Wear your Toque

Winter is here and, yep, it’s cold outside. Put a toque on! You’ll be warmer.
Why do we believe that if we wear a toque, we’ll be warmer? Did we just pick it up from our parents or from some winter safety program that we sat through in elementary school? Well if our parents say it’s so and if the winter safety people say it’s true, then it must be true. Well, it’s not. A group of scientists set out to debunk 5 common assumptions. One of which is wearing a toque will keep you warmer. I will talk about another myth that they debunked later in this blog. To see the article click here. According to these scientists,
“The myth is thought to have arisen through a flawed interpretation of a vaguely scientific experiment by the US military in the 1950s. In those studies, volunteers were dressed in Arctic survival suits and exposed to bitterly cold conditions. Because it was the only part of their bodies left uncovered, most of their heat was lost through their heads.
“The face, head and chest are more sensitive to changes in temperature than the rest of the body, making it feel as if covering them up does more to prevent heat loss. In fact, covering one part of the body has as much effect as covering any other. If the experiment had been performed with people wearing only swimming trunks, they would have lost no more than 10% of their body heat through their heads, the scientists add.”

The other myth they debunked is that sugar will make children hyperactive. According to their research, sugar will not make children hyperactive. You read it correctly; sugar will not make children hyperactive. “At least a dozen high-quality studies have investigated the possibility of a link between children's behaviour and sugar intake, but none has found any difference between children who consumed a lot and those who did not. The belief appears mostly to be a figment of parents' imaginations. "When parents think their children have been given a drink containing sugar, even if it is really sugar-free, they rate their children's behaviour as more hyperactive," the researchers write.” Is this an example in which the parents are falling victim to observation bias? If the parents are looking for children to be hyperactive after they eat candy they will most likely see hyperactive children. I think that children might be under a placebo effect as well. That is, if they think it will make them hyper, it will make them hyper.
One thing that this class sociology has done for me is question what I am told, to question what is “taken for granted” as true.