Authored by Clay Shirky in 2010 (ISBN 978-1-59420-253-7).
I noticed this book on the "new releases" shelf at my library. I read a few pages: he was observing the waste of time that is TV viewing. I have been urging my family to give it up and thought this would be good ammunition.
It turns out the book is about something else: our recent surplus of free time. Only in the last fifty years, one hundred at most, has a large portion of society had a surplus of free time. This time is courtesy of the many labor-saving technologies from the industrial and post-industrial revolutions. What are we doing with it?
Watching TV, mostly, in the United States and elsewhere. Shirky says that Americans alone watch 2 hundred billion hours of TV per year. Millions of hours of TV commercials on any given weekend. He cites an IBM researcher who says that Wikipedia, all the infrastructure and articles and edits and such, amounts to one hundred million hours over the ten years of its existence, or a mere ten million hours per year, or 0.005% of the time spent watching TV. So, when someone says, "I created or edited a Wikipedia page," and someone else responds, in a desultory fashion, "where do you find the time," the answer is: how could you not? We have so much free time.
We watch TV over reading or walking or bowling because the barrier to entry is so low. It is always available and there is usually something interesting to view. But today's youngest generations are watching less TV than the earlier generations; their preferred activity is still not reading nor walking nor bowling, but interacting: Facebook, Twitter, texting, web-surfing, even old-fashioned email.
And, whereas TV is a one-way medium, today's web technologies are two-way. We are using our free time to consume and produce. Given the amount of time and technology available, what has been produced could not have been predicted fifteen years ago. Encarta started in 1993 as a Microsoft purchase of an existing encyclopedia with 40-thousand-plus articles and the full backing of one of the world's largest corporations. Wikipedia started in 1999 with a volunteer staff, zero articles, and a few computers. Who would have predicted Wikipedia's triumph? Who would have expected thousands of people to contribute 3.4 million articles without being paid?
Shirky explains that by focusing on a monetary reward we are ignoring key human motivations: autonomy, competence, membership, sharing. Think about your hobbies and whether you would enjoy them more as a paid position with a boss. Probably not. I have written about this before. Wikipedia and Linux were and are successful because they provide all four motivations. Before the Internet, no one volunteered to write an encyclopedia because there was no way to do it, not because there was no interest.
Shirky says it is a mistake to treat current behaviors as natural when they could be accidental. We watch hours of TV not because it is natural, but because we have no means of producing, only consuming. With the arrival of the printing press and its (then) enormous cost, the publisher had to undertake editorial review. Printing items that would not be consumed would put the printer out of business. Thus, the editorial function of the press is something of a historical accident. With publishing costs now zero the editorial function is no longer needed, or at least it will not be compensated as highly.
He cites research that McDonald's pursued regarding its milkshakes: it wanted to know how to improve sales. Instead of focusing on taste and price, one of its researchers asked: what job is this milkshake performing? This researcher observed that most were purchased by lone travelers, in the morning, and were not consumed in the store. Sustenance? Perhaps, or more possibly, something to occupy the time of a lonely commuter. When something better comes along we should expect a decline in milkshake purchases.
The decrease in the cost of communication will cause us to re-evaluate all sorts of decisions we have made and practices we employ. For example, on college campuses study groups are encouraged while naked sharing of homework is subject to disciplinary action. With free communication it is now possible to set up a study group that includes hundreds of students, not just a small group. With membership so large, and access free and anonymous, some students will take but not give. Like Wikipedia, that may not bother the contributing students but may bother the professors.
One of my favorite examples from the book illustrates how people from my generation, and generations older than me, may not fully appreciate how different our world will become. Shirky was visiting the home of a friend with a four-year-old daughter. The daughter was watching a TV program and was really enjoying a particular character. She suddenly lifted from her seat and started rummaging behind the screen. "What are you looking for, honey?" "The mouse." She just assumed that everything electronic she observes will come with the interactivity provided by, in this case, a computer mouse.
Monday, February 21, 2011
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Book review: the invisible gorilla
Authored by Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simon in 2010 (ISBN 978-0-307-45965-7).
SPOILER ALERT: before reading reading further, please count basketball passes.
According to these authors, approximately 50% of the people who view the video do not observe the gorilla. I read about the video before viewing it, so I have no first-hand knowledge. Both of my children did not not observe it. Of three adults I know who viewed the video, two observed the gorilla and one did not. How could it be that so many of us fail to observe what is right before our eyes? Natural selection, perhaps. There is great benefit to being able to focus on prey in the bush in front of you, or predators behind you, without considering an ongoing argument with a cave-mate.
You might say, after watching the video and reading my explanation, that the gorilla was black and half the players were black; there is no mystery in 50% of the subjects not observing it. Fair enough; the authors repeated the experiment with a red cross sign in place of the gorilla. This time the subjects did a little better, observing the cross 70% of the time. And, according to their studies, there is no such thing as an observant person, a person who consistently notices unexpected objects.
