Another Mysterious Mental Improvement (2)

Seth Roberts14 Comments

A month ago I posted this graph, which shows how long I needed to type the answer to simple arithmetic problems (7-5, 4*1, 9+0). I tested myself with about 40 problems once or twice per day. Because I’d been doing this for a long time, I no longer improved due to practice. Then, at the end of July 2010, I started improving again.

In September I moved from Berkeley to Beijing. I was worried that in Beijing my scores would get worse. Perhaps I couldn’t get good flaxseed oil or butter. Maybe I would suffer from the air pollution. Maybe I would eat contaminated food. But my scores got better in Beijing.

When I eventually noticed the improvement, I wondered what I was doing differently. Obviously my diet and my life were a lot different in Beijing than Berkeley. Was I eating more walnuts in Beijing? I stopped eating walnuts and my scores didn’t get worse. So it wasn’t walnuts. The most plausible differences I could think of were: 1. Less aerobic exercise in Beijing. 2. Less vitamins in Beijing. 3. Warmer in Beijing. I collected data that implied that shower temperature matters — and I can take warmer showers in Beijing than in Berkeley.

All of these proposed explanations implied that the crucial difference was Berkeley versus Beijing. But the improvement started in Berkeley — around the end of July. That was a problem. Recently I realized there was another possible explanation. In Berkeley I had had an amalgam mercury-containing filling replaced with a non-metallic filling. Not because I had symptoms of mercury poisoning, but because it seemed prudent.

I checked my records to see when I had the filling replaced. It was July 28 — right when the improvement started. To my shock, reduction in mercury exposure is now the most plausible explanation of the improvement. Two tests of this explanation are coming up: 1. When I return to Berkeley, will my reaction times go up? 2. When I have more amalgam fillings replaced, will my reaction times go down?

If it turns out that reduction in mercury exposure is the correct explanation, this will be important. I have an average number of fillings. I’d guess that half of Americans have as many amalgam fillings as I did. And — if the mercury explanation is correct — this arithmetic test is a sensitive measure of mercury poisoning. Over the last few years, before the filling was removed, I’d had six hair tests done, all from the same reputable lab. They showed that my mercury level was moderately high, perhaps 75th percentile. Not very worrisome.

I changed dentists because my old dentist made a terrible mistake: he put a gold filling next to an amalgam one. Putting one metal next to a different one is an elementary mistake. Contact of different metals creates an electric current (as Galvani discovered) and releases mercury. (So although I have a normal number of fillings perhaps I have more mercury exposure.) I stopped going to him for any dental work. The last time I went there for a cleaning, I was given a booklet (“we must give you this”) about the many sorts of dental materials — mercury amalgams plus several new ones. The purpose seems to be to tell people mercury amalgams aren’t dangerous (this was stressed) yet get them to choose other materials in the future — mercury amalgams are just one of several possible choices. The controversy about the safety of mercury amalgams is covered here. Sweden, Denmark, and Norway have banned mercury amalgams. The ban began 2008.

Assorted Links

Seth Roberts3 Comments

Thinking Like a Doctor

Seth Roberts11 Comments

Atul Gawande’s latest article in The New Yorker (gated) is one of his best. It is about attempts to reduce health care costs by focusing on the most expensive patients. A tiny fraction of people produce something like 30% of the total cost. You can save a lot of money, it turns out, if you try hard to help them.

To help them, it turns out, you need to do things that aren’t obvious, such as hire someone whose last job was at Dunkin Donuts (as a “health coach”). It turns out that not everyone is happy with what you’re doing.

[One high-cost patient] had seen a cardiologist for chest pains two decades ago, when she was in her twenties. It was the result of a temporary inflammatory condition but [the cardiologist] continued to have her see him for an examination and electrocardiogram every three months, and a cardiac ultrasound every year. The results were always normal. After the clinic doctors advised her to stop [having the tests], he called her at home to say her health was at risk if she didn’t keep seeing him. She went back.

