Stones Have Been Popping Out of People Who Ride Roller Coasters

stabbedinthenameofscience:

the-pie-initiative:

kristoffbjorgman:

kawuli:

kawuli:

kawuli:

1. Doctor finds anecdotal evidence that people are passing kidney stones after riding on Big Thunder Mountain Railroad at Disney World

2. Doctor makes 3-D model of kidney, complete with stones and urine (his own), takes it on Big Thunder Mountain Railroad 60 times

3. “The stones passed 63.89 percent of the time while the kidneys were in the back of the car. When they were in the front, the passage rate was only 16.67 percent. That’s based on only 60 rides on a single coaster, and Wartinger guards his excitement in the journal article: ‘Preliminary study findings support the anecdotal evidence that a ride on a moderate-intensity roller coaster could benefit some patients with small kidney stones.’”

4. “Some rides are going to be more advantageous for some patients than other rides. So I wouldn’t say that the only ride that helps you pass stones is Big Thunder Mountain. That’s grossly inaccurate.”

5. “His advice for now: If you know you have a stone that’s smaller than five millimeters, riding a series of roller coasters could help you pass that stone before it gets to an obstructive size and either causes debilitating colic or requires a $10,000 procedure to try and break it up. And even once a stone is broken up using shock waves, tiny fragments and “dust” remain that need to be passed. The coaster could help with that, too.”

SCIENCE: IT WORKS

Update:

“In all, we used 174 kidney stones of varying shapes, sizes and weights to see if each model worked on the same ride and on two other roller coasters,” Wartinger said. “Big Thunder Mountain was the only one that worked. We tried Space Mountain and Aerosmith’s Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster and both failed.”Wartinger went on to explain that these other rides are too fast and too violent with a G-force that pins the stone into the kidney and doesn’t allow it to pass.“The ideal coaster is rough and quick with some twists and turns, but no upside down or inverted movements,” he said.

MSU Today

I just love this because it’s HILARIOUS and yet also a perfect archetypal example of The Scientific Method:

1. Hypothesis

2. Experiment

3. Results

4. Discussion

5. Conclusions

6. GOTO 1 (the scientific method is iterative, don’t forget that part)

was this like… done in cooperation with disney management or did some random scientist go through bag check with a 3d printed kidney and a bottle of piss and start looking for big thunder mountain fastpasses

He asked first!

Of course, the researchers had to get permission from Disney World before bringing the model kidney onto the rides. “It was a little bit of luck,” Wartinger recalls. “We went to guest services, and we didn’t want them to wonder what was going on—two adult men riding the same ride again and again, carrying a backpack. We told them what our intent was, and it turned out that the manager that day was a guy who recently had a kidney stone. He called the ride manager and said, do whatever you can to help these guys, they’re trying to help people with kidney stones.”

This is what professors from my Alma matter do.

ebonykain:

vastderp:

relentlesslygayy:

thistherapylife:

trashchansenpai:

waluwadjet:

smurflewis:

imguiltyofthis:

andiamburdenedwithgloriousfeels:

Do you ever start bullshitting a paper, and then look over it halfway through and think, ’…Wait a minute, I could be onto something here.’

this is the definition of college.

Literally I was writing a paper on Asian salt water crocodiles, like a simple about them paper for a college class, and I started noticing some inconsistencies in the scientific papers I was sourcing and I accidentally discovered that the crocodile has been misdiagnosed as least concerned on the endangered species list when they should be classified as endangered and now my professor is having me write a formal report to the international Red List to have them reclassified and all I wanted to do was write this paper on an animal I thought was cool and now I’m considered an expert on this species…

this is how it works half of esteemed biologists trip and fall into their specialty while pursuing something else. one lecturer i just went to started as a biochemist researching antibiotics and discovered that crocodiles change colors based on environment and now he has 30+ crocs in his yard for research purposes and he’s just like… “wait… i’m a chemist…”

How did so many people end up with crocodiles on accident?????

Accidental crocodiles lol

Crocodiles are conspiring to become the third domesticated predator

It’s in that prophecy. “After a while: crocodile.”

earlgreytea68:

roachpatrol:

amuseoffyre:

shelomit-bat-dvorah:

themarchrabbit:

onsheka:

thepioden:

gessorly:

tyrror:

ruingaraf:

themarchrabbit:

Seriously, it kills me when I see people hold scientists up as pinnacles of logic and reason.

Because one time the professor I was interning for got punched in the face by another professor, because mine got the funding, and told the other professor his theory was stupid.

This same professor told me to throw rocks to scare the “stupid fucking crabs” into moving so we could count them properly.