With this knowledge in hand, other strange conclusions emerge. Motorcyclists are at higher risk for accidents: they are less noticed and more vulnerable to injury. Should cyclists wear reflective clothing? The authors say it won't make much difference. The problem arises because motorists are not expecting motorcycles and thus do not observe them, even when seeing them, much like subjects plainly "see" the gorilla in the midst of the basketball players but do not observe it. Perhaps motorcycles should be outfitted with widely-spaced headlamps to mimic the front-ends of most automobiles. What about airplane pilots who collide with objects on the taxiway? Surely, a heads-up display would improve matters by allowing the pilots to look through their windshield all the time instead of shifting their gaze between the windshield and their instruments. Tests did not show any improvement, however. The authors interpret that result to mean that the problem was not that the pilots' eyes did not catch the light from the taxiway objects; rather, the pilots did not expect those objects to be there and so did not observe them. The problem is attention, not eyesight.
Given the foregoing I have decided to stop talking on a mobile phone while driving. Hands-free devices are not the answer either. The problem is attention, not finger coordination.
Related to the ability to observe the unexpected is the ability to observe unexpected changes. For instance, movies are not recorded end-to-end. Various scenes are recorded, out-of-order, and then re-ordered in the editing room. Thus, a sequence that takes place over one minute in the movie may have been recorded days apart. Staff on the set are responsible for ensuring that, for example, if the actor was wearing glasses on the first day of filming a scene then the actor must continue to wear glasses on the second day. Yet, mistakes are made, and a cottage industry has arisen, devoted to chronicling the mistakes movie directors and editors make when filming a movie.
This book is all about illusions. The first illusion, described above, is that we observe all there is to observe and that we can competently attend to more than one thing at a time.
The next illusion the authors consider is memory accuracy. The classic view is that memory is like a disk drive: observations come in, are written to disk, and are later retrieved. Sure, there are cases where our memory fails, but those are the exceptions, not the rule. It turns out that the disk drive metaphor is terribly wrong. Memories are profoundly influenced by emotions. Worse, our strength of recall is unrelated to accuracy. I remember this concept from my law school days: subjects were shown a video of a traffic accident and were later separated into two groups. The groups were asked similar, but different questions. For example, group one would be asked "did you observe a broken headlight" while group two would be asked "did you observe the broken headlight". The positive responses were higher for the first group. This result has been repeated countless times in sociology and psychology departments. And, these results are plainly visible in everyday life. The authors cite a study where subjects observed a staged crime and were later asked to identify the perpetrator. Some subjects were given longer, or less obscured views, than the other subjects; these subjects were better at identifying the staged criminal. Yet all subjects expressed the same confidence in their identification.
Shortly after 9/11 the younger President Bush was asked about his recollections of the attacks and his recollections did not match the agreed, actual sequence of events. Some viewed his statements as evidence of his prior knowledge. I was no fan of Bush but I do not think he would do such a thing, especially when faulty memory at a time of high emotionality explains the facts so well. As another example, Hillary Clinton the campaign trail proudly claimed to have touched down in Bosnia in the middle of a fire-fight; none of the press present that day recall such a thing. What would cause her to issue such a statement when it could so easily be proven wrong? Perhaps because she simply mis-remembered it.
Most of us also suffer from the illusion of knowledge. We think we know more than we do about just about everything we encounter. Consider the toilet: we all know how to operate one, but do we know how it works? Could we explain it to a five-year-old, to the repeated "why" questions he or she might ask? Could we draw a picture of a bicycle from memory? The authors cite examples from the investing world: hot-shots like Brian Hunter and hot-shot companies like Lehman Brothers. They certainly felt like they knew how the markets worked.
Another common illusion is using the particular to prove (or disprove) the general; related is the illusion of cause. Many among us believe that autism can be caused by vaccinations. These authors claim that is no proven correlation, let alone proven causation. Rather, the signs of autism manifest themselves around age 2, and most children receive a battery of immunizations at around the same time. This is unfortunate, because the diseases these vaccinations protect against, such as measles, are terrible diseases in their own right. One can only catch measles from someone else who has measles. Some children, such as those receiving certain organ transplants or cancer chemotherapy, should not receive the measles vaccination, and such children are at risk from those children who are not immunized but could be.
Again, the human tendency to conflate sequencing or correlation with cause is probably genetic. Survival is enhanced by the ability to form patterns from observations about the behaviors of predators and prey. I remember reading From Good to Great, where author Jim Collins cites the non-obvious behaviors of successful companies, and thinking that these behaviors were probably practiced by hundreds of failed companies, and further than many successful companies did not follow these practices. I think many recent business books are similar.
