SuperFreakonomics

Home > Other > SuperFreakonomics > Page 26
SuperFreakonomics Page 26

by Steven D. Levitt


  DIRTY HANDS AND DEADLY DOCTORS: For Semmelweis’s sad ending, see Sherwin B. Nuland, The Doctor’s Plague: Germs, Childbed Fever, and the Strange Story of Ignatz Semmelweis (Atlas Books, 2003). / 204 “A raft of recent studies”: see Didier Pittet, “Improving Adherence to Hand Hygiene Practice: A Multidisciplinary Approach,” Emerging Infectious Diseases, March–April 2001. / 204–205 “To Err Is Human”: Linda T. Kohn, Janet Corrigan, and Molla S. Donaldson, To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System (National Academies Press, 2000). It should be noted that hospitals had already been trying for years to increase doctors’ hand-washing rates. In the 1980s, the National Institutes of Health launched a campaign to promote hand-washing in pediatric wards. The promotional giveaway was a stuffed teddy bear called T. Bear. Kids and doctors alike loved T. Bear—but they weren’t the only ones. When a few dozen T. Bears were pulled from the wards to be examined after just one week, every one of them was found to have acquired at least one of a host of new friends: Staphylococcus aureus, E. coli, Pseudomonas, Klebsiella, and several others. / 205–206 Cedars-Sinai Medical Center: see Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt, “Selling Soap,” The New York Times Magazine, September 24, 2006. It was Dr. Leon Bender, a urologist at Cedars-Sinai, who led us to this story. / 205 The Australian study: see J. Tibbals, “Teaching Hospital Medical Staff to Handwash,” Medical Journal of Australia 164 (1996). / 207 “Among the best solutions”: for disposable blood-pressure cuffs, see Kevin Sack, “Swabs in Hand, Hospital Cuts Deadly Infections,” The New York Times, July 27, 2007; for the silver-ion antimicrobial shield, see Craig Feied, “Novel Antimicrobial Surface Coatings and the Potential for Reduced Fomite Transmission of SARS and Other Pathogens,” unpublished manuscript, 2004; for neckties, see “British Hospitals Ban Long Sleeves and Neckties to Fight Infection,” Associated Press, September 17, 2007.

  FORESKINS ARE FALLING: See Ingrid T. Katz and Alexi A. Wright, “Circumcision—A Surgical Strategy for HIV Prevention in Africa,” New England Journal of Medicine 359, no. 23 (December 4, 2008); also drawn from author interview with Katz.

  EPILOGUE: MONKEYS ARE PEOPLE TOO

  See Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt, “Monkey Business,” The New York Times Magazine, June 5, 2005; Venkat Lakshminarayanan, M. Keith Chen, and Laurie R. Santos, “Endowment Effect in Capuchin Monkeys,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 363 (October 2008); and M. Keith Chen and Laurie Santos, “The Evolution of Rational and Irrational Economic Behavior: Evidence and Insight from a Non-Human Primate Species,” chapter from Neuroeconomics: Decision Making and the Brain, ed. Paul Glimcher, Colin Camerer, Ernst Fehr, and Russell Poldrack (Academic Press, Elsevier, 2009). / 212 “Nobody ever saw a dog”: see Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, ed. Edwin Cannon (University of Chicago Press, 1976; originally published in 1776). / 214 Day traders are also loss-averse: see Terrance Odean, “Are Investors Reluctant to Realize Their Losses?” Journal of Finance 53, no. 5 (October 1998).

  SEARCHABLE TERMS

  Note: Entries in this index, carried over verbatim from the print edition of this title, are unlikely to correspond to the pagination of any given e-book reader. However, entries in this index, and other terms, may be easily located by using the search feature of your e-book reader.

