You can die of a broken heart and other surprising science

"Everything that can be invented has been invented."

In 1899, the Commissioner of the US Patent Office, Charles H. Duell, is said to have exhorted that “everything that can be invented has been invented.” While possibly apocryphal, it was a common sentiment of the time. After all, electricity had been tamed, the light bulb had replaced whale oil lamps, powerful steam locomotives traversed the continent, and Herman Hollerith had developed the Census Tabulating Machine. Indeed, what else could possibly be left to invent?

In retrospect, we see how silly was that view. But that is the nature of scientific certitude. Science is an ongoing process. Things we hold to be true are only working models of reality, and reality is often more complex or strange than we think. When our models (theories) disagree with reality, we must quickly develop new theories.

Science, that is, our view of reality, changes all of the time. For instance, here are a handful of new theories published in just the last few months.

• You can literally die of a broken heart. Researchers in the U.K. studied 30,000 people whose spouses had died and found a significant (nearly double) risk of heart attack or stroke. This risk fades in subsequent months and is correlated with higher levels of inflammatory cells in the blood (which gradually return to normal). (JAMA Internal Medicine, April 2014)

• We may have company in other dimensions. Researchers using a sophisticated telescope in Antarctica have for the first time discovered primordial gravitational waves, thus buttressing the case for inflationary expansion. This theory posits that during the first trillionth of a trillionth of a second, the universe expanded from an invisible speck to near its current size. If true, our universe may be “one of many universes floating like bubbles in a glass of champagne.” (Scientific American, March 31, 2014). 

• Beans beat beef, but even then in temperance. Two recent studies support a theory that too much protein has negative effects on human health. The primary study found that people age 50-65, with a diet where protein is restricted to 10% of total calories, suffered cancer and diabetes at significantly lower rates. Those eating a moderate protein diet (up to 19%), were three times more likely to die from cancer. Oddly enough, the effect reversed after age 65, when a moderate protein diet seems slightly protective. In good news for vegetarians, vegetable protein was found to be more healthy than animal protein overall. (Cell Metabolism, March 2014)

• Dark skin is evolutionarily superior in the tropics. An English researcher studying 40 years of data found that albinos living in areas of high ultraviolet radiation (e.g., Africa, Central America) contract skin cancer and often die young before reproducing. Theorizing that early hominids were pale skinned and largely hairless (to control body temperature in tropical heat), he proposes that nonmelanoma skin cancers killed the lighter skinned and spared the darker skinned. This evolutionary force self-selected dark skin as a superior attribute for survival. (Proceedings of the Royal Society B, January 2014)

• Death rays may not be just science fiction. Physicists at the University of Maryland have demonstrated a one-two combo punch that opens the way for laser weapons. High power lasers tend to heat the atmosphere as they pass through it. The low-density air thus created acts like a lens, defocusing and weakening the beam. Instead, by pulsing a low-power laser several times over 7 billionths of a second, a “tunnel in the sky” is created through which a high energy blast could follow. In addition to death rays, such technology could be used to power high altitude aircraft. (Physical Review X, February 2014)

Science is constantly evolving, constantly surprising. To not be open to multiple possibilities is crippling to a scientist. A close-minded scientist is like a blind marksman; brilliant, perhaps, but unable to hit a moving target. That is why the most prized scientific quality is a finely honed sense of skepticism.

A major mistake for a serious scientist is to follow the herd, but it is oh so hard to resist. Usually grants and funding follow the herd; taking another path can lead to poverty. Disagreeing with the herd will also get you shunned, criticized, and sometimes demonized. For instance, Professor Lawrence Torcello seriously proposes jailing those who disagree with him on climate science.

Here’s a famous example. Dr. Barry Marshall and research partner Robin Warren were all alone in their thinking. The entire world’s scientific community ridiculed their theory, but they persevered. Peptic ulcers are caused by bacteria, not spicy foods or stress. Next time you get a simple antibiotic to cure one, won’t you be glad that they remained steadfast?