Did you know that playing Mozart for young children makes them smarter? It does not, or at least it has not been proven to do so by more than one research team. Media sources cited the original study, showing a relationship and helped generate millions of dollars of sales for Baby Einstein and similar products. Few people, and no one in mainstream media, paid any attention to subsequent studies that showed no relationship. The authors call this the illusion of potential: we can achieve more, if only we knew how. Did you know that we only use 10% of our brain power? I did not. I am not even sure what this means. What is your brain capacity? How is it measured? Why would we have all this unused capacity after millions of years of natural selection? Our big heads make childbirth more risky; wouldn't smaller, more efficient brains, provide a competitive advantage?
As other examples the authors cite studies regarding training your brain. It makes sense that exercising your brain will make it stronger, must like exercising your body. There is little evidence that this is true for adults (children being another matter entirely). Subjects who memorized long strings of numbers, for example, became good a memorizing long strings of numbers but no better at other cognitive tasks. In one study, though, aerobic exercise increased cognitive abilities (more so than stretching exercises). So, put away your Mozart CDs and your Sudoku puzzles and put on your sneakers.
SPOILER ALERT: before reading reading further, please count basketball passes.
According to these authors, approximately 50% of the people who view the video do not observe the gorilla. I read about the video before viewing it, so I have no first-hand knowledge. Both of my children did not not observe it. Of three adults I know who viewed the video, two observed the gorilla and one did not. How could it be that so many of us fail to observe what is right before our eyes? Natural selection, perhaps. There is great benefit to being able to focus on prey in the bush in front of you, or predators behind you, without considering an ongoing argument with a cave-mate.
You might say, after watching the video and reading my explanation, that the gorilla was black and half the players were black; there is no mystery in 50% of the subjects not observing it. Fair enough; the authors repeated the experiment with a red cross sign in place of the gorilla. This time the subjects did a little better, observing the cross 70% of the time. And, according to their studies, there is no such thing as an observant person, a person who consistently notices unexpected objects.
With this knowledge in hand, other strange conclusions emerge. Motorcyclists are at higher risk for accidents: they are less noticed and more vulnerable to injury. Should cyclists wear reflective clothing? The authors say it won't make much difference. The problem arises because motorists are not expecting motorcycles and thus do not observe them, even when seeing them, much like subjects plainly "see" the gorilla in the midst of the basketball players but do not observe it. Perhaps motorcycles should be outfitted with widely-spaced headlamps to mimic the front-ends of most automobiles. What about airplane pilots who collide with objects on the taxiway? Surely, a heads-up display would improve matters by allowing the pilots to look through their windshield all the time instead of shifting their gaze between the windshield and their instruments. Tests did not show any improvement, however. The authors interpret that result to mean that the problem was not that the pilots' eyes did not catch the light from the taxiway objects; rather, the pilots did not expect those objects to be there and so did not observe them. The problem is attention, not eyesight.
Given the foregoing I have decided to stop talking on a mobile phone while driving. Hands-free devices are not the answer either. The problem is attention, not finger coordination.
Related to the ability to observe the unexpected is the ability to observe unexpected changes. For instance, movies are not recorded end-to-end. Various scenes are recorded, out-of-order, and then re-ordered in the editing room. Thus, a sequence that takes place over one minute in the movie may have been recorded days apart. Staff on the set are responsible for ensuring that, for example, if the actor was wearing glasses on the first day of filming a scene then the actor must continue to wear glasses on the second day. Yet, mistakes are made, and a cottage industry has arisen, devoted to chronicling the mistakes movie directors and editors make when filming a movie.
This book is all about illusions. The first illusion, described above, is that we observe all there is to observe and that we can competently attend to more than one thing at a time.
The next illusion the authors consider is memory accuracy. The classic view is that memory is like a disk drive: observations come in, are written to disk, and are later retrieved. Sure, there are cases where our memory fails, but those are the exceptions, not the rule. It turns out that the disk drive metaphor is terribly wrong. Memories are profoundly influenced by emotions. Worse, our strength of recall is unrelated to accuracy. I remember this concept from my law school days: subjects were shown a video of a traffic accident and were later separated into two groups. The groups were asked similar, but different questions. For example, group one would be asked "did you observe a broken headlight" while group two would be asked "did you observe the broken headlight". The positive responses were higher for the first group. This result has been repeated countless times in sociology and psychology departments. And, these results are plainly visible in everyday life. The authors cite a study where subjects observed a staged crime and were later asked to identify the perpetrator. Some subjects were given longer, or less obscured views, than the other subjects; these subjects were better at identifying the staged criminal. Yet all subjects expressed the same confidence in their identification.
