THINKER'S ALMANAC - May 15

What one simple act introduced in 1847 reduced the mortality rate in a maternity ward from 20% to 1%?

Subject:  Status Quo Bias - Hand Washing

Event:  Ignaz Semmelweis introduces hygiene practices, 1847

All too often, what matters is not whether an idea is true or effective, but whether it fits with the preconceptions of a dominant cabal. -Rory Sutherland

In 1846, Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis became consumed by a problem.  Working as an obstetrician at Vienna General Hospital, he was troubled by the large number of mothers who died in his hospital after giving birth.  This was not a new problem; dating back to the 5th century, the father of medicine, Hippocrates, had described the ailment that inflicted mothers, known as puerperal fever.

One clue to a solution appeared when Semmelweis compared statistics in his hospital's two birthing wards.  One ward, attended by doctors, had a mortality rate of 20% while the other, attended by midwives, had a mortality rate of just 2%.

                                                                            Image by Kai from Pixabay 

Why, Semmelweis wondered, would the women who were attended by some of the finest doctors in the world, be more likely to die than those attended by midwives?

The answer came to Semmelweis after an unfortunate accident.  One day, one of Semmelweis’ mentors, Dr. Jacob Kolletschka was assisting one of his medical students in the dissection of a cadaver.  As the student wielded his scalpel, he accidentally nicked Kolletschka.  The cut drew blood, but did not appear serious at the time.  A few days later, however, Dr. Kolletschka died.  While Semmelweis mourned the death of his mentor, he also noticed that Kolletschka died of a fever that was eerily similar to the puerperal fever that had taken the lives of so many of the new mothers in the maternity wards attended by doctors.

Semmelweis realized at this point that doctors, including himself, would routinely do dissections and autopsies of human cadavers prior to working in the maternity ward.  Could it be, he wondered, that the hands of doctors carried cadaver particles that infected the mothers?

To test his hypothesis, Semmelweis instituted handwashing, instructing all doctors arriving from the dissecting room to wash their hands with hot water before entering the maternity ward.  On May 15, 1847, Semmelweis began this new hygiene regimen, and the results were remarkable:  the mortality rate for mothers dropped to 1.33 percent.

Despite having concrete evidence to support handwashing, Semmelweis’ procedure was not embraced by the medical establishment.  Semmelweis was just 28-years-old, and many older doctors resented being told that rather than healing their patients, they were killing them with their own unclean hands.

Through lectures and letters, he continued to attempt to persuade doctors that his discoveries were sound and that they would save lives, but he was mostly ignored and eventually ostracised.  Tragically, Semmelweis began drinking and suffered a nervous breakdown that resulted in his confinement in a Vienna insane asylum.  It was there that he died, ironically, of an infected wound on his right hand on August 13, 1865. He was just 47 years old (1).

It was only a few years later that Louis Pasteur’s germ theory would vindicate Semmelweis, identifying his cadaver particles as bacteria.

Semmelweis’s story is a powerful reminder of the status quo bias.  Old habits and dogma die hard, and although we think that an idea that is both true and effective will be adopted and accepted, this is not always the case.

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:  What is the Status Quo Bias? How does Semmelweis’ story illustrate the power of the status quo bias?

Challenge - Ignaz Semmelweis Day:  In 2020, science writer Carl Zimmer recognized the contributions to medical science made by Semmelweis. Zimmer wrote the following Tweet:  “Every day is Ignaz Semmelweis day.”  Who would you argue is a person no longer living who should be remembered and honored for their contributions to making our lives better through science?

ALSO ON THIS DAY:

May 15, 1970:  On this day The Beatles released their last album, Let It Be.

Sources:

1-RadioLab. Dispatch 2: Every Day is Ignaz Semmelweis Day.  NPR.ogr 1 April 2020.

THINKER'S ALMANAC - August 1

How can a Soma cube puzzle help us better understand human motivation?

Subject:  Motivation - Soma Cube Puzzle

Event:  Publication of Edward Deci’s book Why We Do What We Do: Understanding Self-Motivation, 1996

Self-directed accomplishment, no matter how absurd it may look to outsiders or how partial it may be, can become a foundation of our sense of self and of our sense of possibility. Losing ourselves in an all-absorbing action, we become ourselves. -Adam Gopnik

Psychologist Edward Deci's work challenged a basic assumption about human motivation:  that external rewards -- especially money -- are a prime motivator for human achievement. What made people think twice about this assumption was an experiment he conducted in 1969.

