I hope things have changed a little since the bad old days when professors suggested that members of their research team ought to work all day, every day, including evenings and weekends, public holidays and could only have time off for a vacation if it had been well earned. It’s possible that an original letter reproduced a while  back was actually meant tongue-in-cheek, it’s hard to say but the letter sent to “Guido” lit a fire under the science work ethic debate.
Leaders in their field perhaps have every right to insist that their charges work as hard as they do. Was the letter, which told Guido: “In addition to the usual work-day schedule, I expect all of the members of the group to work evenings and weekends,” entirely serious? We may never know.
Interesting, that the notorious letter should come up again this week, given that once again the risks of working more than 40 hours a week has yet again surfaced in the media. It’s nonsense, of course, the notion of burning the candle at both ends is entirely relative, some people thrive on long hours, working weekends and never take a vacation. Others prefer an easy life, tipping the work-life balance in the opposite direction. But, who achieves the most in terms of life satisfaction?
More to the point, who was Guido? Did he stay in chemistry? Did he do well and does he still avoid working weekends? Well, the recipient of that infamous missive dated 1976 was allegedly none other than Guido Koch, Director in Global Discovery Chemistry Basel at the pharmaceutical giant Novartis. I suspect he worked quite hard to get to that position, whether or not that was down to the allegedly draconian rules on working hours or because he skipped weekends we may never know. Apparently, the letter’s author and Koch are still very much on speaking terms.
To be frank, I’ve decided that you really don’t need to know my detailed waist-to-hip ratio, my weight, body fat percentage or any of the other details I am now poring over thanks to the good people at the MRC Epidemiology Unit. None of them are particularly bad…none of them are particularly good. I think I’m in the middle of the ranges for almost all the metrics they acquired, although the DEXA data shows that I’m proportionally rather more fat by percentage body mass than I’d hoped to be by the time I reached my mid-forties. My total fasting cholesterol is bit higher than it should be but the ratio of “good” to “bad” cholesterol is very good (my GP showed me I’m well into the green zone for cardiovascular risk. Nevertheless, she still advised me to cut out the saturated fats and eat more fruit and veg though (isn’t that part of the GP’s standard script, anyway?). She also advised me not to worry about the spurious liver test result mentioned in part 1 and simply to cut back on the old chianti a tad (but, that’s also part of the script, isn’t it?).
Of course, it could be that the total cholesterol was up because of a spot of unusually rich living and partying the week before the Fenland tests. That would also explain the fact that without effort my weight had shifted down within a week of the tests by a couple of kg. That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it. Similiarly with the liver test. Indeed, given that the other values were all fine it makes me wonder whether I am one of the 9% of people who have a permanently raised reading on that test regardless of alcohol consumption or what meds they are on.
NHS Choices finally published its critique of the Harvard red meat research that had the tabloids screaming that meat kills earlier this week. I provided some commentary on Sciencebase soon after. Anyway, this is what NHS Choices concludes:
Quite coincidentally, given the moon hour-by-hour video I posted earlier today, a press release just arrived waxing lyrical about gazing up at the night sky and seeing the familiar face of the “Man in the Moon”. The synchronous rotation of the Moon means it takes about the same amount of time to rotate on its axis as it does to orbit once around the Earth, which means the Moon’s “eyes” are always fixed in our direction, in other words the familiar hemisphere is always facing Earth. The “dark” side of the moon is not, as a matter of fact dark, it is frequently exposed to sunlight, it’s just that we don’t see it from Earth. But why was it the “facial” side of the Moon that ended up locked facing the Earth?
I was planning to write an “appraisal” of the Harvard study on meat and risk of death that hit the news today, but have been so busy procrastinating lately that another blog has beaten me to it. Apparently, we should all be eating less meat, particularly processed meat like sausages, bacon and burgers because not eating less will kill us. At least, that’s what the headlines and the tabloid stats seem to imply. 20% increased risk if you eat 3 or 4 beef steaks every week?
Is there a link between carbon emissions in the developing world and reproductive health?
As promised, here are the thoughts of Soren Brage, an Investigator Scientist in Physical Activity at the MRC Epidemiology Unit in Cambridge on the recent BBC Horizon program featuring Michael Moseley taking part in a TV experiment to see how good high-intensity training (HIT) might be for his health.