Shortly after 9/11 the younger President Bush was asked about his recollections of the attacks and his recollections did not match the agreed, actual sequence of events. Some viewed his statements as evidence of his prior knowledge. I was no fan of Bush but I do not think he would do such a thing, especially when faulty memory at a time of high emotionality explains the facts so well. As another example, Hillary Clinton the campaign trail proudly claimed to have touched down in Bosnia in the middle of a fire-fight; none of the press present that day recall such a thing. What would cause her to issue such a statement when it could so easily be proven wrong? Perhaps because she simply mis-remembered it.
Most of us also suffer from the illusion of knowledge. We think we know more than we do about just about everything we encounter. Consider the toilet: we all know how to operate one, but do we know how it works? Could we explain it to a five-year-old, to the repeated "why" questions he or she might ask? Could we draw a picture of a bicycle from memory? The authors cite examples from the investing world: hot-shots like Brian Hunter and hot-shot companies like Lehman Brothers. They certainly felt like they knew how the markets worked.
Another common illusion is using the particular to prove (or disprove) the general; related is the illusion of cause. Many among us believe that autism can be caused by vaccinations. These authors claim that is no proven correlation, let alone proven causation. Rather, the signs of autism manifest themselves around age 2, and most children receive a battery of immunizations at around the same time. This is unfortunate, because the diseases these vaccinations protect against, such as measles, are terrible diseases in their own right. One can only catch measles from someone else who has measles. Some children, such as those receiving certain organ transplants or cancer chemotherapy, should not receive the measles vaccination, and such children are at risk from those children who are not immunized but could be.
Again, the human tendency to conflate sequencing or correlation with cause is probably genetic. Survival is enhanced by the ability to form patterns from observations about the behaviors of predators and prey. I remember reading From Good to Great, where author Jim Collins cites the non-obvious behaviors of successful companies, and thinking that these behaviors were probably practiced by hundreds of failed companies, and further than many successful companies did not follow these practices. I think many recent business books are similar.
Did you know that playing Mozart for young children makes them smarter? It does not, or at least it has not been proven to do so by more than one research team. Media sources cited the original study, showing a relationship and helped generate millions of dollars of sales for Baby Einstein and similar products. Few people, and no one in mainstream media, paid any attention to subsequent studies that showed no relationship. The authors call this the illusion of potential: we can achieve more, if only we knew how. Did you know that we only use 10% of our brain power? I did not. I am not even sure what this means. What is your brain capacity? How is it measured? Why would we have all this unused capacity after millions of years of natural selection? Our big heads make childbirth more risky; wouldn't smaller, more efficient brains, provide a competitive advantage?
As other examples the authors cite studies regarding training your brain. It makes sense that exercising your brain will make it stronger, must like exercising your body. There is little evidence that this is true for adults (children being another matter entirely). Subjects who memorized long strings of numbers, for example, became good a memorizing long strings of numbers but no better at other cognitive tasks. In one study, though, aerobic exercise increased cognitive abilities (more so than stretching exercises). So, put away your Mozart CDs and your Sudoku puzzles and put on your sneakers.
Monday, February 14, 2011
Dogs Decoded
My family and I watched a Nova show: Dogs Decoded.
According to the show, dog owners live longer than non-owners. Of course, this is correlation, not causation, but causation is possible, and owing a dog is fun.
Some researchers have examined animals' ability to track human eye and finger gestures. The first animals mentioned were chimpanzees, the animal most similar to humans in terms of DNA sequences. A treat was placed under one of two opaque cups and presented to a chimp. A human would point, or look at, or both, the cup with the treat. The chimps paid no attention to these signals. Dogs, however, did.
The show described attempts to domesticate wolves, the animal believed to have DNA most similar to dogs. The wolves were removed from the mother at birth and fed and raised in a human home. After about eight months the wolves became too aggressive to live with. Or, rather, their aggressiveness did not diminish and they became too large to live with safely.
The show then described attempts to domesticate foxes. Adult foxes were selected based on their initial contacts with humans. Some react fearfully, some aggressively, some with curiosity. The curious foxes were bred with each other and, after eight generations (eight years) the researchers had foxes that were perfectly suited to live in a human home. These foxes also developed some of the physical traits of dogs: their legs were shorter and their tails curlier than standard foxes.
Dogs were described as having intelligence beyond our common assumptions but did not list any research to back this claim. It did, however, recount the activities of a particular dog. The dog was placed in one room and several dozen stuffed toys in another. The subject dog was verbally instructed to retrieve a particular toy, and did so. Fair enough, not so impressive. Then the dog was shown a smaller version of a particular toy; this dog went to the other room and retrieved the full-size version. Pretty neat. Then this dog was shown a picture of a particular toy; that toy was retrieved. That, I thought, was pretty impressive.
According to the show, dog owners live longer than non-owners. Of course, this is correlation, not causation, but causation is possible, and owing a dog is fun.