Image by Bluehouse Skis from Pixabay

In Deci’s experiment, subjects put together configurations using seven Soma puzzle pieces from the Soma Cube dissection game during three sessions on three consecutive days.  He began by dividing the subjects into two groups:  Group A and a control group, Group B.  On the first day, both groups were challenged to assemble the Soma pieces into specific configurations. On the second day, the task was the same for both groups; however, Group A was incentivized by an offer of $1 for each successful configuration they constructed.  On the third day, both groups again were challenged to construct puzzles, and just as on the first day of the experiment, neither group was paid (Group A was told that the experimenters had run out of money to compensate them for their work).

The key to the experiment came midway through each day’s session when Deci stopped the experiment, telling the participants that he needed to take a short break to compile data.  At that point, the subjects were told to do whatever they wanted. (In addition to the Soma puzzle pieces, the subjects had access to magazines they could read).  During the 8-minute break, Deci recorded the activity of the participants, noting specifically how much time they spent working on the puzzles when not required to do so.

On the first day, there was no significant difference between what the participants did in Group A and B; on average both groups spent around four minutes working on the puzzles.  On the second day, however, Group A, which was offered the financial incentive, spent more than five minutes on average working on the puzzles during the “break,” while Group B spent the same amount of time as they did on the first day.  The third day’s results were the most interesting:  Without the financial incentive, Group A played with the puzzles about two minutes less than they had on the second day when they were paid; furthermore, they played with the puzzles a minute less than they had on the first day.

Deci’s experiment challenged what so many took for granted, that external rewards, such as money, motivated people to be more productive and to achieve more.  Instead, Deci showed that external rewards could produce short-term results, but in the long run, these rewards had a net negative effect, causing people to lose inherent interest in the activity. 

Deci’s work was so challenging to the conventional wisdom about human motivation that he was fired from a business school.  Fortunately, social scientists were intrigued enough by his findings to give him a job as a psychology professor, where he continued to develop and expand his studies in human motivation.  On this day in 1996, he published the book Why We Do What We Do: Understanding Human Motivation (1).

Writer Adam Gopnik echoes Deci’s ideas in a New York Times editorial in 2023.  Gopnik recounted his early teen years when he worked for hours in his bedroom with his guitar and a Beatles chord book.  Gopnik was intrinsically motivated to learn to play his guitar -- that is he was absorbed in doing something that he loved and the positive feelings that resulted were the only motivation he needed.

To make the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation more clear, Gopnik defines the difference between “achievement” and “accomplishment.”:

Achievement is the completion of the task imposed from outside — the reward often being a path to the next achievement. Accomplishment is the end point of an engulfing activity we’ve chosen, whose reward is the sudden rush of fulfillment, the sense of happiness that rises uniquely from absorption in a thing outside ourselves. (2)

Understanding the difference between achievement and accomplishment will help us to better understand where our motivation is coming from, and this insight may help us to understand ourselves better.  It also may guide us on the path toward a better future.

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:  What is the difference between an achievement and an accomplishment, and how does this relate to the Soma cube puzzle experiment?

Challenge - Just Do It:  Whether it’s internal (intrinsic) or external (extrinsic), motivation is a subject that everyone should study to better understand how we can push ourselves toward success.  Do some research on quotations about the topic “Motivation.”  Which one do you think is the best and why?

Sources:

1-Pink, Daniel H. Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. Canongate Press, 2011.

2-Gopnik, Adam. What We Lose When We Push Our Kids to ‘Achieve.’ New York Times 15 May 2023.

THINKER'S ALMANAC - May 20

How can a three-pronged trident help us be more tolerant of views different from ours and help us be more intellectually humble?

Subject:  Epistemology - Mill’s Trident

Event:  Birthday of British philosopher John Stuart Mill, 1806

Perfect objectivity will always elude us, but we come much closer if we follow the empirical rule by checking our views against others’ different views, which of course is possible only where people disagree. -Jonathan Rauch

Today is the birthday of one of the most influential philosophers and writers of all time, John Stuart Mill.  Mill was born in London and was educated by his father at home.  Although he never attended a university, his writings were widely read and respected, especially his masterpiece, On Liberty (1859).

                                                        Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay 

The major theme of On Liberty is freedom of speech and how it must be allowed to withstand the “tyranny of the majority.”  To address the importance of freedom of speech, Mill presents a three-pronged trident that shows the possibilities of any argument:

-First, your argument might be entirely wrong.

-Second, your argument might be partially wrong.

