The Half-Life of Facts (34 page)

178    
A series of seminal experiments were done in this field:
Chabris, Christopher, and Daniel Simons.
The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us
. New York: Crown Archetype, 2010.

179    
Obama decided to sign the guestbook:
Amira, Dan. “President Obama Has No Idea What Year It Is.”
New York: Daily Intel
, 2011; http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2011/05/president_obama_has_no_idea_wh.xhtml.

181    
according to the medical site UpToDate and the Merck Manual:
UpToDate.com. Accessed February 8, 2013. Fried, Marvin P. “Epistaxis.” Merck Manual. 2012. http://www.merckmanuals.com/professional/ear_nose_and_throat_disorders/approach_to_the_patient_with_nasal_and_pharyngeal_symptoms/epistaxis.xhtml Accessed February 18, 2013.

183    
or distinguish Pluto in some other way:
The son of a friend of mine explained to me that Pluto was destroyed, the same way that Superman’s home planet of Krypton was destroyed.

184    
reading an essay by Michael Chabon:
Chabon, Michael. “To The Legoland Station.” In
Manhood for Amateurs
. New York: HarperCollins, 2009, pp. 51–58.

185    
enriched by spirited discussion:
Johnson, Steven.
Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation
. New York: Riverhead, 2010.

186    
Pritchett recently proposed an intriguing idea:
Howley, Kerry. “Welcome Guest Workers.”
The Atlantic
(July/August 2009).

186    
Kuhn argued that switching from one paradigm to another:
Kuhn, Thomas S.
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. p. 151.

188    
Planck’s Principle doesn’t hold:
Hull, David L.
Science as a Process
. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1988; Wray, K. Brad.
Kuhn’s Evolutionary Social Epistemology.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2011.

188    
Watts has demonstrated:
For an overview of his work and this topic, see Watts, Duncan.
Everything Is Obvious *Once We Know the Answer: How Common Sense Fails Us.
New York: Crown Business, 2011.

189    
there is evidence that the frequencies:
Martin, Andrew Thomas. “The Evolving Lexicon.” Dissertation. University of California Los Angeles, 2007.

189    
the rate of a verb’s regularization:
Lieberman, Erez, et al. “Quantifying the Evolutionary Dynamics of Language.”
Nature
449, no. 7163 (2007): 713–16.

189    
to continue to correct everyone:
For many more examples, see Ben Yagoda’s article in
Slate
, “The ‘Nonplussed’ Problem”; http://www.slate.com/articles/life/the_good_word/2011/04/the_nonplussed_problem.2.xhtml.

190    
a longer voice onset time:
Kuniko, Nielsen. “Specificity and Abstractness of VOT Imitation.”
Journal of Phonetics
39, no. 2 (April 2011): 132–42.

190    
A team of linguists studied Oprah:
Hay, Jennifer, Stefanie Jannedy, and Norma Mendoza-Denton. “Oprah and /ay/: Lexical Frequency, Referee Design and Style.” In
Proceedings of the 14th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences
, eds. John J. Ohala et al. (1999): 1389–92.

191    
how this linguistic change happens around us:
McWhorter, John. “Swearing In: Are Curse Words Becoming More Common?”
The New Republic
, March 23, 2011.

193    
a regional accent based on age:
See work by Suzanne Evans Wagner; for example: Wagner, Suzanne Evans. “Language Change and Stabilization in the Transition from Adolescence to Adulthood.” Dissertation. University of Pennsylvania, 2008.

194    
a certain situational aspect to the shift:
Yaeger-Dror, Malcah. “Phonetic Evidence for the Evolution of Lexical Classes: The Case of a Montreal French Vowel Shift.” In
Towards a Social Science of Language
, ed. G. Guy, et al. Philadelphia: Benjamins, 1996. 263–87; Yaeger-Dror, Malcah, “Lexical Classes in Montreal French: The Case of (E:),”
Language and Speech
35 no. 3 (July/September 1992): 251.

195    
there is a Web site called Worldometers:
http://www.worldometers.info.

197    
the Web site MeasuringWorth.com:
http://www.measuringworth.com/ppoweruk.

198    
a series called Media Diet:
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/posts/media-diet.

