They say that timing is everything. Two studies suggest that they have a point.
First up and hot off the presses, try not to have your surgery on Friday. Your chances of dying go way up whether you do it in a hospital that does or does not spell the word color with a ‘u’.
Meanwhile if you find yourself before a judge, hope like hell that you show up early on the docket. A court in Israel handed down favorable parole decisions around seventy percent of the time first thing in the morning and then got less friendly fast, reaching a low of about zero right before lunch.
Of course nobody expects people to work like robots. I cannot tell you how many teenage hours we spent trying to work out what made cops chase or not chase and give a ticket or a warning. There was general agreement that red paint and two doors was trouble, young males with poor grooming got it worse, stay polite, slow down in Ohio and lord help you if you decide to speed while black. Every profession run by people will have its good moments and bad moments. Still, in important cases like sentencing judges and life-saving hospital procedures we really should try to understand the predictable biases and make some effort to fix them.
Seriously, your chance of parole went down to zero point zero if your case came up right before lunch. Anyone think that the researchers randomly picked the one court on Earth that acts like that? No? Then maybe we should take a quick look across the legal system. Hospitals too.