Some researchers have examined animals' ability to track human eye and finger gestures. The first animals mentioned were chimpanzees, the animal most similar to humans in terms of DNA sequences. A treat was placed under one of two opaque cups and presented to a chimp. A human would point, or look at, or both, the cup with the treat. The chimps paid no attention to these signals. Dogs, however, did.
The show described attempts to domesticate wolves, the animal believed to have DNA most similar to dogs. The wolves were removed from the mother at birth and fed and raised in a human home. After about eight months the wolves became too aggressive to live with. Or, rather, their aggressiveness did not diminish and they became too large to live with safely.
The show then described attempts to domesticate foxes. Adult foxes were selected based on their initial contacts with humans. Some react fearfully, some aggressively, some with curiosity. The curious foxes were bred with each other and, after eight generations (eight years) the researchers had foxes that were perfectly suited to live in a human home. These foxes also developed some of the physical traits of dogs: their legs were shorter and their tails curlier than standard foxes.
Dogs were described as having intelligence beyond our common assumptions but did not list any research to back this claim. It did, however, recount the activities of a particular dog. The dog was placed in one room and several dozen stuffed toys in another. The subject dog was verbally instructed to retrieve a particular toy, and did so. Fair enough, not so impressive. Then the dog was shown a smaller version of a particular toy; this dog went to the other room and retrieved the full-size version. Pretty neat. Then this dog was shown a picture of a particular toy; that toy was retrieved. That, I thought, was pretty impressive.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Book review: The Poisoner's Handbook
Authored by Deborah Blum in 2010 (ISBN 9-781-59240-243-8).
When I first spotted this volume on the shelf at the library I thought the title might be "The Young Poisoner's Handbook"; I once watched an enjoyable movie by the same name.
Even though the book explains thoroughly the chemistry behind poison, the central stories of Charlie Norris, New York City's long-serving chief medical examiner, and his assistant Alexander Gettler. Before Norris' arrival in 1918, New York, like many cities, allowed the Mayor to appoint the coroner. By law, no medical degree or experience was required, and the appointments generally followed exigencies political rather than scientific. The appointees could be inept or corrupt or both. Pay was sometimes based in part on commission; the coroner might perform multiple autopsies on the same body to collect multiple payments. One coroner received kickbacks from funeral homes for directing bodies there. Coroners would accept payment from relatives or interested parties in exchange for a particular finding regarding cause of death. As an example of ineptness, Blum cites a death certificate identifying "assault or diabetes" as the cause of death.
Norris was a skilled scientist, but his main contribution to the professional medical examiner we take as a given in today's cities was political and monetary. Norris forcefully demanded the independence of his office, bullying or embarrassing the mayor where necessary. He could do so because of his independent means: he was of the Pennsylvania Norrises, leading bankers and founders of Norristown. When he first took office the coroner's laboratory had no equipment (itself testimony to merits of the former office-holders). He used his own funds to purchase the equipment, and throughout the years when a poor economy or an emboldened mayor caused his funding to be cut, he would again dip into his own pocket to pay the salaries of his staff. Norris also used his political skills and charm to organize conferences of medical examiners from other cities, further strengthening the notion that the coroner's office should be a professional, rather than political, post.
The science Alexander Gettler inherited was primitive. Poisoning was a preferred method of murder because it was so easy to "get away with". Few methods existed for reliably detecting the presence of a poison in a cadaver. Even if its presence could be proven, no one knew what a lethal dose was. These uncertainties meant in many cases no arrest, or if an arrest then no conviction. Gettler was an exceptionally skilled chemist and toxicologist. He, together with Norris, invented the tests necessary to isolate poisons and determine what levels caused which symptoms.
Blum divides her book by poison. These divisions fall to some extent into time periods, although many poisons spanned (and continue now) across multiple periods:
Chloroform (CHCl3). Chloroform was one of the first widely-used anesthetics. Cheap and effective, surgeons preferred it, pharmacists stocked it, and it was widely available. It was, however, capricious. No one knew for sure what a safe dose was, and the burning and scarring of throat and lung tissue made overuse painful. Doctors preferred its use in part because suits for malpractice often failed because no one could say what was safe. Robbers and murderers appreciated its effectiveness.
Methyl (wood) alcohol (CH3OH). Like its cousin ethyl alcohol, methyl alcohol gives its user a buzz, though more intensely. After the buzz, blindness and death often followed. As opposed to ethyl alcohol, when the body breaks down methyl alcohol the by-products are formaldehyde and formic acid. Ordinarily, no one would willingly imbibe methyl alcohol in place of ethyl. But, the Prohibition laws were not ordinary. Ethyl alcohol was harder to come by; bars and saloons sold liquor from unmarked, or mislabeled, containers. It was drinker-beware, and the poor populations, those without access to previously acquired stashes of alcohol, were most at risk.