198    
This is already happening:
Sparrow, Betsy, Jenny Liu, and Daniel M. Wegner. “Google Effects on Memory: Cognitive Consequences of Having Information at Our Fingertips.”
Science
353, no. 6043 (2011): 776–78.

198    
While this is certainly a common argument:
Nicholas Carr discusses this topic, in a qualified manner, in his article in the July/August 2008 issue of
The Atlantic
, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”

198    
a constantly updated online medical reference:
http://www.uptodate.com/home/about/index.xhtml.

CHAPTER 10: AT THE EDGE OF WHAT WE KNOW

200    
This error-checking methodology:
Johnson, Steven Berlin.
Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation
. New York: Riverhead, 2010.

200    
the modern conception of the fact:
Poovey, Mary.
A History of the Modern Fact: Problems of Knowledge in the Sciences of Wealth and Society
. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.

201    
detailed a number of facts about the origins of human beings:
Barnes, Jonathan.
Early Greek Philosophy
. New York: Penguin, 1987.

201    
Science requires an idea to be refutable:
This is the idea of falsifiability of Karl Popper: A scientific theory is only truly a theory if it is testable, and can be refuted, or falsified, by contrary evidence. He discusses this in the book,
The Logic of Scientific Discovery.
Routledge. Reprinted in 1992.

201    
“This is the pivotal insight of the Scientific Revolution”:
Schulz, Kathryn.
Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error
. New York: Ecco, 2010. p. 32.

202    
a team of researchers compiled a list:
Deutsch, Karl W., John Platt, and Dieter Senghaas. “Conditions Favoring Major Advances in Social Science.”
Science
171, no. 3970 (February 5, 1971): 450–59.

203    
Do submerged islands…remain nation-states:
“I Am a Rock, I Am an Island: How Submerged Islands Could Keep Their Statehood.”
The Economist
, May 26, 2011.

203    
there are many who feel:
“Tech Luminaries Address Singularity.”
IEEE Spectrum
, June 2008.

204    
its development has gone hand in hand:
This is known as the
demographic transition
.

204    
his taxonomy had three kingdoms:
Natural History Museum, London. “Carl Linnaeus.” http://www.nhm.ac.uk/nature-online/science-of-natural-history/biographies/linnaeus/index.xhtml.

205    
the International List of Causes of Death was first adopted:
World Health Organization. “History of the Development of the ICD.” Available online: www.who.int/entity/classifications/icd/en/HistoryOfICD.pdf

205    
we are up to the tenth revision:
The American version even has tens of thousands more classifications than the international version.

205    
Just as being exposed:
Johnson, Steven.
Everything Bad Is Good for You
. New York: Riverhead Books, 2005.

205    
This is about the number of soldiers:
Christakis, Nicholas A., and James H. Fowler.
Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives
. New York, New York, USA: Little Brown, 2009.

206    
and is about 190, as of 2011:
Ugander, Johan et al. “The Anatomy of the Facebook Social Graph”; http://arxiv.org/abs/1111.4503.

206    
we increase the number of people we are close to:
O’Malley, A. James, et al. “Egocentric Social Network Structure, Health, and Pro-Social Behaviors in a National Panel Study of Americans.”
PLoS ONE.
7(5): e36250.

206    
Sherlock Holmes argued this very point:
Doyle, Arthur Conan.
A Study in Scarlet
, 1887. First published by Ward Lock & Co. in
Beeton’s Christmas Annual
, London. Available online: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/244.

207    
decided to use history as a guide:
Magee, Christopher L., and Tessaleno C. Devezas. “How Many Singularities Are Near and How Will They Disrupt Human History?”
Technological Forecasting and Social Change
78, no. 8 (October 2011): 1365–78.

208    
“Seriously, the world is changing so quickly”:
Flood, Alison. “Jonathan Franzen Warns Ebooks Are Corroding Values.”
The Guardian
. January 30, 2012. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jan/30/jonathan-franzen-ebooks-values.

