Eat More Chocolate
According to a study just published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine, the more chocolate per capita a nation consumes, the more Nobel laureates it produces. Or, to put it in tabloid press terms, "Chocolate Makes You Smarter."
The Swiss, Swedes, and Danes lead the lists in both number of Nobel prizes collected over the years and the amount of chocolate they eat. The Swiss alone consume 22.5 pounds of chocolate per year per person. According to Dr. Frank Messerli, who did the analysis, America would need to eat an extra 275 million pounds of chocolate per year just to produce one more Nobel prizewinner.
Eric Cornell, who shared the Nobel for Physics in 2001, was quoted an article in an online journal of the U.S. National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health. "I attribute essentially all my success to the very large amount of chocolate that I consume."
"Personally I feel that milk chocolate makes you stupid," he added. "Now dark chocolate is the way to go. It's one thing if you want like a medicine or chemistry Nobel Prize, OK, but if you want a physics Nobel Prize it pretty much has got to be dark chocolate."
Dr. Messerli confesses that the study is absurd, but the data are absolutely accurate. He was astonished to to find a direct correlation between chocolate consumption and Nobel laureates in 23 countries. The link was so strong that the odds of it being mere chance were calculated at less than 1 in 10,000.
But it's still bogus.
Physicist Eric Cornell removed his tongue (and the chocolate) from his cheeks and explained, "Scientists look at hundreds and hundreds of different things, and every once in a while they will find two things that are surprisingly correlated with each other, and then they will say, 'Look at those very strong correlations and how important that is,'" "But what they don't do is tell you about all the different things that aren't correlated."
The result is that we underestimate randomness.
Another possibility is that there is a real link, but it is meaningless.
"National chocolate consumption is correlated with a country's wealth and high-quality research is correlated with a country's wealth," said Cornell. "So therefore chocolate is going to be correlated with high-quality research, but there is no causal connection there."
Finally, we just want to believe. We want to believe in superfoods that can burn fat or make you smarter. A balanced diet and exercise are just too prosaic. So we buy obscure berries we've never heard of because we're told they contain antioxidants, or eat chocolate made the way the Aztecs did because it the crunchy stone-ground stuff must be better for you than fine smooth commercial candy. (It might be, but "better" is a relative term.)
We want to believe that the reason that other person is so fit and attractive isn't great genes, four hours a day at the gym and a spartan diet. It must be the brand of oat hulls and wheat chaff they eat for breakfast. We want to believe that our indulgences are somehow healthy and virtuous. We want to believe in shortcuts.
The first person who comes up with an easier path to fitness than a balanced diet and exercise will definitely win the Nobel. I'll personally throw in a year's supply of chocolate.
The Swiss, Swedes, and Danes lead the lists in both number of Nobel prizes collected over the years and the amount of chocolate they eat. The Swiss alone consume 22.5 pounds of chocolate per year per person. According to Dr. Frank Messerli, who did the analysis, America would need to eat an extra 275 million pounds of chocolate per year just to produce one more Nobel prizewinner.
Eric Cornell, who shared the Nobel for Physics in 2001, was quoted an article in an online journal of the U.S. National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health. "I attribute essentially all my success to the very large amount of chocolate that I consume."
"Personally I feel that milk chocolate makes you stupid," he added. "Now dark chocolate is the way to go. It's one thing if you want like a medicine or chemistry Nobel Prize, OK, but if you want a physics Nobel Prize it pretty much has got to be dark chocolate."
Dr. Messerli confesses that the study is absurd, but the data are absolutely accurate. He was astonished to to find a direct correlation between chocolate consumption and Nobel laureates in 23 countries. The link was so strong that the odds of it being mere chance were calculated at less than 1 in 10,000.
But it's still bogus.
Physicist Eric Cornell removed his tongue (and the chocolate) from his cheeks and explained, "Scientists look at hundreds and hundreds of different things, and every once in a while they will find two things that are surprisingly correlated with each other, and then they will say, 'Look at those very strong correlations and how important that is,'" "But what they don't do is tell you about all the different things that aren't correlated."
The result is that we underestimate randomness.
Another possibility is that there is a real link, but it is meaningless.
"National chocolate consumption is correlated with a country's wealth and high-quality research is correlated with a country's wealth," said Cornell. "So therefore chocolate is going to be correlated with high-quality research, but there is no causal connection there."
Finally, we just want to believe. We want to believe in superfoods that can burn fat or make you smarter. A balanced diet and exercise are just too prosaic. So we buy obscure berries we've never heard of because we're told they contain antioxidants, or eat chocolate made the way the Aztecs did because it the crunchy stone-ground stuff must be better for you than fine smooth commercial candy. (It might be, but "better" is a relative term.)
We want to believe that the reason that other person is so fit and attractive isn't great genes, four hours a day at the gym and a spartan diet. It must be the brand of oat hulls and wheat chaff they eat for breakfast. We want to believe that our indulgences are somehow healthy and virtuous. We want to believe in shortcuts.
The first person who comes up with an easier path to fitness than a balanced diet and exercise will definitely win the Nobel. I'll personally throw in a year's supply of chocolate.