What the heck happened to Detroit?

Detroit population by year.

Detroit was first settled by the French in the 1670s as a fur trading outpost. It was formally established in 1701 by Antoine Laumet de La Mothe, sieur de Cadillac, who constructed a fort to assert French interests against the British (and became the namesake of a famous American luxury car).

Strategically located on a long narrow waterway connecting two of the Great Lakes, Huron and Erie, Detroit is named by the French word for strait, détroit. It is a cruel irony that Detroit is both named by a strait and is, economically, in dire straits. It was a long story, peaked by strength and glory, but ultimately ending in ignominy and bankruptcy.

Detroit became famous for manufacturing automobiles, and that required steel and labor. Both were readily available, with workers flocking to the city from all over the country. Situated within a golden triangle of easily accessible natural resources, Detroit was able to tap into iron ore in Minnesota, coal in Pennsylvania and Ohio, and limestone in Michigan. A network of canals, railroads, and lake shipping made all the components of steel cheap to find and transport.

Not one to depend on the vagaries of supply, Henry Ford built the huge Rouge River complex to manufacture steel and glass, produce electrical power, cast engine blocks, and otherwise keep his Detroit production lines humming. Detroit in the 1950s reached its apex with a population approaching two million and hundreds of thousands employed in the auto industry. The days of “Leave it to Beaver” and the new Ford Thunderbird were idyllic, prosperous, and exciting. But it would never be so good again.

On July 18, 2013, Detroit declared bankruptcy. The city suffered a spectacular failure, with debt estimated as much as $20 billion. From a peak of nearly two million, the New York Times portrayed the city as “home to 700,000 people, as well as to tens of thousands of abandoned buildings, vacant lots and unlit streets.” Crime was rampant. The disaster was immense.

PBS Newshour on December 13, 2013, presented an investigation into the causes of Detroit’s collapse. In a program titled “How Detroit Leaders Ignored Causes of Bankruptcy for 65 Years,” economist Dr. Lew Mandell delved into the precipitous decline.

One major factor was the slowness of the Big Three auto makers to respond to the demand for small, fuel efficient cars following the Arab oil embargo in 1973. This created a huge opportunity for upstarts Toyota, Honda, and Datsun (Nissan today). Ford, GM, and Chrysler offered a weak slate of small cars with poor options and not-so-good fuel economy. The die was cast.

But there was a more serious problem. The Big Three were supported by a raft of other small manufacturers. According to Mandell, they became very discontented.  “Manufacturers, other than the big-three, felt so poorly treated by state and local government in terms of high business taxes, oppressive worker’s compensation laws and hostility to business that many were ready to move elsewhere.” And indeed they did.

With the departure of businesses came an inevitable increase in unemployment. Mortgages were foreclosed, houses abandoned. Crime rates soared. Whites escaped to the suburbs. Middle class blacks did as well. Vast sections of Detroit became a wasteland as the tax base evaporated. Huge commitments to public union pensions, with little income to fund them, made bankruptcy inevitable.

A sad story with no redemption except, perhaps, in learning a lesson. Mandell reviewed studies of business climate and found that Detroit and Michigan made employers unwelcome. Onerous regulations and taxes burdened employers to the extent that they simply left. Atlanta and Charlotte and many other cities were the beneficiaries of Detroit’s burdensome policies. While the anti-capitalists among us may hate business, it is clear that Detroit fervently wished it had kept some.

Locally, there is another great example. According to a recent Forbes survey of business climate by state, Massachusetts ranks 13^th while Michigan is 47^th and Rhode Island 48^th.  It is no accident that Massachusetts has an unemployment rate of 6.5%, Michigan 7.7%, and Rhode Island 9.0%. It is fun to hate business, to castigate fat cats, but when they take the jobs away, we all suffer. It’s a lesson that Detroit has learned, and Rhode Island is wrestling with.

Remember that government produces nothing. It is said that taxing our way to prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket, trying to lift himself by the handle. It’s a tough lift.