The page numbers in this index refer to the printed version of this book. To find the corresponding locations in the text of this digital version, please use the “search”function on your e-reader. Note that not all terms may be searchable.

actuarial escape velocity, 53

Akaike Information Criterion, 69–70

Albert, Réka, 103

aluminum, 53

Ambient Devices, 195

amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), 98, 100–101

anatomy, 23

Anaxagoras, 201

Anaximander, 201

Andreessen, Marc, 123

Annals of Internal Medicine,
107

apatosaurus, 79–82

apoptosis (programmed cell death), 111, 194

Aral, Sinan, 143

Arbesman, Harvey, 96–98, 100–101

Arbesman, Samuel, 79

Ariely, Dan, 172

Asimov, Isaac, 35–36

asteroids, 22, 23, 51, 85–86, 183–84

athletes, 51

Atlantic,
86, 198

Australia, 57, 59, 60

automated discovery programs, 112–14

Automated Mathematician, 112

Babbage, Charles, 106–7

Back to the Future
(film), 211

Bak, Per, 137–38

Barabási, Albert-László, 103

Battle of New Orleans, 70

Bede, 115–16

Being Wrong
(Schulz), 174–75, 201–2

Berlin, 64

Berman, David, 81–82

Bettencourt, Luís, 135

Bingham, Alpheus, 96–97

biomarkers, 98

Black Death, 52, 64, 71, 73

board games, 2, 51

Bohemian Journal of Counting,
86

Bone Wars, 80, 169

bookkeeping, double-entry, 200

Book of Lost Books, The: An Incomplete History of All the Great Books You’ll Never Read
(Kelly), 115

Boston Globe,
86

Bowers, John, 85–86

Boyle, Robert, 94

Bradley, David, 62–63

brain, 205, 207

branching process, 104

Bremer, Arthur, 66

British Medical Journal,
83, 212

brontosaurus, 79–82, 169

Brooks, David, 198

Brooks, Rodney, 46

bubonic plague, 52

Black Death, 52, 64, 71, 73

“Bully for Brontosaurus” (Gould), 82

calculations, 43–44

calculus, 67

Canterbury Tales, The
(Chaucer), 90

Caplan, Bryan, 58

Cardarelli, François, 146

Carroll, Sean, 36–37

carrying capacity, 45

cell death, programmed, 111, 194

cell phone calls, 69, 77

Census of Marine Life, 37–39

Chabon, Michael, 184

Chabris, Christopher, 178

chain letters, 91–93

change:

fast, 207–9

slow, 171, 172, 190, 191

change blindness, 177–79

Chaucer, Geoffrey, 90

chemical elements, 6, 22, 23, 50–51

atomic number of, 150–51

atomic weight of, 150–52

periodic table of, 50, 150–52, 182

thermal conductivity of, 33–35

Christakis, Nicholas, 21, 75

Christensen, Clayton, 45

chromosomes, 1–2, 89, 92, 143

cirrhosis, 28–30

Cisne, John, 116

citations, 17, 31–32, 90–91, 108

cities, 135–36, 202

citizen science, 19–21

Clarke, Arthur C., 18–19

classification systems, 204–5

Clay Mathematics Institute, 133

climate change, 203

clinical trials, 107–9, 157, 160

coelacanths, 26–27

cognitive biases, 175–76, 177, 188

cognitive dissonance, 4

Colbert, Stephen, 193

Cole, Jonathan, 48–49

Cole, Stephen, 162, 163

computation, human, 20

computers, 20, 41, 53, 110

automated discovery programs, 112–14

Babbage and, 106–7

games and, 2, 51

information transformation and, 43–44, 46

Moore’s Law and, 42

confirmation bias, 177

Consumer Price Index (CPI), 196

Cope, Edward, 80, 81, 169

Copernicus, Nicolaus, 206

CoPub Discovery, 110–12

Cosmos,
121, 129

Couric, Katie, 41

Courtenay-Latimer, Marjorie, 26–27

Cowen, Tyler, 23

cryptography, 134

cumulative knowledge, 56–57

Daily Show, The,
159

Darwin, Charles, 79, 80, 105, 166, 187

data science, 167–68

Davy, Humphry, 51

decline effect, 155–56, 157, 162

de Grey, Aubrey, 53

demographics, 204

Dessler, A. J., 148–49, 155