-Third, your argument might be entirely correct.

In the first case, no matter how confident we feel about our own argument, we must realize that there is a possibility that we might be wrong; the only way to truly test this is to expose it to disconfirming challenges.  We know that the impulse towards confirmation bias (see THINKER’S ALMANAC - February 15 and October 4) blinds us to seeing the whole truth; we must, therefore, be open to and welcome any challenges, realizing that all claims are provisional and open to be disproven at any time.

In the second case, we may be close to truth; however, we must be open to forming a more complete and precise claim.  By being open to the ideas and perspectives of others, we can correct our imprecision and revise our claim to make it more complete and correct.

In the third case, even if we are completely correct, we won’t truly understand our claim unless we can defend it.  We need contrary viewpoints to test our understanding and strengthen our claim.  Furthermore, a truth that is not challenged is most likely to become “dead dogma, not living truth.”

In short, Mill’s trident encourages us to be intellectually humble, realizing that there is always the possibility of being wrong and that the only way to ensure we are getting closer to the truth is to expose our claims to contrary views.

Furthermore, as Jonathan Raunch explains in his book The Constitution of Knowledge (2021), knowledge is not something that we discover by ourselves; it is best done in groups of people with diverse opinions:  “It is a product of human interactions, not just individual reason.  It requires comparing viewpoints.  Wherever there is only one person or opinion, fact and faith become undistinguishable” (192).

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason: What are the three prongs of Mill’s Trident?  How does each prong help us get closer to the truth? 

Challenge - Mill 101:  Read the following excerpt from Chapter 2 of John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty (1859).  After you have read the excerpt, summarize Mill’s key ideas as clearly and succinctly as you can in your own words:

He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side; if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion. The rational position for him would be suspension of judgment, and unless he contents himself with that, he is either led by authority, or adopts, like the generality of the world, the side to which he feels most inclination. 

Sources:

1-Lukianoff, Gregg. “Mill’s (invincible) Trident: An argument every fan (or opponent) of free speech must know.” Thefire.org 16 Feb. 2021.

2-Rauch, Jonathan. The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth. Washington D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2021: 192.

THINKER'S ALMANAC - October 6

How can a Xerox machine help us better understand human thinking?

Subject:  Because Justification - Xerox Study

Event:  Electrophotography patented, 1942

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual. -Galileo Galilei

On this day in 1942, Chester F. Carlson (1906-1968) received a patent for his invention, electrophotography.  His discovery was a giant leap in the history of publishing.  For centuries making a copy of a single document was arduous and time-consuming.  Electrophotography, or xerography as it came to be called, is fast and easy.

Unlike previous wet copy processes, Carlson’s process was “dry.” First, an electrostatic image of the original document was created on a rotating metal drum; then, with the help of toner – powdered ink – a copy was transferred to a piece of paper and the print was sealed in place by heat (1).

Image by Steve Buissinne from Pixabay

To differentiate the name of his invention – electrophotography –  from print photography, Carlson searched for a new term. He settled first on the word xerography from the Greek xeros (meaning “dry”) and graphein (meaning “writing”). Xerography later became Xerox because of Carlson’s admiration for the name Kodak, the iconic American photography company. Carlson especially liked the fact that the name Kodak was nearly a palindrome (a word that is spelled the same frontwards and backward).  Adding an “x” at the end of his invention’s name, Carlson reasoned, would give it the same memorable ring.  Thus, Xerox, the word that would become synonymous with duplication, was born (2).

  

More than thirty years after the invention of Xerox, in the 1970s, Harvard psychologist Elle Langer used a copy machine to do more than just make copies; she used it to better understand human thinking. 

Langer conducted her research in a library where people lined up to make photocopies.  She began by attempting to cut in line, asking the person in front, ‘Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine?’ She found that this approach resulted in success approximately 60% of the time.

Next, Langer again approached the first person in line, but this time she added a reason to her request, asking, “Excuse me. I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine, because I’m in a rush?’ This approach yielded success 94% of the time.

The most surprising result of Langer’s study, however, came with her third approach.  This time she presented the first person in line with a nonsensical reason:  ‘Excuse me. I have five pages. May I go before you, because I have to make some copies?’ Even though she presented a pretext that made her no different from everyone else waiting to make copies, she achieved success in an astonishing 93% of cases.  As Langer’s Xerox study showed, people crave reasons -- even unreasonable ones.  One word --“because” -- can make a big difference (3).

