From Wikipedia: “Emily Rosa is the youngest person to have a research paper published in a peer reviewed medical journal. At age nine she conceived and executed a scientific study of therapeutic touch which was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1998. In 1996, Rosa saw a video of Therapeutic Touch practitioners claiming they could feel a “Human Energy Field” emanating from a body and could use their hands to manipulate the HEF in order to treat disease. She heard Dolores Krieger, co-inventor of Therapeutic Touch, claim that everyone had the ability to feel the HEF. Using a standard display board, Rosa devised a single-blind protocol for a study she conducted at age nine for her 4th grade science fair.”
The so-called Mediterranean diet is mostly a work of fiction
From Politico: “It’s the most famous diet in the world. It might also be the most misunderstood. “All this is part of the lifestyle of the Mediterranean diet,” the 72-year-old explains serenely, mopping tomato sauce off his plate with a thick hunk of artisanal bread. It’s a beautiful story and a terrific seasoning for our meal. The only problem is it’s not true. Fifty years since the term was coined by the American physiologist Ancel Keys — and a decade and a half after UNESCO recognized it as an intangible cultural heritage of humanity — the Mediterranean diet has become a mishmash of hyperbole, half-truths and howlers, stirred together for political and commercial ends. There are two competing theories on how the Mediterranean diet was born. Both begin with Keys, its founding father. Keys got his start in the world of nutrition in the 1930s, developing a portable provision for United States troops (the famous “K-ration”).
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Research shows that mice in the wild will run on running wheels just for the fun of it
From The Royal Society: “Wheel running is often used in the laboratory for triggering enhanced activity levels, despite the common objection that this behaviour is an artefact of captivity. If wheel running is indeed caused by captive housing, wild mice are not expected to use a running wheel in nature. This however, to our knowledge, has never been tested. Here, we show that when running wheels are placed in nature, they are frequently used by wild mice, also when no extrinsic reward is provided. Bout lengths of running wheel behaviour in the wild match those for captive mice. This finding falsifies one criterion for stereotypic behaviour, and suggests that running wheel activity is an elective behaviour. Our findings may help alleviate the main concern regarding the use of running wheels in research on exercise.”
Hi everyone! Mathew Ingram here. I am able to continue writing this newsletter in part because of your financial help and support, which you can do either through my Patreon or by upgrading your subscription to a monthly contribution. I enjoy gathering all of these links and sharing them with you, but it does take time, and your support makes it possible for me to do that. I also write a weekly newsletter of technology analysis called The Torment Nexus.
She invented the circular saw and revolutionized the lumber industry overnight
From the Mills Archive: “As a young woman, Tabitha Babbitt was a weaver in Harvard, Massachusetts. She used to watch the workers at the local sawmill. Observing them use the difficult two-man whipsaw, she noticed that half of their motion was wasted. It had two handles which two men would pull from side to side. However, the saw only cut the wood when it was being pulled forward. Tabitha proposed creating a round blade to increase efficiency. Eventually she came up with a prototype, attaching a circular blade to her spinning wheel. But Tabitha was a member of the Shakers, a Christian sect founded circa 1747 in England, and they believed intellectual property should be shared by the community. Because she did not patent it, there is controversy over whether she was the first true inventor of the circular saw.”
Cowboys in the Old West didn’t wear what we now think of as cowboy hats
From Ripley’s: “A cowboy’s preferred choice of hat? The derby — also known as the bowler. Photos of the Wild Bunch from 1892 and 1900 clearly show the gang — Harry A. Longabaugh (the Sundance Kid), Ben Kilpatrick (the Tall Texan), Robert Leroy Parker (Butch Cassidy), Harvey Logan (Kid Curry), and Will Carver — donning derby hats. Famous gunslinger and gambler Bat Masterson also favored the derby. The classic photo of gunfighter Billy the Kid depicts the outlaw wearing what resembles a top hat. Men commonly wore hats on the American frontier, and derby hats were functional for various occasions. Most photographs from that time feature men wearing them and one of the reasons they were popular is because they stayed on in windy conditions. In addition to the derby, men wore flat wool caps, Mexican sombreros, or old Civil War hats.”
Watching a brain surgeon practice using his instruments
Acknowledgements: I find a lot of these links myself, but I also get some from other newsletters that I rely on as “serendipity engines,” such as The Morning News from Rosecrans Baldwin and Andrew Womack, Jodi Ettenberg’s Curious About Everything, Dan Lewis’s Now I Know, Robert Cottrell and Caroline Crampton’s The Browser, Clive Thompson’s Linkfest, Noah Brier and Colin Nagy’s Why Is This Interesting, Maria Popova’s The Marginalian, Sheehan Quirke AKA The Cultural Tutor, the Smithsonian magazine, and JSTOR Daily. If you come across something interesting that you think should be included here, please feel free to email me at mathew @ mathewingram dot com