Shocking new research!
There have been some radical suggestions to increase citation counts of late but heavy drinking would probably rank at the bottom of most researchers’ lists.
Yet a new study has found that the world’s most highly cited ecologists and environmental scientists typically consume more than double the amount imbibed by the general population.
Published in the October issue of Scientometrics, John Parker, a post-doctoral sociologist at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and colleagues report the results of a survey of the drinking habits of 124 of the most highly cited researchers in ecology and environmental science: the vast majority men aged between 50 and 70 based in either North America or Western Europe.
The results reveal that consumption for this group averages around 7 alcoholic beverages per week, about 2.5 drinks over the weekly consumption of the average American. Though a fifth of the group does not drink, more than half consume 10 or more alcoholic beverages a week, 20% consume 12 or more and 10% consumer 21 or more. The largest consumer downed 31 per week.
It astonishes me that an editor let this through. How do we know that unsuccessful ecologists don’t drink four times as much as an average civilian? Useful information for someone who works in ecology is what separates a great ecologist from his or her peers, not what separates them from the guy who changes oil.
As a professional scientist I have have had what you could call an odd career. I worked as a field ecologist and as an oceanographer who split my time 90/10 between the lab and the field. I studied in the surprisingly competitive geology department at Colorado College. For the last ten-ish years I’ve been cloistered in a lab with a microscope and protein gels. I learned pretty fast that the more time a researcher spends in the field the higher his or her alcohol tolerance. I don’t care if she’s five foot four and under a hundred pounds; if she does science in muddy jeans then don’t go head to head at the bar. You will most likely need medical help.
If they really wanted to create a work of lasting value these guys could have compared the drinking habits of top performers in, say, geology versus ecology versus cell biology versus those cheap dates in cerebral fields like chemiststry, physics and mathematics. Then we’d have a proper test of what really might have been Tim F’s First Law (and not the first one I enunciated on the internet). Here’s hoping that they put it in the grant renewal.
John Bird
I know an ecologist, and yeah, she can put ’em away and so can all her friends. That’s real statistics!
jeffreyw
Heh, here-have a hot dog and settle down, gonna be a long night.
urizon
Now, why would ecologists want to drink themselves into oblivion? Hmm.
Roger Moore
I wouldn’t knock the chemists; most of the ones I know are able to hold their liquor well. I don’t think we can keep up with the Geologists, but working with all those solvents gives us a better tolerance than you might expect.
BR
Anecdotally, there is high variance in the alcohol tolerance of computer scientists. I know some who barely drink, if at all, and some who can finish a 12 pack and top it off with 3 adios motherfuckers.
Zifnab
In all fairness, with an oil derrick blowing up once every couple of months and global warming sinking small islands in the Pacific and dozens of species looking to go extinct in the next couple of years – if you were an environmental scientist or ecologist, you’d be drinking too.
WereBear
Don’t know enough scientists to say…
My experiences from business has been people from the Sales end are the champion drinkers; Administration were pikers by comparison. While Engineering are lunatics, but in a good way.
John Bird
We are, we are, we are the engineers,
we can, we can, we can drink forty beers.
No, I’m in a P.Ad. program, but I always liked that song. And some of us can drink. Some of us.
DonkeyKong
I do know in the scientific field, archaeologists have a lower tolerance for snakes.
Nylund
I have yet to go to an economics conference or seminar that didn’t end up at the local pub. That may have something do to with the fact that the head of our research department is Irish (oh stereotypes!). But seriously, I’ve witnessed way too many drunken arguments about the validity of various theoretical models. Its a hell of a buzz kill! Then again, its about the only time honest debate takes place. Then again, I’m always impressed by how well the best guys can make sound logical arguments while six pints deep.
Ell
Hey, CC. What year? A friend of mine dropped acid one day and then remembered he was going to go out with the hockey team that night. He drank them under the table.
Face
Not to mention they’re overrepresenting men in their study and comparing them to the “average American”, which I will assume is 50%-ish women, who drink less on average. So there’s that fail as well.
