A new study on scientific productivity has arrived at the conclusion that beer is bad for science.
It seems obvious, drunks aren’t very common in labs or the library after all, but the report is one of the first to take a scientific look at the impact of researchers’ social lives on their work.
The research was conducted by Dr Tomas Grim, a behavioural ecologist with the Czech Republic’s Palacky University. Dr Grim wanted to research the effect of social behaviours on scientific work, and social drinking is one of the world’s most popular pastimes. Dr Grim wanted to concentrate his research on the relationship between beer consumption and scientific productivity, and he was in a good place to do it.
The Czech Republic has the highest rate of beer consumption per person in the world. Each Czech drinks over 175 pints of beer a year on average. Dr Grim concentrated his research on Czech scientists in the field of avian ecology. I have no idea why he chose avian ecologists, maybe they’re known as hard partying types in the scientific community. He contacted Czech avian ecologists with a survey, asking about their social activities and a list of their published work since 1980.
Dr Grim said: “Based on well known negative effects of alcohol consumption on cognitive performance, I predicted negative correlations between beer consumption and several measures of scientific performance.”
After his study, his hypothesis appears to have been confirmed. He discovered “that increasing per capita beer consumption is associated with lower numbers of papers, total citations, and citations per paper.” Czech regions with higher per capita consumption fared worse than did regions with lower consumption rates.
Dr Grim says: “These correlations are consistent with the possibility that leisure time social activities might influence the quality and quantity of scientific work and may be potential sources of publication and citation biases.”
I don’t know about you, but I find it appropriate that someone called Dr Grim is saying that drinking beer will make you a bad scientist. We’ve already seen that scientists embarass themselves when they try to dance, so social drinking is one of the few acceptable outlets they have left. Leave the poor stressed-out scientists alone Grim.
译文:
啤酒阻碍了科学发展
一项关于科学研究成果产量的研究指出，啤酒阻碍了科学发展。
众所周知，我们终究不会在实验室或图书馆饮酒。但是，这次科学调查却首次将目光投向科研工作者的社交活动，研究这些活动对科研工作的影响。
这次研究是由行为生态学家汤玛斯•格林博士带领捷克共和国帕拉斯基大学进行的。格林博士想调查社交活动对科学研究工作的影响，而饮酒就是一种普遍的社交消遣活动，并流行于全世界。格林将会侧重研究饮酒量和科研成果产出量之间的关系，而且他已经在这方面着手。
捷克共和国是世界上人均饮酒率最高的国家。捷克平均每人每年喝酒175品脱。格林博士的调查将着眼于鸟类生态学领域的捷克科学家。我不知道他为何选择鸟类生态学家，或许他们在科学领域更具带代表性吧。格林博士给捷克鸟类生态学家做了一个调查，询问他们的社交活动情况，并让他们列出自1980年以来发表的科研作品表。
格林博士指出：“我们都知道，酒精会削弱人类的认知能力。基于这一点，我认为，酒精同样会削弱科学研究运作。”
在这次调查后，他的推论也得到了证实。他发现“啤酒喝越多，科学家的论文数量越少，总体评价及论文质量也越低。”在捷克，啤酒消费量高的地区，这种状况会比啤酒消费量低的地区严重。
格林博士还指出：“以上这种联系还可能伴随一种影响，那就是休闲社交活动可能会影响科研工作的品质和产出量，也可能成为科研出版物和引用偏倚的潜在材料。
我不知道你是如何看待的这个调查结论，但我觉得很有道理。用格林博士的话说，就是啤酒是杰出科学家的绊脚石。我们已经目睹了科学家们饮酒后跳舞的窘象，因此他们也远离了啤酒，远离这种不明智的消遣方式。让我们也遗弃那些借助酒消除压力的意志薄弱的科学家吧！