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Science and the Red Sox
September 26, 2005
Science and sports increasingly intersect as competitors look to technology for an edge. See, for example, our June 2003 report on Team Alinghi's use of technology to win the 2003 America's Cup. More prosaically, nanotechnology is increasingly applied to golf clubs and tennis rackets and even to designing tennis balls that minimize deflation and golf balls that reduce hooks and slices.
Often, necessity is the mother of invention, and inventions such as the nanotech golf ball whose weight shifts in flight to maintain a straight trajectory are certainly a necessity for golfers such as myself. And it could be argued that Team Alinghi, based in land-locked Switzerland, had more need of simulation technologies than would a shore-based team.
But as the need becomes increasingly desperate, the science sought out to address it can become increasingly peculiar. The need I'm referring to is saving the season of the local baseball team, the Red Sox, as they increasingly look as if they'll snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. The science to meet this need is what Dr. Eric Leskowitz, a psychiatrist at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in Boston, calls "weird science": "distant intentionality, the memory of water, intercessory prayer, and conditioned spaces." Writing in the Boston Globe, he cites several scientific studies in support of the benefits of weird science, including one showing that positive thoughts directed at a lab subject cause his EEG brain waves to become more coherent and balanced. "Maybe that's what 35,000 Fenway fans do for the Sox's brain waves," Dr. Leskowitz writes, referring to the Sox' home field, Fenway Park, which itself, he adds, may have quantum-mechanical properties conducive to home-team victories.
I'm skeptical, but it can't hurt to apply a little "distant internationality." Try it on your own favorite team as we approach the season's end. And if you're indifferent to baseball, in the interest of science, periodically throughout this week think "Go Red Sox!"
Posted by Rick Nelson on September 26, 2005 | Comments (0)