  Aab, Albert, 59

  Abbott, Karen, 24

  abortion, 4–5

  accidental randomization, 79

  Adams, John, 83

  adverse selection, 53

  Afghanistan, 65, 87

  Africa, HIV and AIDS in, 208–9

  Agricultural Revolution, 141–42

  agriculture, and climate change, 166

  air travel, and terrorism, 65–66

  air bags, for automobiles, 150

  Al-Ahd (The Oath) newsletter, 62

  al Qaeda, 63

  Allgemeine Krankenhaus (General Hospital), Vienna, 134–38, 203–4

  Alliance for Climate Protection, 170

  Allie (prostitute), xvi-xvii, 49–56

  Almond, Douglas, 57, 58–59

  altruism

  and anonymity, 109, 118

  and charitable giving, 106–7

  and climate externalities, 173

  and economics, 105,106–23

  effect of media coverage on, 107

  experiments about, 106–23

  games about, 108–11,113,115,117, 118–20

  and Genovese murder, 97–100, 104–5,106,110,125–31

  impure, 124–25

  and incentives, 125, 131

  List’s experiments about, 113–20, 121, 123, 125

  and manipulation, 125

  and monkey-monetary exchange experiment, 215

  and people as innately altruistic, 110–11, 113

  and taxes, 124

  warm-glow, 124–25

  Amalga program, 73–74

  Ambrose, Stanley, 189

  American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), 101

  Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), 139

  ammonium nitrate, 142, 160

  An Inconvenient Truth (documentary), 170, 181

  The Andy Griffith Show (TV), 104

  aneurysms, repair of, 179–80

  animals, emissions of, 166, 167–68

  annuities, 82

  antimicrobial shield, 207

  apathy, and Genovese murder, 99–100, 125–31

  Apni Beti, Apna Dhan (“My Daughter, My Pride”) project, 5–6

  Arbogast, Jessie, 14, 15

  Archimedes, 193

  Army Air Forces, U.S., 147

  Athabasca Oil Sands (Alberta, Canada), 195

  athletes

  birthdays of, 59–60

  women as, 22

  automobiles

  air bags for, 150

  and cheap and simple fixes, 146–58

  children in, 150–58

  crash-test data for, 153–55

  as replacement for horse, 10–11

  seat belts for, 148,149–58

  stolen, 173–75

  autopsies, 137–38,140, 203

  Auvert, Bertran, 208

  Azyxxi program, 73

  baby boom, and crime, 102

  banks, and terrorism, 90–96

  Barres, Ben (aka Barbara Barres), 47–48

  baseball, drug testing in, 92

  baseball cards, experiment about, 115–17, 121

  Baseball Hall of Fame, and life span, 82

  Bastiat, Frédéric, 31

  Bateson, Melissa, 122

  Becker, Gary, 12–13, 105, 106, 113, 124

  behavior

  Becker’s views about, 12

  collective, 203

  data for describing, 13–14

  difficulty of changing, 148–49, 173, 203–9

  of doctors, 203–8

  influence of films on, 15

  irrational, 214

  predicting, 17

  rational, 122–23, 213–14

  for self-welfare, 208–9

  typical, 13–14, 15–16

  behavioral economics, 12–13, 113–23. See also specific researcher or experiment

  Bernheim, Douglas, 105

  Berrebi, Claude, 62–63

  Bertrand, Marianne, 45–46

  BigDoggie.net, 51

  birth effects, 57–62

  Bishop, John, 44

  blood-pressure cuffs, disposable, 207

  boats, wind-powered fiberglass, 202

  Bolívar, Simón, 63

  border security, 66

  Budyko, Mikhail, 191

  Budyko’s Blanket, 193–99, 200

  Buffett, Warren, 195

  “butterfly girls,” 24–25, 34

  bystander effect, 99

  Caldeira, Ken, 183–84, 185, 186, 191–92, 196, 200

  Canada, Athabasca Oil Sands in, 195

  cancer, 84–87, 92

  cap-and-trade agreement, 187

  capitalism, as “creative destruction,” 11

  carbon emissions, 11, 166, 171, 173, 18
2–83, 184–85, 187–88, 192, 199, 203

  cardiovascular disease, 86

  careers/professions

  and feminist revolution, 43–44

  and prostitution, 54–55

  Carnegie Institution, 183

  “casual sex,” 30–31

  Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, 205–6

  Chamberlen, Peter, 141

  change

  behavioral, 148–49,173, 203–9

  charitable giving, 106–7, 124

  Chavez, Hugo, 198

  cheap and simple fixes

  and Agricultural Revolution, 141–42

  and automobiles, 146–58

  and childbirth, 133–38

  and drugs, 145–46

  and hurricanes, 158–63,178

  and law of unintended consequences, 138–41

  and oil, 142–43

  and polio, 143–45

  and population, 141–42

  and puerperal fever, 133–38

  and technological innovation, 11

  and whaling, 142–43

  See also Myhrvold, Nathan

  cheating, 116–17, 121

  chemotherapy, 84–86

  Chen, Keith, 211–16

  Chevrolet, 158

  Chicago, Illinois, prostitution in, 23–25, 26–38, 40–42, 50–55, 70–71

  chief executive officers (CEOs), women as, 44–45

  childbirth

  and cheap and simple fixes, 133–38,177

  forceps in, 140–41

  children

  and MBA wage study, 45–46

  seat belts for, 150–58

  “chimney to the sky,” 200–201

  circumcision, 208–9

  civil rights, 100

  Civil Rights Act (1964), 43

  climate change

  and Budyko’s Blanket, 193–99, 200

  and carbon emissions, 166, 171, 173, 182–83, 184–85, 187–88, 192

  control of, 198

  cost-benefit analysis about, 168–69

  and hurricanes, 158–63

  incentives concerning, 203

  lack of experiments about, 168

  manipulation of, 190–91

  prediction models about, 181–86

  scary scenarios about, 169, 202–3

  and volcanoes, 188–90

  See also global warming/cooling

  Clinton, Bill, 99

  clouds, puffy white, 201–2

  Club (anti-theft device), 173–74

  coal, 187, 189, 200–201

  competition, for prostitutes, 30–31

  condoms

  in India, 5, 6

  and prostitution, 36, 53

  Congress, U.S.

  organ donation legislation of, 112

  seat belt legislation of, 149

  context, of experiments, 122–23

  cooperation, forced, 123

  Cornell University, auto crash research at, 147–48

  crash-test research, 147–48,153–55

  crime

  impact of television on, 102–4

  increase in, 100–104

  criminal justice system, 101–2

  Crutzen, Paul, 196–97, 200

  data

  for describing human behavior, 13–14,16

  misinterpretation of, 120

  on-the-spot collection of, 28–29

  World War II use of, 147

  See also specific experiment

  De May, Joseph Jr., 127–28,129, 130–31

  death

  as externality, 172

  holding off, 82–87

  life insurance for, 200

  military, 87

  traffic, 65–66, 87

  See also terrorism

  debt, forgiveness of, 140

  decision making, 1

  Defense Department, U.S., 15, 66

  Department of Health, U.K., 207

  Dictator (game), 109–10, 111, 113, 115,117,118–20,121,122,123

  discrimination

  against women, 20–22, 45

  and disabled workers, 139

  gender, 45

  price, 35

  doctors

  arrogance of, 205

  measuring skills of, 74–82

  neckties of, 207

  oncology, 85–86

  perception deficit of, 205

  and puerperal fever, 134–38

 

‹ Prev