The name of the concept behind Langer’s study is called the because justification, which means, “I think; therefore, I need reasons.”

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason: What is the Because Justification, and how did the contrasting words used in the Xerox study reveal the power of reasoning?

Challenge - Ten Reasons in the Tenth Month:  The because justification reveals the fact that people want reasons to believe.  Think of a claim that you believe in strongly enough that you could support it with at least 10 reasons.  State your claim and support it by listing your reasons.  “Ten reasons that Halloween should always be on a Saturday” or “Ten reasons that we should/or should not celebrate Columbus Day.”

Sources:

1-Thompson, Clive. “How the Photocopier Changed the Way We Worked — and Played.” Smithsonian Magazine March 2015.

2- Owen, David. Copies in Seconds:  How a Lone Inventor and an Unknown Company Created the Biggest Communication Breakthrough Since Gutenberg.  New York:  Simon and Schuster, 2008:  146.

3-Weinschenk, Susan. “The Power of the Word ‘Because’ to Get People to Do Stuff.” www.psychologytoday.com 15 October 2013.

THINKER'S ALMANAC - October 10

Why do we prioritize dental hygiene over mental hygiene?

  

Subject:  Mental Hygiene - The Semmelweis Analogy

Event:  World Health Organization Mental Health Day

Anything that’s human is mentionable, and anything that is mentionable can be more manageable. When we can talk about our feelings, they become less overwhelming, less upsetting, and less scary. -Fred Rogers

Today is World Mental Health Day, an international day to raise awareness of the importance of mental health.  The day was established in 1992 by the World Federation for Mental Health and is supported by the World Health Organization (1). 

Image by WOKANDAPIX from Pixabay

Most people visit a dentist at least once a year to address their dental hygiene, but how many consider a visit to a psychologist or counselor an equal priority? Writing in Psychology Today, author Julie Hersh argues that mental hygiene should be taken much more seriously:

Has anyone died of tooth decay? No. Has anyone died of mental illness? About 36,000 per year die by suicide. I would argue that most of these 36K suffered from some form of mental illness, be it depression, bipolar disorder or another flavor. With the costs so high, why is it socially acceptable to practice dental hygiene but not mental hygiene?

One reason that mental hygiene is less popular than dental hygiene is the fact that it is much less visible than a toothless smile.  And as Hersh argues, “Humans have a long history of disregarding what they can’t see.”  The case of Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis is an excellent, and tragic, example of this.

In 1846, Semmelweis was working as an obstetrician in Vienna.  He was troubled by the large number of mothers who died in his hospital after giving birth.  In retrospect, Semmelweis’ solution to the problem seems obvious, but at the time it was radical:  He proposed that doctors wash their hands before entering the maternity ward.  Doing this, the mortality rate fell from 20% to 1%. (See THINKER’S ALMANAC - May 15).

Unfortunately for Semmelweis, his new hygiene regimen came at a time before germ theory, which was not established until microbiologist Louis Pasteur proved it in 1865.

Rather than embracing Semmelweis’ procedure, doctors resented his suggestion that they were the source of the problem.  Instead of being applauded, the young doctor was ostracized.  Tragically, Semmelweis began drinking and suffered a nervous breakdown that resulted in his confinement in a Vienna insane asylum.  It was there that he died, ironically, of an infected wound on his right hand on August 13, 1865. He was just 47 years-old (2).

On World Mental Health Day, we should remember Semmelweis and his contribution to helping us see that just because something is invisible does not mean it shouldn’t be addressed.  Just as doctors wash their hands as a preventative measure against physical disease, we should also consider how we might prevent mental illness through sound mental hygiene.  

You don’t just go to the dentist when your teeth are hurting.  Instead, the best and smartest course of action is to visit the dentist regularly in order to prevent tooth decay before it starts.  Just as we are proactive about our dental hygiene, we would be smart to do the same with our mental hygiene.  A visit with a mental health provider -- counselor, psychologist, or psychiatrist -- at least annually is a good way to begin to practice mental health hygiene.

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:  How can our annual visit to the dentist help us understand the importance of mental hygiene?

Challenge - Your Mind Matters:  Write a short public service announcement (PSA) promoting World Mental Health Day. Convince your audience that mental hygiene is just as important as other forms of hygiene.

Sources:

1-World Health Organization.  “World Mental Health Day.”

2-Hersh, Julie K. ”Mental Hygiene:  Preventative Care for Mental Illness.”  Psychologytoday.com 28 Feb. 2012