General Stuck
When I was doing field ecology for the Forest Service, half my time was shivering in a pup tent on the side of a 12,000 foot mountain, living off beef jerkey and filtered water and whatever edible wild berries and such I could find. The rest of the time was spent climbing up and down those mountains.
When we got back to civilization, about every two weeks, everything was wondrous and easy, and the booze flowed and was metabolized by bodies free of fat and sassy.
The bartenders in Cooke City, Mt. Loved to see us come out of the woods. So I agree with your assertions TimF.
beltane
This is a silly question, but did they take educational achievement into account? I could have sworn I read something recently (probably at Sully’s) about alcohol consumption being somewhat higher among people with advanced degrees, possibly due to higher incomes. Comparing the alcohol consumption of environmental scientists with the general population doesn’t really address this.
Honus
As an American man between the ages of 50 and 70, I’m having a real hard time believing the average American man between those ages drinks only the equivalent of 4.5 beers a week. All of my peers exceed that on Sunday afternoon.
Of course the article said “average American” not average American man between 50 and 70. Or average well-educated upper middle-class male, which all of these scientists are. No distortion or agenda there, you betcha.
Original Lee
Anecdata from my distant past, but I seem to remember, rather muzzily-fuzzily, that the Chinese and Russian graduate students could drink everybody else under the table, almost regardless of area of specialization. There was this one Chinese med student I remember in particular who could knock back either beer or vodka for hours on end. I think he had figured out at what pace he could drink and keep nicely buzzed and just stuck to that.
arguingwithsignposts
I’d like to see the similar results for journalists. Hunter Thompson was, from what I understand, far over on the scale of consumption, but a helluva writer.
Punchy
From Beer Blogging to just blogging about beer. Damn, Timmy, did you get old or something?
Nylund
I grew up surrounded by NASA scientists. Biologists, chemists, physicists, etc. and boy, could they knock ’em back and I witnessed many a party devolve into scenes of naked debauchery (kinda scarring as a child, btw). But the worst was when the Russians would visit to work on joint projects. The Americans would have to sneak to the bathroom and pour the vodka down the sink and replace it with water just to stay standing.
I’ve hung out with quite a few rockstars and I’m always surprised at how tame they are compared to the “nerds” I grew up surrounded by.
Honus
And even if they are all drunk, it doesn’t mean the science is no good. Definition of ad hominem.
John Bird
@beltane:
Assuming that’s in the United States – it’s also really stressful being an intellectual here.
Not, like, Khmer Rouge stressful, but.
WereBear
So they average a drink a day? I know bankers who would knock that out of the park.
Lynne
Probably most scientists drink heavily. How else would they keep their heads from exploding when the newspapers report that 30% of Americans are creationists?
El Cid
With as many anti-science anti-environmental idiot right wingers leading discourse in the nation, I’d drink more as an environmental / ecological scientist too.
Joe Bauers
As P.J. O’Roarke said back in the day when he was still funny (or at least when I still found him so), “Life is filled with pain and sorrow, which facts cannot fail to touch the heart of any perceptive American. Therefore no U.S. citizen with an IQ over 110 is sober after 6:00 in the evening.”
John Bird
I can still really enjoy Parliament of Whores, even with that accidentally hilarious chapter about how unintended acceleration in cars is impossible and the people who report it are just lying or retarded.
‘Accidentally.’ Heh.
SBJules
The guy’s from UCSB. I live in Santa Barbara & graduated from UCSB. The student community, Isla Vista, is famous for weekend beer binges. I’m sure that inspired him to see how much ecologists drink.
Ya think?
eemom
How come there’s never any ++ love for lawyers in these kinds of studies?? SOME of us do our part.
SciVo
I plan on having a six-pack tonight (as I often do), and my degree is in math. “The plural of anecdote is data” as Wolfinger said, but you can’t work backwards from aggregate statistics to a datum, or in other words “individuals” is not the plural of “stereotype”.
scav
Beer Abuse
More Alcohol
Pretty Heavy Drinking
was our local mantra in Geography. Never noticed a significant difference in capacity between the field-work types and the lab rats.