To me, the most revealing part of the article was about a young woman with persistent migraines. During the last 10 months she had required $52,000 of medical care (“twenty-nine E.R. visits, fifty-one doctor’s office visits, and a hospital admission”). Yes, dealing with a persistent migraine by going to the E.R. over and over isn’t getting anywhere. But here is what Gawande (a doctor at Harvard, who writes for The New Yorker) recommends:

She wasn’t getting what she needed for adequate migraine care–a primary physician taking her in hand, trying different medications in a systematic way, and figuring out how to better keep her migraines at bay.

During those fifty-one doctor’s office visits, the woman wasn’t prescribed all possible medicines? And, if she was, she needs a doctor’s help to figure out if they work — which they obviously don’t? How stupid does Gawande think that she and her doctors are?

I don’t think Gawande thinks they are stupid; I think he is unable to stop thinking like a doctor, which means thinking that every serious problem has a solution that includes prescription drugs or other medical care. (Unless it’s obesity, in which case the solution is the ancient advice to “eat less, move more”.) This woman needs to explore lifestyle solutions to her problem. She doesn’t need a doctor for that. But most doctors, judging by their actions, cannot imagine such a thing.

Economic Police

Seth Roberts1 Comment

There exists in China a branch of law enforcement called economic police (I don’t know the Chinese name) whose job is to make sure government officials aren’t getting rich — that is, corrupt. Only government officials, no one else. The brother of a friend of mine is one of them. He has been doing it for six years. In college he double-majored in police work and economics. He carries a gun but has only used it once — to stop a government official trying to flee from Shenzhen to Hong Kong.

Inside the Chinese Government (2)

Seth Roberts1 Comment

I showed a Chinese friend of mine the famous Chinese Professor commercial. In Beijing, 2030, a Chinese professor tells his students about the fallen American empire. It is a commercial against “government waste”.

My friend said that in China you would be put in jail for making such a commercial. There is lots of waste in the Chinese government, she said. I asked her for examples. One is restaurant meals. Government officials go out for extremely expensive meals and eat just a few bites. I have heard that one quarter of restaurant spending in China comes from the government. There is a restaurant near my apartment with absurdly high prices; one of my students said that only government officials would eat there. Another example of government waste is cars. Government officials have big expensive cars.

Inside the Chinese Government.

Law Schools Deceiving Students

Seth Roberts3 Comments

In an article about how law schools deceive prospective students, one way astonished me. Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego reported that 92% of their graduates are employed 9 months after graduation. That 92% included the 25% of the students they couldn’t locate. Which is in accord with the guidelines, said the associate dean of student affairs.

What Global Warming Science Really Says

Seth Roberts8 Comments

To see the usual arguments for global warming, look no further than this list, which gives the most popular “skeptic arguments” with rebuttals. The person who made this list presumably read lots of stuff and tried to select the best rebuttal in every case.

That reading led to this:

Skeptic argument: Models are unreliable.

Rebuttal: Models successfully reproduce temperatures since 1900 globally, by land, in the air and the ocean.

Notice what it doesn’t say. It doesn’t say Models have successfully predicted temperatures . . .Â

These models have many adjustable parameters. With enough adjustable parameters, you can reproduce anything. The only reasonable test of a model with many adjustable parameters is how well it predicts.

Hal Pashler and I wrote a paper pointing out that psychologists had been doing something similar for 50 years — passing off models with many adjustable parameters as reliable when in fact they hadn’t been tested — when their ability to predict hadn’t been measured. One explanation of the current global warming scare is that there is something to be afraid of. A more plausible explanation, I believe, is that — again — one group of scientists is passing off complex models with many adjustable parameters as reliable when in fact they haven’t been tested.

Design Farmer

Seth Roberts3 Comments

A friend of mine majored in design at Tsinghua and is now working as a designer. Her opinion of her education has gone down. Designers from other schools are better trained than she is, she sees.

At Tsinghua, her teachers denigrated learning to use this or that software program. To design something using a computer program was to be a design farmer, they said. They preferred to talk about big ideas. “I hate big ideas,” said my friend.

Her comments reminded me of law professors who would rather teach philosophy than how to be a lawyer (and are surprised when students play solitaire during class) and education professors who don’t teach their students how to teach.