Cyanide (HCN, KCN or NaCN). Cyanide is present in yew tree leaves, cherry laurel flowers, peach and apricot pits, and in bitter almonds. It was a popular choice for suicide because it acted quickly; it was not so popular for murder because of the tell-tale signs of death: bruising discoloration and convulsions. Accidental deaths were commonplace: before Norris was able to successfully lobby for their outlaw, insect fumigation commonly included cyanide in a gaseous form (hydrogen cyanide is used in the gas chamber).
Arsenic (Ag). While pure arsenic is poisonous, it mixes easily with oxygen to form white arsenic (As2O3), a nearly tasteless and odorless substance that can be added to food and causes death. As a murder weapon, its benefits include easy accessibility and handling (it was a key ingredient in weed and rat poisons) and, if administered in small doses, a slow death that mimics natural causes. However, because it is a metal and is not digested, it remains detectable in a body long after death. Alexander Gettler's contribution was to develop tests that detected ever smaller amounts.
Mercury (Hg). Pure mercury is not particularly poisonous, mostly because as a liquid its surface tension is so high that it tends to slip right through the digestive system, although its drinkers did tend to develop cancer. When mixed with chlorine in HgCl2, however, it becomes a salt, and like most salts is easily absorbed into the body. Like white arsenic, mercury bichloride was readily available in rat poisons and other household products (including treatments for constipation and syphilis). As with white arsenic, Dr. Gettler improved the sensitivity of the existing tests.
Carbon monoxide (CO). Carbon monoxide was a key ingredient in "illuminating gas" (along with hydrogen); the gas was also used to power stoves and heaters. Carbon monoxide is particularly toxic; at the time government scientists reckoned that the 22 horsepower Model-T, running in a closed, single-car garage would produce a lethal dose in ten minutes. Its lethality stems from its attractiveness to hemoglobin, the protein that transports oxygen in our blood. It turns out that hemoglobin prefers carbon monoxide to oxygen 200-to-1; thus, even with plenty of oxygen available, the body suffocates. The challenge for New York City toxicologists was to differentiate the carbon monoxide level in the cadaver from the level which existed in all urban dwellers. Gettler and others performed autopsies on dozens of decedents, from rural and urban settings, to discover the expected amount of "background" carbon monoxide. These discoveries were critical to securing convictions.
Radium (Ra). Radium is a poor choice as a murder weapon or suicide modality. It kills over a period of years. Its discovery in France by Madam Curie in 1898 came at the same time as her discovery of polonium, named after her native Poland. Both were radioactive, like uranium. Radium was considered especially useful, as it "burned" (emitted alpha and gamma radiation) much faster than uranium but more slowly that polonium (polonium's half-life is only one year). The military appreciated its use in watches whose numbers and indicators glowed in the dark, providing the time to soldiers without revealing their location to the enemy the way lights would have. Today, the same effect is achieved in watches and street signs with phosphorescent materials. The sparkle of radium was considered healthy in the early 1900s; the substance was added to soda, candy and facial creams. A hot spring that emitted radon gas was more popular than those that did not.
How was the radium made part of a watch? By hand-painting. The young gals who worked in the manufacturing plants were instructed, or learned on their own, that the paint brush could be brought to a finer point by smoothing it with their mouths. Unfortunately, from a chemical perspective (the number of electrons circling the nucleus) radium looks like calcium, which the body readily absorbs. Over time the radium entered their bones, causing their legs to break and their teeth to fall out.
Ethyl (grain) alcohol (C2H5OH). Beer, wine and liquor have caused countless deaths, either directly by incapacitating the brain, or indirectly, by causing poor judgment or coordination that precipitates an accident. But the science necessary to determine the level of intoxication of a decedent did not exist in Norris's time. It had to be invented.
One thing Alexander Gettler established was that the amount of alcohol consumed, the amount in the stomach, even the amount in the blood, was of no importance. It was the amount in the brain that mattered. And, by testing dogs, he established that the amount in the brain had the same effect on anyone, regardless of their drinking experience. What differentiated the habitual drinker, who could seemingly imbibe without effect, from the novice was the amount of ingested alcohol that made its way to the brain and the speed at which it did so. The chronic drinker's liver generates more enzymes to break down alcohol; thus, the chronic drinker seems to have a higher immunity to alcohol's effects.
Thallium (Tl). This was the preferred mode of the young poisoner in the movie mentioned above. It was first isolated in 1861, and its poisonous nature was soon recognized, but many in industry believed, or at least said, it was harmless in small amounts. It appeared in depilatory creams that very effectively removed hair from wherever on the body it was applied. Manufacturers derived pest control substances from it, mixed it with tungsten in lamp filaments, added it to eyeglasses to increase refraction, and combined it with mercury to achieve thermometer readings below -50 Celsius.
