Franklin’s Forgotten Triumph: Scientific Testing PDF

“Millions of asthmatics and hay fever sufferers could be spared the misery of severe attacks by a new vaccine,” the newspaper story begins. “Clinical trials suggest new cancer drug may save thousands of lives,” the television news anchor intones. “Children who received the medication developed long-lasting resistance to measles compared to those who received a placebo,” the brochure in a pediatrician’s office reads.

In a thousand ways our lives are influenced by what is known as the blind protocol. Its basic elements are simple to understand. Take a group of people. Randomly assign them to one of two populations. One receives the real medicine, while the other gets a sugar pill, or sham treatment, known as a placebo, with both researchers and patients blind to which is which. Every pill we take, every nasal spray or medical patch we use, has been subjected to the judgment of the blind protocol. It is the entry price demanded by the Food and Drug Administration before the gates to the American drug market will open.

Doing science this way is important because what a researcher wants or expects can influence what they observe, or how they interpret what their data is saying. If no one knows which is which until the data collection and analysis are completed, then the potential for bias is eliminated. This is why the blind protocol has become the gold standard of the life sciences. But where did the idea begin? Even scientists are surprised to learn that this critical tool of modern research was created by the extraordinary Benjamin Franklin.

Publication History: October 2004 AMERICAN HERITAGE

Spirit World (Full Text PDF)

EXCERPT:

We walk down a street that seems lifted from a Victorian era children’s book and there, on the white clapboard cottage’s wall, is the small sign we have been told to look for: “Mrs. Hanson, Medium”. Reverend Hanson, as she is properly known, answers the door and there, behind her, is Mr. Hanson. in what can only be called a front parlor, sitting in an open necked short-sleeve white shirt reading his paper. We are invited in, but only my wife Hayden can enter the reading room, lest “your vibrations” disturb the clarity of Mrs. Hanson’s focus. On the left of the entrance to her Reading Room, pinned to the wall, is her Certificate of Ordination from the International General Assembly of Spiritualists, and her Florida State business license, entitling her to give readings from her home. Psychic “channeling” did not begin in America with James Van Praagh, and Jonathon Edwards, and the New Age movement we know today is really only the most recent iteration of a feature of America’s religious and spiritual landscape that traces back to our colonial past. Nor did the country’s fascination with communes and “intentional” small communities start with the 60s.

Publication History: AMERICAN HERITAGE APRIL/MAY 2005