“Treated” chocolate makes you happier
CHOCOLATE has wonderful powers – witness our report last week on the correlation between per-capita chocolate consumption and a nation’s haul of Nobel prizes (3 November). Now Tony Burton points us to the apparently very serious paper “Effects of Intentionally Enhanced Chocolate on Mood”, published in Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing ().
The paper describes an experiment in which subjects were given chocolate which had been “treated” with health-giving “intentions” by, we are told, “(1) a pair of experienced meditators, (2) an electronic device imprinted by six experienced meditators, [or] (3) a ritual performed by a Mongolian shaman”. A fourth group was given untreated chocolate. Neither the subjects nor those delivering the chocolate knew which sample was which.
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The authors report a statistically significant effect, in which those consuming sort-of-prayed-over chocolate scored more of a mood improvement than those eating plain old plain chocolate. (A declaration of interest here: Explore is published by Elsevier, part of Reed Elsevier, which owns 91av.)
So far, so remarkable. Even more so is the paper’s conclusion, in which the authors insist that in “future efforts to replicate this finding… persons holding explicitly negative expectations should not be allowed to participate for the same reason that dirty test tubes are not allowed in biology experiments”. Tony asks whether this may be “the most comprehensive pre-emptive strike ever” against any attempt to replicate the results.
More intriguing still is the statement that “Given theoretical support and experimental evidence for retrocausal effects, replication of intentional phenomena may be inherently limited because once conducted and published, an experiment might be influenced by a potentially infinite number of future intentions.”
If this is true, it may be worth rechecking the published paper, in case Feedback’s having accidentally spattered chocolate on our computer screen has retrocausally altered the findings.
Brian Grout forwards a promotion from Lab Manager magazine which promises to reveal “How a laboratory execution system will increase your lab’s efficiency”
Poppleton University – reality or myth?
A SHOOT is sprouting in the groves of British academe: Poppleton University. We discovered it while browsing the website , which exists as “a platform for academics to share research papers”.
But hang on a minute. That Poppleton University couldn’t be connected – could it? – with the Poppleton University that features in Laurie Taylor’s for the London magazine Times Higher Education. This has been described, , as “like , one of the truly great columns” – the source of this praise apparently being “author Malcolm Bradbury[citation needed]“.
Whatever its provenance, Poppleton Uni is clearly in the early stages of engagement with academia.edu. The only faculty member mentioned on the site at the time of writing is our old friend Jo De Selby, in the Department of Experimental Epistemology, who lists as research interests “quantitative inspiration” and “nominative determinism” (18 August). How on earth did he/she get there?
The university’s Department for Corporate Affairs is better represented, by Phillina Spredshete and Jamie Targett. Strangely, there are two people of the same name in Taylor’s column. There too they are in the Department for Corporate Affairs, where they are the founts of ghastly “inspirational” management speak.
We are sure that De Selby, Spredshete and Targett will join us in looking forward to networking socially – perhaps helped by Feedback readers – with more of the Poppleton faculty at .
WHEN you talk about money, using the letter “k” to mean one thousand can sound streetwise – so long as you get it right. Adam Young copies us an : “First Steps is the gateway to home ownership for London’s first-time buyers earning up to £77,200k a year.”
That, Adam points out, is just short of £80 million. Not even the City of London financial district has many potential house buyers on that kind of salary.
A COMMON symptom displayed by people with obsessive-compulsive disorder is an uncontrollable devotion to personal hygiene. 91av writer Laura Spinney tells of a recent conference on neuropsychiatric disorders, at which an American OCD specialist described a conflict with the authorities at the US university psychiatric hospital where he works.
Managers had placed signs saying “Please wash your hands” in the restrooms at the OCD clinic. On the grounds that their presence did not provide an “ideal therapeutic environment for those afflicted with severe OCD”, he wanted to remove the signs, but was forbidden from doing so because of health and safety regulations.
FINALLY, Peter Buck’s Indesit PWE 91272 W washing machine has a button to control its temperature. The explains: “Temperature button: press to reduce or completely exclude the temperature”. Peter says he has not yet tried a wash cycle with the temperature completely excluded, as he fears it may damage his clothes.