Its effectiveness as a poison derives from its chemical resemblance to potassium, which the human body is happy to incorporate into all of its tissues. The indications of poisoning included delirium and coma, tremors, nausea and diarrhea, and varied from person to person. Death from 10 grams followed in a few days or weeks. To the poisoner, these varied symptoms and extended period between application and death were very attractive, especially if the poisoner disliked the victim. As an added bonus, thallium has no taste or texture and is easily combined with foods and liquids. The poisoner only needed to hope that no autopsy was performed. Because thallium is a metal is remains in the body well after death and is easily detected.
Ms. Blum uses a light, story-telling style. I could have finished the 280-page book in a day had I not been distracted. I found her closing note amusing: when her husband discovered the topic of the book she was writing he made sure to place his cup of coffee beyond her reach.
When I first spotted this volume on the shelf at the library I thought the title might be "The Young Poisoner's Handbook"; I once watched an enjoyable movie by the same name.
Even though the book explains thoroughly the chemistry behind poison, the central stories of Charlie Norris, New York City's long-serving chief medical examiner, and his assistant Alexander Gettler. Before Norris' arrival in 1918, New York, like many cities, allowed the Mayor to appoint the coroner. By law, no medical degree or experience was required, and the appointments generally followed exigencies political rather than scientific. The appointees could be inept or corrupt or both. Pay was sometimes based in part on commission; the coroner might perform multiple autopsies on the same body to collect multiple payments. One coroner received kickbacks from funeral homes for directing bodies there. Coroners would accept payment from relatives or interested parties in exchange for a particular finding regarding cause of death. As an example of ineptness, Blum cites a death certificate identifying "assault or diabetes" as the cause of death.
Norris was a skilled scientist, but his main contribution to the professional medical examiner we take as a given in today's cities was political and monetary. Norris forcefully demanded the independence of his office, bullying or embarrassing the mayor where necessary. He could do so because of his independent means: he was of the Pennsylvania Norrises, leading bankers and founders of Norristown. When he first took office the coroner's laboratory had no equipment (itself testimony to merits of the former office-holders). He used his own funds to purchase the equipment, and throughout the years when a poor economy or an emboldened mayor caused his funding to be cut, he would again dip into his own pocket to pay the salaries of his staff. Norris also used his political skills and charm to organize conferences of medical examiners from other cities, further strengthening the notion that the coroner's office should be a professional, rather than political, post.
The science Alexander Gettler inherited was primitive. Poisoning was a preferred method of murder because it was so easy to "get away with". Few methods existed for reliably detecting the presence of a poison in a cadaver. Even if its presence could be proven, no one knew what a lethal dose was. These uncertainties meant in many cases no arrest, or if an arrest then no conviction. Gettler was an exceptionally skilled chemist and toxicologist. He, together with Norris, invented the tests necessary to isolate poisons and determine what levels caused which symptoms.
Blum divides her book by poison. These divisions fall to some extent into time periods, although many poisons spanned (and continue now) across multiple periods:
Chloroform (CHCl3). Chloroform was one of the first widely-used anesthetics. Cheap and effective, surgeons preferred it, pharmacists stocked it, and it was widely available. It was, however, capricious. No one knew for sure what a safe dose was, and the burning and scarring of throat and lung tissue made overuse painful. Doctors preferred its use in part because suits for malpractice often failed because no one could say what was safe. Robbers and murderers appreciated its effectiveness.
Methyl (wood) alcohol (CH3OH). Like its cousin ethyl alcohol, methyl alcohol gives its user a buzz, though more intensely. After the buzz, blindness and death often followed. As opposed to ethyl alcohol, when the body breaks down methyl alcohol the by-products are formaldehyde and formic acid. Ordinarily, no one would willingly imbibe methyl alcohol in place of ethyl. But, the Prohibition laws were not ordinary. Ethyl alcohol was harder to come by; bars and saloons sold liquor from unmarked, or mislabeled, containers. It was drinker-beware, and the poor populations, those without access to previously acquired stashes of alcohol, were most at risk.
Cyanide (HCN, KCN or NaCN). Cyanide is present in yew tree leaves, cherry laurel flowers, peach and apricot pits, and in bitter almonds. It was a popular choice for suicide because it acted quickly; it was not so popular for murder because of the tell-tale signs of death: bruising discoloration and convulsions. Accidental deaths were commonplace: before Norris was able to successfully lobby for their outlaw, insect fumigation commonly included cyanide in a gaseous form (hydrogen cyanide is used in the gas chamber).
Arsenic (Ag). While pure arsenic is poisonous, it mixes easily with oxygen to form white arsenic (As2O3), a nearly tasteless and odorless substance that can be added to food and causes death. As a murder weapon, its benefits include easy accessibility and handling (it was a key ingredient in weed and rat poisons) and, if administered in small doses, a slow death that mimics natural causes. However, because it is a metal and is not digested, it remains detectable in a body long after death. Alexander Gettler's contribution was to develop tests that detected ever smaller amounts.