Sir Nose'D
I’m a professional ecologist–not among the elite–and I put away about 21-28 per week. However, I don’t drink with geologists anymore. They are the elites within the scientific establishment. The last time I went out drinking with geologists, there was a line of people to use the bathroom not to urinate, but to vomit.
+2
Sir Nose'D
@urizon:
Yeah, climate change is a small part of it. But some other factors also, too. Overpopulation, the human condition, and the fact we love strange and beautiful organisms that most people have never heard of or have any interest in, and work in places that are falling to the march of progress. We’re shitty communicators, and can’t seem to get the point across that environmental deterioration is bad for the country and the economy without mentioning P-values or using weasel words.
Excuse me, time for another.
+3
RSA
Oh, crap. I’ve been following the wrong strategy for a decade and a half.
Kiril
Tim hit the nail on the head. Field work. That’s exactly what I thought when I saw ecologists and environmental scientists as the subjects. Spend all your time in the middle of nowhere, and then — YES! A hotel with a bar!
Brian
I’ll put Inorganic Chemists up against anyone, except the Irish and Germans. We ain’t no cheap date.
Redshift
@DonkeyKong: Ms. Redshift is an archaeologist, so I occasionally go to archaeology conferences. They not only are they big drinkers (especially the field guys&gals), at one conference there was an entire track devoted to beer-related research.
John Bird
@Redshift: It’s an interesting question. From my extremely poor knowledge of the field, it’s still a debate whether humans fermented grain or rode horses first.
Betsy
I’m a +3 historian, but I can say that my paleo-ecologist BFF (she’s in Ecuador digging up giant sloth bones right now, <3 her) can drink me under the table.
Facts!
John Bird
@Sir Nose’D:
Hey, I wouldn’t sell y’all short as communicators. Environmental scientists, ecologists, and biologists in related fields have done a way better job communicating the concerns of their field to laypeople than most disciplines, and it’s only partly because of our immediate interest as citizens (I only wish our stake in the matter got people as worked up about public administration in this country, other than the Glenn Beck plan to somehow do without it).
I think that Silent Spring set a precedent in communication for y’all, and in my personal experience, people in these fields feel they need to be better communicators to do their job well.
Hell, your lament reinforces that belief, because you care at all. In my experience, there’s not a lot of chemists, even in fields that really matter to non-chemists and the public interest, who even consider communicating their concerns to laypeople to be part of their job.
Betsy
@John Bird:
Agreed. Historians, likewise, need to get their asses in gear to fight the wholesale swallowing of Glenn Beck’s version of history, in which middle-aged white conservatives were the heroes of the civil rights movement.
Excuse me while I curl up in a corner and weep.
Wag
Betsy
@Betsy:
Also, I posted this even before I noticed this part of Tim’s post:
Yeah.
scav
I forget if my archaeologist friend had to register as an Infidel or a Degenerate in Pakistan so that she could get alcohol during fieldwork. What many of us wouldn’t do to have one of those IDs now, honestly. . .
wmd
@BR:
Same with mathematicians.
J.W. Hamner
Having your publication record and grant history as the entirety of your professorial identity has some definite drawbacks, but it also means nobody cares if you come in at 11 after a night of boozing as long as you are productive.
Nately's Whore's Kid Sister
@urizon: That’d be economists, wouldn’t it? No? Dang, I got fooled again.
Grumpy Code Monkey
I did two legs on the JOIDES Resolution drill ship while developing the Janus system and saw amazing capacities. There was an impromptu “safety meeting” in our cabin that lasted until around 2:00 a.m. (when the “safety materials” finally ran out), and saw a diminuitive, five-foot-nothing grandmother not only drink everyone else under the table, but show up at 7:00 the next morning for a meeting that everyone else was too hung over to attend.
Gordon Schumway
DougJ, Tim F. just called you a lightweight!
S. cerevisiae
Hell, we don’t wantto be witnessing the sixth great extinction but so our path is laid. Gimme another IPA bartender!
