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?

United Mine Workers want their engagement ring back

Professor Freeman Dyson

Climate change is a highly charged emotional issue. It should not be. Anything as deadly serious, with such huge potential human peril and economic impacts, must be analyzed only with the sharp, cutting edge of cold reason. Religious fervor has no role. But we, and our children, are being proselytized that carbon is an evil pollutant, and that human-caused carbon emissions are wrecking the climate. This is a hypothesis, not settled fact. There are very smart people who believe otherwise, but they are dismissed as crackpots. Or worse.

Freeman Dyson is a brilliant physicist who taught for decades at Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Studies after Albert Einstein’s death created an opening. Dyson was considered the only physicist capable of filling Einstein’s enormous shadow. There is just one problem – Dyson is an anthropomorphic climate-change skeptic, and climate warriors have demanded his head – literally. Professor Richard Parcutt of Australia seriously proposes the death of heretics such as Dyson, provided they do not repent (much like Galileo). This is no way to conduct a scientific debate.

Dyson thinks that the computer models used by climatologists are faulty and do not account for the climate cooling effect of clouds. His hypothesis may be credible in that there has been no significant warming in the past sixteen years. Even the august New York Times has said “The rise in the surface temperature of earth has been markedly slower over the last 15 years than in the 20 years before that” (“What to Make of a Warming Plateau”, June 10, 2013).

As Dyson puts it, "there’s more solid evidence for the beneficial effects of CO2 than the negative effects." In spite of that, your president is pursuing policies to impoverish you.

In a recent major policy speech on climate change, President Obama drew a keen bead on the nation’s coal miners. In so many words, he said, if you are a coal miner, it’s time to find another line of work (or sign up for food stamps).

This was not a complete surprise to them. In 2008, the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) voiced whole-hearted support and proposed marriage to then-candidate Obama. But by 2012 they had seen the handwriting on the wall and chose to withhold support from either candidate, a shocking turn of events for a staunchly Democratic union. But they had overheard the whispers of the president’s environmental base and were worried.

In April 2013, fulfilling the UMWA’s fears, the president’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reclassified carbon dioxide as a hazard to human life. Shortly thereafter, they revealed a major policy shift buried in the fine print of a regulation on electrical efficiency. The agency raised the “social cost of carbon” from $22 to $36 per ton. The administration was saying that the costs of global warming would be greater than previously thought and that these costs were exacerbated by the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. 

By executive fiat, the president initiated a major, wrenching change in the nation’s energy infrastructure with no legislative deliberation by your elected legislators. While generating electrical energy with wind mills or solar panels is a lovely idea, these are nascent technologies. Energy costs, if sharply increased, will cut though the economy like an inflationary great white shark. How would grandma like to buy $15 corn flakes?

Taking the next logical step, what's to prevent the EPA from assessing a fine to parents of each newborn child? Using the administration's current projections, an American child will cause $52,000 of "climate damage" during his or her lifetime, both from simple exhalation and from consuming the fruits of the economy. Instead of a dependent tax deduction, parents would owe the IRS a huge penalty on their next tax return. 
  

Here’s another viewpoint. While our children are being brainwashed that carbon is an evil pollutant, perhaps they should also be taught that they are, themselves, carbon based life forms, and that carbon dioxide is crucially necessary for the growth of plant life on earth. In other words, we would not exist without carbon, and plants could not grow without carbon dioxide. There are demonstrably two sides to a very one-sided story.

What we need is a reasoned debate, with scientists properly playing the role of skeptics and the media, objective investigative journalists. The time for mindless religious cheerleading and witch hunts is past. There is too much at stake.