SCIENCE

thank you

this is one of the best comments this post has recieved

I have witnessed:

Two professors hiding around a corner and snickering, “Shhh, here she comes!” While a female professor approached and, when she finally found them, she proceeded to scream while pointing from one to the other, “You! I called your office but you weren’t there! So I tried to call YOUR office to figure out where HE was but YOU weren’t there!”

Two grad students standing outside a closed and locked door yelling, “Come out of the damn office. You haven’t left for days. If you didn’t have a couch in there I’d be concerned as to where you were sleeping!”

A religious studies professor apologizing for being late to class because, “security stopped me because I’m dressed like a hobbit”

Watched a professor snort the results of my experiment to determine if I had the right final compound.

Two archeology professors toss priceless fossilized teeth back and forth in an attempt to figure out who is smarter by “guessing the type of tooth and species of animal before it lands”

Multiple fully degreed individuals throw dry ice at one another in an attempt to be first to use the lab/get that piece of equipment/or change the iPod song.

A genetics professor build furniture out of stacks of paper and planks of wood because she is that far behind in grading papers/responding. One of the impromptu furniture pieces housed a fish tank.

I could go on but I think that covers the larger portion of the insanity…

Every time it comes around on my dash, it gets better.

– I have had a professor buy a huge fuckoff bottle of rum during fieldwork in Costa Rica and let the undergrads get wasted because “you’re not underage in Costa Rica and we’ll be up all night with the bats anyway!”

– Same professor hung a bat from her headlamp and wore it as a decoration for an entire night.

– A whole swarm of older women – and these are women with PhDs and world-renown bat experts, the bigwigs – all, to a woman, go to the formal charity dinner at an international research symposium in Toronto in late October dressed in skimpy Batgirl costumes. Because Halloween was that weekend, you see.

– At a different conference, a professor get blackout drunk and pass out on the side of the road.

– “Yeah, we have to say we did it properly for the grant but to be really honest, Miracle-gro works better.”

– Teaching lab: we had liquid nitrogen for a demo, and after class the professor, the other TA, and I spent a good two hours freezing and breaking things in it.

a chemistry class begins with 30 students nine months later just six of us left sitting on tables dipping paper into contaminated chemicals to see what happens when we burn it teacher making idle suggestions while he marks our work

“go to the fume hood thing, yeah now put some potassium in chlorine” can i burn the results sir? “fuck it sure whatever its tainted anyway”

The prof I’m working for just asked me if I knew how to pick a lock, and when I responded “yes” she replied, “see, this is why I hire the former delinquents instead of the suck-ups. You’re actually useful.”

I then let her into her office.

“Security stopped me because I’m dressed like a hobbit.” I would bet anything this has happened to Dr. Medievalist.

Semi-related non-academic anecdote: The concert hall security guys tried to throw out our violone player in between performances this spring because they thought he was a homeless guy. Despite the fact that he was wearing concert black… and carrying a violone. There is no more obvious instrument.

One of my English Professors admitted that sometimes “you just have to do a soliloquy” and would phone up the main office of the department on the internal phoneline to recite a Shakespearean monologue at them. No greeting, no warning, just “To be or not to be”.

every time i read this stuff i think about how upset vulcans would be to meet earth’s greatest scientific minds

I am a professor and nothing even half as interesting as any of this has ever happened in my vicinity. I feel cheated.

Newsflash: academics are people. And very strange people, at that.

My semi-famous advisor rather indiscreetly asked one of my fellow grad students at a conference dinner if he knew where to buy weed (or “grass,” as he calls it; he’s old and European). Some other grad students and I later smoked weed with said advisor (and no, it wasn’t legal at the time). My department has a yearly talent show and sometimes the professors participate. One of them break-danced; another passed a basketball around his middle while his wife (also a professor) poured a beer into his mouth and he chugged it.

elodieunderglass:

blueelectricangels:

blueelectricangels:

if you read in a frog paper “specimen was released in the field immediately after capture” chances are very good that what it actually means is

“i dropped the damn frog and despite the fact that we fell all over each other no one could recapture it”

sometimes when i am sad i go read through the tags on this post, because they are 70% other biologists saying things like “AND ALSO FUCK FIELD MICE” and “THAT CRAB ALMOST BROKE MY FINGER” and I am reassured that I am not the only one who has bobbled a wood frog right into their cleavage.

plus six or seven people who just….can’t figure out what a frog paper could possibly be. (guys it’s…a scientific paper. about frogs.)

and this one

which made me laugh despairingly because i mean

bro you don’t even know.

I mean the implication is that that person has not read multiple frog papers