A Coke and a Smile?

29 March 2011

How can a law improve public health? In 2011, Public Health Law Research is asking “What is the impact of laws addressing consumption and purchase of sugar-sweetened and citric-acid drinks on oral health? ” The study, based at the Appalachian School of Law, is looking at “Mountain Dew Mouth” in Appalachia, the persistently poor teeth among America’s  impoverished hillfolk.

Back in 1911, in a courtroom in Chattanooga, it was caffeine, not sugar, that was on trial. According to Murray Carpenter in today’s (March 28, 2011) New York Times,

The trial grabbed headlines for weeks and produced scientific research that holds up to this day — yet generated no federal limits for caffeine in foods and beverages.

Those levels remain virtually unregulated today. As two researchers recently wrote in The Journal of the American Medical Association, nonalcoholic energy drinks “might pose just as great a threat to individual and public health and safety” as alcoholic ones, and “more research that can guide actions of regulatory agencies is needed.”

Nobody used the term “energy drink” in 1911, but the drink that was on trial in Chattanooga contained as much caffeine as a modern Red Bull — 80 milligrams per serving.

The drink was Coca-Cola.

It’s an entertaining story, and also, in the end, enlightening if dispiriting to twenty-first century public health law researchers.  “Harvey Washington Wiley, the “crusading chemist” who led the Bureau of Chemistry in the United States Department of Agriculture, had brought a lawsuit against the Coca-Cola Company, accusing it of adulterating the drink by adding a harmful ingredient: caffeine.” The Atlanta company hired its own expert to to test people who drank the stuff, taking advantage of the fact that most existing research had served Coke only to lab rats. The result was

a four-week trial dominated by anecdotal, contradictory or sloppy testimony.

“[The Coca-Cola scientist’s] testimony was by far the most interesting and technical of any yet introduced,” The Chattanooga Daily Times reported. But the jury never issued a verdict based on the science, because a week later the judge granted Coca-Cola’s motion to dismiss.

In court, it’s seldom the science or research that decides the case.

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Posted by Paul Statt

Seeing Is (or Would Be) Believing

22 March 2011

Patty Cohen writes on the “digital humanities” in The New York Times today (22 March, 2001), and misses an opportunity to show us what information technology can do for the liberal arts. She highlights a few unrepresentative projects, and ignores the big question: What can the non-scientific researchers in literature, philosophy, history and the rest of the humanities concoct when given access to great stores of data, and how do they react? Cohen tells us a little and shows us less.

Humanists have always had data; what makes digital data different is the play and the display: you can see the data better and have some fun with it, too.

The title, for which Cohen may not be responsible, is “Giving Literature Virtual Life.” But her story is lifeless.

At the University of Virginia, history undergraduates have produced a digital visualization of the college’s first library collection, allowing them to consider what the selection of books says about how knowledge was classified in the early 18th century.

A library visualization? What does that mean? I would need to see such a thing. Even online, the story offers no link. So here it is, for all to see. Two things make make this a visual representation of the 1828 U. Va. library catalog: maps that neatly mark where the books came from and charts that reveal what they were about. The VisualEyes technology that supports this project allows humanists to create visualizations; ten such projects are demonstrated at that link.

Cohen spends a lot of time at Bryn Mawr College, gushing about teaching Shakespeare with

Their assignment was to create characters on the Web site theatron.org and use them to block scenes from the gory revenge tragedy “Titus Andronicus,” to see how setting can heighten the drama.

…

“Until you get Shakespeare on its feet, you’re doing it an injustice,” [student] Ms. Cook said. “The plays are in 3-D, not 2-D.”

Cook lacks a basic understanding of what three-dimensional means, believing perhaps it was invented by James Cameron for Avatar. Shakespeare’s plays were created indeed as performances. Until you see them performed, or better yet, get on your feet and perform them, you are doing the Bard an injustice indeed.

Cohen writes thats scholars are only beginning to explore “the contours of this emerging field of digital humanities.” I approve of the metaphor, but reporters too have much more to learn.

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Posted by Paul Statt