Scientific Method / Science & Exploration

Weird Science makes friends with atheists to keep them happy

But it sticks everyone in uncomfortable chairs so they drive safely.

A fisher in the woods at night.

Christians have happy tweets, atheists think too much. Social networking services allow behavioral questions to be examined using a large subject population. This one is no different, involving 16,000 Twitter users. The group was split in two based on simple criteria: do you follow one of a list of famous Christian figures, or do you follow someone from a comparable list of atheists (no word on how many people followed both). The researchers then analyzed the content of the tweets. Christians ended up using terms that suggested an intuitive thinking style and a focus on community; they were also generally happier. In contrast, atheists tended to be more analytic and less focused on social connections. This latter bit is important, as having social connections tends to keep people happier, and the authors think religion can help provide those connections.

Maybe we just need to give investment bankers smaller chairs. When yelling at you to stop slouching, your parents may have emphasized how posture influences how others perceive us. What they probably neglected to mention is that posture also influences how we see ourselves. And the truly weird thing is that this works even if we don't make any conscious choices about our posture.

The researchers set up chairs that either kept their subjects a bit constrained or allowed them to spread out into an expansive posture. Those who ended up with an open posture were more likely to steal money, cheat on a test, or break the law when in a driving simulator. The authors ascribe this to the fact that this sort of posture is generally associated with people being in a position of power. To see if there were any real-world consequences, the authors then turned to the streets of New York City, finding that cars that allowed their drivers to adopt an expansive posture were more likely to be illegally parked.

Fishers being killed by pot farming. No, this is not a story of anglers getting wasted and falling into rivers. Instead, the fishers in question are medium-sized mammals that are relatives of the marten and members of the weasel family. And, as it turns out, pot farming is killing them. It's normal to have problems with wildlife deaths near agricultural regions where the animals come in contact with various pesticides. But in this case, the agriculture came to the animals, as illegal pot farms have sprung up in the national forests of the Sierra Nevada. Survival of female fishers was found to correlate with the number of illegal marijuana farms known to be near their home range, which suggests that the illegal farmers are adopting some of the practices of their more traditional peers.

Acid reflux tied to organ rejection. Acid reflux seems more like a long-term health risk than an immediate crisis, but it apparently can set off a crisis: rejection of transplanted lungs. Bear with me, it'll all make sense. Of all the organs we transplant, lungs suffer rejection the most frequently, and their recipients have the lowest survival among transplant patients. Rejection is the product of an immune response to the transplanted tissue, and that's where acid reflux comes in. Acid reflux irritates the tissue in the esophagus, which creates inflammation, a form of immune response. That may ultimately help draw immune cells to the area, where they begin attacking the lung. Fortunately, there are both surgical and drug treatments for acid reflux, so this finding is mostly identifying a problem that doctors should be aware of.

Now that we've eliminated them, we've found out they were safe. This isn't so much weird as it is ironic. As part of its attempt to heighten airport security, the US rolled out two types of scanners, one of which relied on X-rays. But the scanners were put into use without any detailed safety testing, which raised fears that the estimated exposures used to decide on their safety was overly optimistic. But over time, the TSA has gradually removed the X-ray based scanners until, as of a few months ago, they're no longer in use at our airports. So, now is obviously the perfect time for the American Association of Physicists in Medicine to weigh in on their safety. Turns out they were fine all along, and you probably got a higher dose of radiation while waiting in line for security than you did during the scan itself.

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