Mercury (Hg). Pure mercury is not particularly poisonous, mostly because as a liquid its surface tension is so high that it tends to slip right through the digestive system, although its drinkers did tend to develop cancer. When mixed with chlorine in HgCl2, however, it becomes a salt, and like most salts is easily absorbed into the body. Like white arsenic, mercury bichloride was readily available in rat poisons and other household products (including treatments for constipation and syphilis). As with white arsenic, Dr. Gettler improved the sensitivity of the existing tests.
Carbon monoxide (CO). Carbon monoxide was a key ingredient in "illuminating gas" (along with hydrogen); the gas was also used to power stoves and heaters. Carbon monoxide is particularly toxic; at the time government scientists reckoned that the 22 horsepower Model-T, running in a closed, single-car garage would produce a lethal dose in ten minutes. Its lethality stems from its attractiveness to hemoglobin, the protein that transports oxygen in our blood. It turns out that hemoglobin prefers carbon monoxide to oxygen 200-to-1; thus, even with plenty of oxygen available, the body suffocates. The challenge for New York City toxicologists was to differentiate the carbon monoxide level in the cadaver from the level which existed in all urban dwellers. Gettler and others performed autopsies on dozens of decedents, from rural and urban settings, to discover the expected amount of "background" carbon monoxide. These discoveries were critical to securing convictions.
Radium (Ra). Radium is a poor choice as a murder weapon or suicide modality. It kills over a period of years. Its discovery in France by Madam Curie in 1898 came at the same time as her discovery of polonium, named after her native Poland. Both were radioactive, like uranium. Radium was considered especially useful, as it "burned" (emitted alpha and gamma radiation) much faster than uranium but more slowly that polonium (polonium's half-life is only one year). The military appreciated its use in watches whose numbers and indicators glowed in the dark, providing the time to soldiers without revealing their location to the enemy the way lights would have. Today, the same effect is achieved in watches and street signs with phosphorescent materials. The sparkle of radium was considered healthy in the early 1900s; the substance was added to soda, candy and facial creams. A hot spring that emitted radon gas was more popular than those that did not.
How was the radium made part of a watch? By hand-painting. The young gals who worked in the manufacturing plants were instructed, or learned on their own, that the paint brush could be brought to a finer point by smoothing it with their mouths. Unfortunately, from a chemical perspective (the number of electrons circling the nucleus) radium looks like calcium, which the body readily absorbs. Over time the radium entered their bones, causing their legs to break and their teeth to fall out.
Ethyl (grain) alcohol (C2H5OH). Beer, wine and liquor have caused countless deaths, either directly by incapacitating the brain, or indirectly, by causing poor judgment or coordination that precipitates an accident. But the science necessary to determine the level of intoxication of a decedent did not exist in Norris's time. It had to be invented.
One thing Alexander Gettler established was that the amount of alcohol consumed, the amount in the stomach, even the amount in the blood, was of no importance. It was the amount in the brain that mattered. And, by testing dogs, he established that the amount in the brain had the same effect on anyone, regardless of their drinking experience. What differentiated the habitual drinker, who could seemingly imbibe without effect, from the novice was the amount of ingested alcohol that made its way to the brain and the speed at which it did so. The chronic drinker's liver generates more enzymes to break down alcohol; thus, the chronic drinker seems to have a higher immunity to alcohol's effects.
Thallium (Tl). This was the preferred mode of the young poisoner in the movie mentioned above. It was first isolated in 1861, and its poisonous nature was soon recognized, but many in industry believed, or at least said, it was harmless in small amounts. It appeared in depilatory creams that very effectively removed hair from wherever on the body it was applied. Manufacturers derived pest control substances from it, mixed it with tungsten in lamp filaments, added it to eyeglasses to increase refraction, and combined it with mercury to achieve thermometer readings below -50 Celsius.
Its effectiveness as a poison derives from its chemical resemblance to potassium, which the human body is happy to incorporate into all of its tissues. The indications of poisoning included delirium and coma, tremors, nausea and diarrhea, and varied from person to person. Death from 10 grams followed in a few days or weeks. To the poisoner, these varied symptoms and extended period between application and death were very attractive, especially if the poisoner disliked the victim. As an added bonus, thallium has no taste or texture and is easily combined with foods and liquids. The poisoner only needed to hope that no autopsy was performed. Because thallium is a metal is remains in the body well after death and is easily detected.
Ms. Blum uses a light, story-telling style. I could have finished the 280-page book in a day had I not been distracted. I found her closing note amusing: when her husband discovered the topic of the book she was writing he made sure to place his cup of coffee beyond her reach.
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