Improbable Research

Stanley Kaplan, the man who fueled the industry that taught people how to take the tests supplied by the industry that fueled standardized school admissions testing, has died.

The New York Times obituary says:

Stanley H. Kaplan, a businessman and teacher who carved out a lucrative niche in the world of for-profit education and made test-preparation classes a rite of passage for students across America, died on Sunday in Manhattan. He was 90.

“Placebos Are Getting More Effective. Drugmakers Are Desperate to Know Why,” explains a report by Steve Silberman, in Wired.

(Thanks to investigator G.J. Reynolds for bringing this to our attention.)

When asked what they would do if scientists were to disprove a particular religious belief, nearly two-thirds (64%) of people say they would continue to hold to what their religion teaches rather than accept the contrary scientific finding, according to the results of an October 2006 Time magazine poll.

So writes David Masci in an essay called “How the Public Resolves Conflicts Between Faith and Science”, for the Pew Forum.

(Thanks to investigator Bethany McMahon for bringing this to our attention.)

It thinks this is a good route to take from Roxbury Crossing area to Kenmore Square area. And that it will only take 64 minutes for the bus to pinball back and forth over the river several times.

So says the One Smoot Short of a Bridge blog, after receiving this computer-generated instruction for how to use public transportation to make a  journey between two spots —which are not far from each other — in the city of Boston:

Researchers are delving into the blood, fingers, and genes of financial traders. Here are some of the studies that may give us insights into the success or failure of the traders, and of the researchers who study the financiers’ digits and chemical composition. Here, too, are a few earlier studies that probe the mysteries of high and low finance. Coates and the Blood of Fabulous Financial Traders (2008) John M. Coates is a leader of the modern scientific attack force. “Endogenous Steroids and Financial Risk Taking on a London Trading Floor,” John M. Coates, Proceedings of the National Academies of Science, vol. 105, no. 16, April 22, 2008, pp. 6167–72 (http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0704025105).
(Thanks to Catharine Dobbs for bringing this to our attention.) The author, at Cambridge University, reports:

Here, we report the findings of a study in which we sampled, under real working conditions, endogenous steroids from a group of male traders in the City of London. We found that a trader’s morning testosterone level predicts his day’s profitability. We also found that a trader’s cortisol rises with both the variance of his trading results and the volatility of the market. Our results suggest that higher testosterone may contribute to economic return, whereas cortisol is increased by risk

(That’s an excerpt from the article “Financial Meltdown,” Published in AIR 15:3.)