DIRTY HANDS AND DEADLY DOCTORS: For Semmelweis’s sad ending, see Sherwin B. Nuland, The Doctor’s Plague: Germs, Childbed Fever, and the Strange Story of Ignatz Semmelweis (Atlas Books, 2003). / 204 “A raft of recent studies”: see Didier Pittet, “Improving Adherence to Hand Hygiene Practice: A Multidisciplinary Approach,” Emerging Infectious Diseases, March–April 2001. / 204–205 “To Err Is Human”: Linda T. Kohn, Janet Corrigan, and Molla S. Donaldson, To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System (National Academies Press, 2000). It should be noted that hospitals had already been trying for years to increase doctors’ hand-washing rates. In the 1980s, the National Institutes of Health launched a campaign to promote hand-washing in pediatric wards. The promotional giveaway was a stuffed teddy bear called T. Bear. Kids and doctors alike loved T. Bear—but they weren’t the only ones. When a few dozen T. Bears were pulled from the wards to be examined after just one week, every one of them was found to have acquired at least one of a host of new friends: Staphylococcus aureus, E. coli, Pseudomonas, Klebsiella, and several others. / 205–206 Cedars-Sinai Medical Center: see Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt, “Selling Soap,” The New York Times Magazine, September 24, 2006. It was Dr. Leon Bender, a urologist at Cedars-Sinai, who led us to this story. / 205 The Australian study: see J. Tibbals, “Teaching Hospital Medical Staff to Handwash,” Medical Journal of Australia 164 (1996). / 207 “Among the best solutions”: for disposable blood-pressure cuffs, see Kevin Sack, “Swabs in Hand, Hospital Cuts Deadly Infections,” The New York Times, July 27, 2007; for the silver-ion antimicrobial shield, see Craig Feied, “Novel Antimicrobial Surface Coatings and the Potential for Reduced Fomite Transmission of SARS and Other Pathogens,” unpublished manuscript, 2004; for neckties, see “British Hospitals Ban Long Sleeves and Neckties to Fight Infection,” Associated Press, September 17, 2007.
FORESKINS ARE FALLING: See Ingrid T. Katz and Alexi A. Wright, “Circumcision—A Surgical Strategy for HIV Prevention in Africa,” New England Journal of Medicine 359, no. 23 (December 4, 2008); also drawn from author interview with Katz.
EPILOGUE: MONKEYS ARE PEOPLE TOO
See Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt, “Monkey Business,” The New York Times Magazine, June 5, 2005; Venkat Lakshminarayanan, M. Keith Chen, and Laurie R. Santos, “Endowment Effect in Capuchin Monkeys,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 363 (October 2008); and M. Keith Chen and Laurie Santos, “The Evolution of Rational and Irrational Economic Behavior: Evidence and Insight from a Non-Human Primate Species,” chapter from Neuroeconomics: Decision Making and the Brain, ed. Paul Glimcher, Colin Camerer, Ernst Fehr, and Russell Poldrack (Academic Press, Elsevier, 2009). / 212 “Nobody ever saw a dog”: see Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, ed. Edwin Cannon (University of Chicago Press, 1976; originally published in 1776). / 214 Day traders are also loss-averse: see Terrance Odean, “Are Investors Reluctant to Realize Their Losses?” Journal of Finance 53, no. 5 (October 1998).
SEARCHABLE TERMS
Note: Entries in this index, carried over verbatim from the print edition of this title, are unlikely to correspond to the pagination of any given e-book reader. However, entries in this index, and other terms, may be easily located by using the search feature of your e-book reader.
Aab, Albert, 59
Abbott, Karen, 24
abortion, 4–5
accidental randomization, 79
Adams, John, 83
adverse selection, 53
Afghanistan, 65, 87
Africa, HIV and AIDS in, 208–9
Agricultural Revolution, 141–42
agriculture, and climate change, 166
air travel, and terrorism, 65–66
air bags, for automobiles, 150
Al-Ahd (The Oath) newsletter, 62
al Qaeda, 63
Allgemeine Krankenhaus (General Hospital), Vienna, 134–38, 203–4
Alliance for Climate Protection, 170
Allie (prostitute), xvi-xvii, 49–56
Almond, Douglas, 57, 58–59
altruism
and anonymity, 109, 118
and charitable giving, 106–7
and climate externalities, 173
and economics, 105,106–23
effect of media coverage on, 107
experiments about, 106–23
games about, 108–11,113,115,117, 118–20
and Genovese murder, 97–100, 104–5,106,110,125–31
impure, 124–25
and incentives, 125, 131
List’s experiments about, 113–20, 121, 123, 125
and manipulation, 125
and monkey-monetary exchange experiment, 215
and people as innately altruistic, 110–11, 113
and taxes, 124
warm-glow, 124–25
Amalga program, 73–74
Ambrose, Stanley, 189
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), 101
Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), 139
ammonium nitrate, 142, 160
