Learn about why we need memorials for medicine; NASA’s Phantom Torso experiment; and why we often overestimate outliers. Additional resources from Steven Johnson: Pick up "Extra Life: A Short History of Living Longer": https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/594501/extra-life-by-steven-johnson/ Website: https://stevenberlinjohnson.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/stevenbjohnson The Phantom Torso Experiment Protected Future Astronauts In The Creepiest Way Possible by Ashley Hamer Experiment Details. (2021). Nasa.gov. https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/explorer/Investigation.html?#id=994 We overestimate the outliers we see, which may hamper diversity efforts by Kelsey Donk Focus on outliers creates flawed snap judgments. (2021). EurekAlert! https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2021-05/du-foo051121.php Khaw, M. W., Kranton, R., & Huettel, S. (2021). Oversampling of minority categories drives misperceptions of group compositions. Cognition, 214, 104756. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104756 Shandwick, W. (2015). The female CEO reputation premium? Differences and Similarities. https://www.webershandwick.com/uploads/news/files/female-ceo-reputation-premium-executive-summary.pdf Layton, J. (2016, June 16). How 17 Equals 49.6: The Amazing Multiplying Women. HowStuffWorks. https://health.howstuffworks.com/mental-health/human-nature/perception/how-17-equals-496-the-amazing-multiplying-women.htm https://www.asc.upenn.edu/news-events/news/correcting-misperceptions-about-and-increasing-empathy-migrants Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to learn something new every day withCody Gough andAshley Hamer — for free!
Learn about why we need memorials for medicine; NASA’s Phantom Torso experiment; and why we often overestimate outliers.
Additional resources from Steven Johnson:
The Phantom Torso Experiment Protected Future Astronauts In The Creepiest Way Possible by Ashley Hamer
We overestimate the outliers we see, which may hamper diversity efforts by Kelsey Donk
Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to learn something new every day with Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer — for free!
Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/the-phantom-torso-experiment-protected-astronauts-in-a-very-creepy-way
CODY: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from curiosity-dot-com. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Today, you’ll learn why we need memorials for medicine, with bestselling author Steven Johnson. You’ll also learn about NASA’s kind-of-creepy Phantom Torso experiment; and why we tend to overestimate outliers.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
What's the biggest statue you can think of? Chances are, it's some sort of memorial to war, put there to remember a battle or a general or fallen soldiers. There aren't too many statues devoted to medical achievements, and today's guest says, well, there should be. Stephen Johnson is the bestselling author of thirteen books, along with this latest entitled "Extra Life: A Short History of Living Longer." We asked him why he thinks we need memorials for medicine.
[CLIP 2:43]
After last year, I think we can all imagine a new hero that deserves their own statue. Again, that was Steven Johnson, the author of "Extra Life: A Short History of Living Longer." You can find a link to pick it up in the show notes.
For six months in 2001, astronauts aboard the International Space Station had one very creepy roommate. A male dummy with no arms and no legs sat in the ISS’s U.S. Destiny Lab to absorb the radiation of space. This was known as the Phantom Torso Experiment, and — as strange as it may seem — it helped protect astronauts for generations to come.
When you think about the risks an astronaut takes, you might imagine the launch, the lack of oxygen, and the cold vacuum of space. But there’s another invisible danger that’s arguably more deadly: radiation exposure. Space is teeming with high-energy particles that wreak havoc on living cells. That can lead to everything from cataracts and reproductive damage to cancer and mutations in DNA. On Earth, we’re protected from most of these particles by our planet’s magnetic field. But in space, there’s nowhere to hide.
Before the galaxy’s creepiest astronaut came aboard, scientists had only been able to determine the dose of radiation to which ISS astronauts were exposed with one type of passive sensor, which measures total radiation. The Phantom Torso, on the other hand, was wired with both passive sensors and active sensors, which give real-time readings. Hundreds of sensors were placed at five different locations in the Phantom’s body, including his brain, thyroid, heart, stomach, and colon, and still more were placed next to him to measure the radiation inside the spacecraft. There were around 350 sensors in all.
So, what did this creepy experiment find? For one thing, some models that experts had used to estimate radiation dose had been underrepresenting the harms. Many hadn’t taken into account free neutrons from galactic cosmic rays, and the experiment found that they contributed a whopping 80 percent of the radiation that astronauts were exposed to. The experiment also showed that there wasn’t much of a difference between the amount of radiation that hit the skin and the amount that hit the organs, although the damage was slightly less the further back in the dummy’s body it went.
In the end, the Phantom Torso sharpened our precision in measuring radiation’s harms. We went from a wild plus or minus 500 percent accuracy to something closer to 25 percent. Knowing the risks means that the people who design spacesuits and spacecraft can know where and how to focus their protective measures, and that will help astronauts in the future.
When you walk into a room full of people, it’s common to scan the crowd to get a sense of who’s there. But according to a new study, our estimates of a group’s makeup tend to be pretty inaccurate. We overestimate how many people are in the minority, and we do it really quickly. That could help us understand something new about how our attention works.
For this experiment, researchers gathered a group of 48 people between the ages of 18 and 28. The participants had a quick chance to look at a grid of 12 faces before being asked to estimate how many men and how many women were present in the grid.
When the grids were made up of all men or all women, or a 50-50 split, the participants had an easy time. But when the grid was made up of an uneven mix — say, 10 men and 2 women — participants would overestimate how many women there were. And when there were more women than men, they overestimated the number of men.
This puts an interesting twist on previous research that shows people of all genders routinely overestimate how many women there are in male-dominated areas, like CEOs, film leads, and fiction protagonists.
This suggests that these overestimates are more than just a social bias. The study found that people even overestimate the number of landscape images they see. For that experiment, researchers asked participants to take a one-second glance at a grid that contained both indoor and outdoor nature photos. Whatever scene appeared less often was the one participants overestimated.
To find out what was going on, the researchers tracked the movements of participants’ eyes in the one second they spent looking at the grid. Participants spent more time looking at the photos in the minority — whether it was men, women, or nature photos.
Our visual systems are built to process information very quickly, and that processing is reliably faulty. Our eyes are automatically drawn to outliers in a group setting, and we’re likely to overestimate how many of the minority are in a group. We then form impressions of the whole group, and make snap judgments about how we fit in. And that can be a problem. It’s hard to get diverse viewpoints in a room when you falsely assume they’re already there.
It’s a behavior worth noticing in ourselves as we move through the world. Snap judgments aren’t always good judgments. It’s always a good idea to look twice.
Let’s do a quick recap of what we learned today
[ad lib optional]
ASHLEY: The writer for today’s last story was Kelsey Donk.
CODY: Our managing editor is Ashley Hamer, who was also a writer and audio editor on today’s episode.
ASHLEY: Our producer and audio editor is Cody Gough.
CODY: Why don’t YOU put up a memorial to your curiosity? Maybe by writing us a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts? Just a thought. And then, of course, join us again tomorrow to learn something new in just a few minutes.
ASHLEY: And until then, stay curious!