a celebration of what these folks are doing, rather than a negative thing.
posted by Arturus at 6:00 AM on July 23, 2007

Well when the article is titled, "No @#&!, Sherlock: This Week in the Very Obvious", you can't really help but assume that they meant it as a negative thing.
posted by octothorpe at 6:32 AM on July 23, 2007

Just because not every obvious thing is true, that doesn't mean that someone spending a lot of money to prove something that's completely obvious isn't a valid source for laughs.
posted by empath at 7:42 AM on July 23, 2007

Well when the article is titled, "No @#&!, Sherlock: This Week in the Very Obvious", you can't really help but assume that they meant it as a negative thing.

If all you bother to read is the title, maybe. If you read further, you find:

Yet in their own way, these are equally important: just because something is painfully obvious doesn't mean it'll be acknowledged until a scientific foot soldier demonstrates it in academic form.

So for all those uncelebrated researchers who provide the meat and potatoes at the banquet of science, who map their neighborhoods instead of the frontier, Wired Science brings you the first installment of No @#&!, Sherlock: This Week in Very Obvious.

But perhaps you consider meat and potatoes a negative thing.
posted by languagehat at 8:39 AM on July 23, 2007 [1 favorite]

I agree with you Malor to a certain degree. I have a horrible reaction to MSG and try and feed my kidlet food without any additives. I know it causes behavioral changes--in myself and the Bean. I mean the stuff causes brain lesions! They took it out of baby food for awhile though I've read recently that they've put it back. I have a friend with an autistic son who removed chemical additives from his diet because of how they violently affected him.

Just like cigarettes we'll find out that this stuff really is very bad for nearly everyone.
posted by pywacket at 9:15 AM on July 23, 2007

Malor, perhaps this thread of yore about MSG might interest you?
posted by nickyskye at 9:16 AM on July 23, 2007

Is that a snark, or did you not notice that malor posted several long comments in that long and unpleasant thread? This sums up his incoherent take on the subject:

MSG alone may be perfectly safe, in other words. I suspect it probably isn't, and I suspect it's probably doing some damage to everyone who eats it, but that's a guess. I have no hard data to back it up. The brain can indeed self-repair, so perhaps MSG alone might never do enough damage to make any effective difference.

And now he's saying:

My hypothesis on autism is that it's from all the MSG in our food now.

Uh, right. My hypothesis (such an impressive word!) is that it's from space aliens. Unfortunately, I too do not have the resources to actually test that hypothesis.
posted by languagehat at 10:08 AM on July 23, 2007

To put it in perspective: this is a post on metafilter with comments, one of which you are reading right now.
posted by Smedleyman at 10:29 AM on July 23, 2007

Another point: often, studies that appear painfully obvious from the POV of commonsense are conducted, not because a scientist genuinely didn't think that a causal connection existed, but to provide definitive evidence of that causal connection for other purposes - changes in laws or public policy, lawsuits, or just raising awareness. So, for example, while the blog snarks this:

In the sports world, McGill University Health Center researchers say that wearing a helmet decreases soccer players' chances of being hurt when struck in the head by a ball.

The press release it links to includes this quotation:

“This study may help convince parents and players that soft protective soccer headgear can be an effective part of a comprehensive plan to reduce the number of head injuries and concussions in soccer.,” confirmed Dr. Delaney.

At least part of the motivation for the study is convincing parents that soccer may be more dangerous for kids than they think, and that headgear - silly as it may seem - might offer some protection.
posted by googly at 10:57 AM on July 23, 2007

My hypothesis on autism is that it's from all the MSG in our food now. It's hard to avoid the stuff these days. Most prepared food has it, frequenty under 'natural flavors', but there's at least a dozen other ways they hide it. I'm allergic; it messes me up pretty bad mentally, and I can easily see it doing something similar to a subset of the population.

Huh. Just the other day I was putting MSG on a baked potato. It definitely makes food taste better. Also, your body produces glutamate on it's own if you don't eat it. Ikkyu2 made some good posts about it a while back.
posted by delmoi at 11:48 AM on July 23, 2007

I'm pretty sure scientific studies produce more than just conclusions.
posted by erikharmon at 3:30 PM on July 23, 2007

I don't think msg causes autism, I think it can cause brain lesions. I think it can cause behavioral changes. I did an experiment *with* my doctor once I'd figured out what might be causing my problems (and after 3 trips to the emergency room with my throat closing up) and sure enough after a couple of bites of food heavy on the msg (raman anyone?and the second time commercial ranch dressing)I got a blinding headache and my throat and nose closed up while my face turned bright red. After a while on oxygen and a couple of big shots my doctor believed me.

About a year after being VERY careful about what I ate
and paying attention to b vitamins many things improved. There aren't many processed foods in our house. I don't have the same problems with 'free glutamate," for example I love tomatoes so I'm not rabid about glutamic acid, just the additives msg and aspartame. Works for me, and works for several autistic kids too.

I do think that a few years down the line MSG will be linked to a variety of health problems prompting a 'duh,' reaction.
posted by pywacket at 4:03 PM on July 23, 2007

Echoing aspo and others: it's also not just showing that there is a difference, but showing the degree of difference. For example, it's obvious that if you're hit by a car doing 50mph, it will do more damage than a car traveling at 10mph. How much more damage is the interesting thing, because then you can start making decisions about appropriate speed limits that balance rights of drivers vs risks to others in the event of an accident.
posted by Infinite Jest at 5:08 PM on July 23, 2007

It's very obvious that a heavy object will fall faster than a lighter object. Why bother to test it?
posted by SPrintF at 5:21 PM on July 23, 2007

The article about the importance and benefits of walking isn't exactly counterintuitive, but the finding needs to be advertised. Too many people say, or think, that there is no point in exercising because they "don't have time to go to the gym." The idea that one can maintain good metabolic fitness (which is more important than aerobic fitness and MUCH more important than having a conventionally "beautiful" physique) just by WALKING is, seriously, something many people don't know, and have to be taught. Walking is good for you, yes, and it needs to be shouted from the rooftops.
posted by ethnomethodologist at 11:02 PM on July 23, 2007

SPrintF for the win.
posted by eritain at 1:48 AM on July 24, 2007