An Inconvenient Truth (documentary), 170, 181
The Andy Griffith Show (TV), 104
aneurysms, repair of, 179–80
animals, emissions of, 166, 167–68
annuities, 82
antimicrobial shield, 207
apathy, and Genovese murder, 99–100, 125–31
Apni Beti, Apna Dhan (“My Daughter, My Pride”) project, 5–6
Arbogast, Jessie, 14, 15
Archimedes, 193
Army Air Forces, U.S., 147
Athabasca Oil Sands (Alberta, Canada), 195
athletes
birthdays of, 59–60
women as, 22
automobiles
air bags for, 150
and cheap and simple fixes, 146–58
children in, 150–58
crash-test data for, 153–55
as replacement for horse, 10–11
seat belts for, 148,149–58
stolen, 173–75
autopsies, 137–38,140, 203
Auvert, Bertran, 208
Azyxxi program, 73
baby boom, and crime, 102
banks, and terrorism, 90–96
Barres, Ben (aka Barbara Barres), 47–48
baseball, drug testing in, 92
baseball cards, experiment about, 115–17, 121
Baseball Hall of Fame, and life span, 82
Bastiat, Frédéric, 31
Bateson, Melissa, 122
Becker, Gary, 12–13, 105, 106, 113, 124
behavior
Becker’s views about, 12
collective, 203
data for describing, 13–14
difficulty of changing, 148–49, 173, 203–9
of doctors, 203–8
influence of films on, 15
irrational, 214
predicting, 17
rational, 122–23, 213–14
for self-welfare, 208–9
typical, 13–14, 15–16
behavioral economics, 12–13, 113–23. See also specific researcher or experiment
Bernheim, Douglas, 105
Berrebi, Claude, 62–63
Bertrand, Marianne, 45–46
BigDoggie.net, 51
birth effects, 57–62
Bishop, John, 44
blood-pressure cuffs, disposable, 207
boats, wind-powered fiberglass, 202
Bolívar, Simón, 63
border security, 66
Budyko, Mikhail, 191
Budyko’s Blanket, 193–99, 200
Buffett, Warren, 195
“butterfly girls,” 24–25, 34
bystander effect, 99
Caldeira, Ken, 183–84, 185, 186, 191–92, 196, 200
Canada, Athabasca Oil Sands in, 195
cancer, 84–87, 92
cap-and-trade agreement, 187
capitalism, as “creative destruction,” 11
carbon emissions, 11, 166, 171, 173, 18
2–83, 184–85, 187–88, 192, 199, 203
cardiovascular disease, 86
careers/professions
and feminist revolution, 43–44
and prostitution, 54–55
Carnegie Institution, 183
“casual sex,” 30–31
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, 205–6
Chamberlen, Peter, 141
change
behavioral, 148–49,173, 203–9
charitable giving, 106–7, 124
Chavez, Hugo, 198
cheap and simple fixes
and Agricultural Revolution, 141–42
and automobiles, 146–58
and childbirth, 133–38
and drugs, 145–46
and hurricanes, 158–63,178
and law of unintended consequences, 138–41
and oil, 142–43
and polio, 143–45
and population, 141–42
and puerperal fever, 133–38
and technological innovation, 11
and whaling, 142–43
See also Myhrvold, Nathan
cheating, 116–17, 121
chemotherapy, 84–86
Chen, Keith, 211–16
Chevrolet, 158
Chicago, Illinois, prostitution in, 23–25, 26–38, 40–42, 50–55, 70–71
chief executive officers (CEOs), women as, 44–45
childbirth
and cheap and simple fixes, 133–38,177
forceps in, 140–41
children
and MBA wage study, 45–46
seat belts for, 150–58
“chimney to the sky,” 200–201
circumcision, 208–9
civil rights, 100
Civil Rights Act (1964), 43
climate change
and Budyko’s Blanket, 193–99, 200
and carbon emissions, 166, 171, 173, 182–83, 184–85, 187–88, 192
control of, 198
cost-benefit analysis about, 168–69
and hurricanes, 158–63
incentives concerning, 203
lack of experiments about, 168
manipulation of, 190–91
prediction models about, 181–86
scary scenarios about, 169, 202–3
and volcanoes, 188–90
See also global warming/cooling
Clinton, Bill, 99
clouds, puffy white, 201–2
Club (anti-theft device), 173–74
coal, 187, 189, 200–201
competition, for prostitutes, 30–31
condoms
in India, 5, 6
and prostitution, 36, 53
Congress, U.S.
organ donation legislation of, 112
seat belt legislation of, 149
context, of experiments, 122–23
cooperation, forced, 123
Cornell University, auto crash research at, 147–48
crash-test research, 147–48,153–55
crime
impact of television on, 102–4
increase in, 100–104
criminal justice system, 101–2
Crutzen, Paul, 196–97, 200
data
for describing human behavior, 13–14,16
misinterpretation of, 120
on-the-spot collection of, 28–29
World War II use of, 147
See also specific experiment
De May, Joseph Jr., 127–28,129, 130–31
death
as externality, 172
holding off, 82–87
life insurance for, 200
military, 87
traffic, 65–66, 87
See also terrorism
debt, forgiveness of, 140
decision making, 1
Defense Department, U.S., 15, 66
Department of Health, U.K., 207
Dictator (game), 109–10, 111, 113, 115,117,118–20,121,122,123
discrimination
against women, 20–22, 45
and disabled workers, 139
gender, 45
price, 35
doctors
arrogance of, 205
measuring skills of, 74–82
neckties of, 207
oncology, 85–86
perception deficit of, 205
and puerperal fever, 134–38
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