The Ultimate Experiment to Answer the Question: Which is Healthier Coffee or Tea?
Salon
writes:
It’s an age-old question: What’s better for you, coffee or tea? Even back in the 18th century, inquiring minds wanted to know. King Gustav III of Sweden, being of the belief that coffee was poisonous, devised an interesting experiment to answer the question definitively. He found two identical twins in prison, both sentenced to death for crimes they had committed. Gustav III commuted their sentences to mere life imprisonment (which was no picnic either, given prison conditions back then).
In return for his kingly generosity, the twins had to agree to participate in an experiment: One twin had to drink three pots of coffee a day. The other had to drink three pots of tea a day. Two court physicians were procured to oversee the experiment. Sadly, the physicians died before the experiment was over, as did the king, who was assassinated in 1792. Had he lived, he would have seen the tea-drinking twin live until the age of 83. The coffee drinker? He lived even longer, although we don’t know exactly how much longer. Score one for coffee, if you believe in the efficacy of 18th-century science..
Class, if King Gustav III wanted to do better science he should have used triplets. Can anyone tell us why?
ReplyDeleteYes, the third one could have had three martinis a day, had a much better time, and, like the rest of us, would not have cared who lived longer. Works for me...
DeleteMy guess is because he needs a control group, in other words, a triplet not drinking coffee or tea.
DeleteGood experiment. But, there is a reason for large numbers, even in trials of identical twins. While identical twins may be genetically identical, there is real variability in their organ sizes, etc.; see Roger Williams in 'Nutrition Against Disease.' An experiment he did to investigate his thesis was to dissect armadillos, which commonly have large litters of genetically identical offspring. He found very large differences in organ sizes, which he posited happened due to 'local' conditions at multiple points in the fertilized egg, i.e., compounds are not evenly distributed in the fertilized egg. These differing 'local conditions' give rise to differing growth rates for the genetically identical embryos.
ReplyDelete"He found very large differences in organ sizes"
ReplyDeleteHis theory appears to be applicable to the porn industry...
The coffee drinker was too wired to die!
ReplyDelete