+4
Calming Influence
This “revelation” doesn’t surprise me in the least. Science is a very social pursuit; daily lab discussions, weekly in-house presentations, scientific meetings and symposia, etc. By definition, you’re always working on something that is new or hasn’t been fully investigated, so successful scientists are always talking over problems with other scientists.
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, one of the top private non-profit research labs in the world, has a bar right in the middle of the campus that starts serving alcohol at lunchtime, and more than a few Nobel Laureates have taken their first drink of the day there while chatting about science.
So does the success make you a boozer, or does the booze make you a success?
Bizzle
In my experience the “more cerebral” chemists tend to go for the more “cerebral” drugs. *cough* *nudge*
SapphireCate
@Redshift: Speaking as an archaeologist, i’ve never met anyone who can drink like archaeologists (again, particularly fieldworkers and professors). I’ve got some health problems so i’m rarely more than +1 but I have to fake drink after drink at conferences or people get really worried about why i’m not drinking.
I think the paper also forgets to account for the ‘old boys network’ in operation – there are certain people in certain fields whose papers one has to cite (because they edit journals, run departments, etc.). Those papers are not necessarily the best, just the best known – meaning that the author had to go out/give papers/be friendly and convincing to lots of people, all activities associated with a friendly tipple in the local pub.
Consequently, the drunks are (a) well-known, (b) heavily cited, (c) able to rest on their laurels as (d) they will keep getting cited whether they start producing crap or not ergo (e) they can get drunk more often with neglible damage to their professional reputations.
SapphireCate
@John Bird: fermenting grain came first, but well before that people were finding ways to get f+++d up: poppy was one of the earliest domesticates, traces of honey mixed with hallucinogens in pots, etc. Based on ethnographic work, early people probably spent a goodly part of their lives high as a kite as that’s what most hunter-gatherer (and agricultural and industrial) populations do. It’s only in the last few centuries that many people are totally sober most of the time.
Incidentally, even when horses were domesticated there was an ulterior motive.
Ginger Yellow
“I’d like to see the similar results for journalists. Hunter Thompson was, from what I understand, far over on the scale of consumption, but a helluva writer”
At least in the UK, I can confirm that we hacks would put the ecologists to shame. At least in my circle of acquaintances (mainly financial and music journos), 7 drinks would be a quiet week. Hell, it would be an ordinary night out.
ChrisS
After I get done with a long day spent collecting toxic water samples or sifting through yet another split spoon that reeks of hydrocarbons, I head back to the hotel, take a long, hot shower, and then meet the rest of the crew in the hotel bar/restaurant for a drink. Then we’re off to dinner at whatever is supposed to be good in the area where we sample beer after beer after beer.
For three years, I traveled the western US searching for old military firing ranges. I have a very nice collection of t-shirts from brew pubs.
However, I’m not cited anywhere. The downside of being a consultant and not a research scientist, I guess.
Remember November
a cold one is the best palliative to Global Warming.
thalarctos
I spent a year as a postdoc in a Geology department, and all I can say is–ow! my liver!
I hate to think how much russian geologists drink…
chopper
oh noes, an average of one drink a day? shocking!
then i turn on the news and find out that a glass of red wine a day is ‘good for the heart’.
jesus, why can’t this country just burn to the ground already and get it over with.
Tom Hilton
I know a geologist who every year does a combination brewpub & geology field trip (the Brew Schist tour), and his stories about fieldwork always involve multiple kinds of distilled spirits.
Kilkee
@eemom: Indeed. I’m throttling it back a bit as I get older, but I haven’t been the only lawyer I know to go from a long day at the office to a long night in teh pub, with nary a pause between them. Rinse and repeat, M-F and then some.
Scott P.
None of those fields hold a candle to Classicists, the biggest lushes on the planet.
The Golux
Wow, after reading some of the comments on the post where Tim F.’s First Law was declared, all I can say is that the Balloon Juice community sure has changed over the last five years.
Tim F.
@The Golux: Ya think.
Isua
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/12/15943/
Wired magazine reports on the real story from last year’s American Geophysical Union meeting (when 16,000 geologists invade San Francisco and commence drinking and scribbling graphs of mantle isotopes on cocktail napkins).