In 1967, a woman was admitted to Baltimore City Hospital, complaining about shortness of breath, chest pains, nausea, and dizziness. She was 22-years-old. She hadn't had health problems until just over a month earlier. Now she was extremely anxious, hyperventilating, sweating and nearly fainting.
After two weeks, she finally confided to the doctor what she believed was wrong with her. By then, she only had a few days to solve it. As it happened, the woman had been born on Friday the 13th in Florida's Okefenokee Swamp. The midwife who'd delivered her had also delivered two other children that day. She told the girls' parents that all three children had been hexed. The first girl would die before her sixteenth birthday. The second would die before her twenty-first. The third—the woman in this hospital—would die before she turned twenty-three.
The problem science journalists face is that this process is fundamentally at odds with how news coverage works, and that this can be confusing to readers. In most areas—politics, international relations, business, sports—the newest thing journalists report is almost always the most definitive. The Supreme Court heard arguments on Mississippi’s challenge to Roe v. Wade; pitcher Max Scherzer signed a three-year, $130-million contract with the Mets; Facebook rebranded its parent company as “Meta.” All of these are indisputably true. And when the court issues its ruling next year, or if Scherzer is injured and can’t play; or if Facebook re-rebrands itself, that won’t make these stories incorrect; they’ll just be out-of-date.
But in scientific research, the newest thing is often the least definitive—we have seen this over and over with COVID—with science reported, then revised, as more information comes in.
When was the last time you swore? Like, really let go. Released a flock of choice words out into the ether and into the ears of passers-by who were busy minding their own business, cycling to the shops to get a newspaper and a packet of rich tea biscuits, until they found themselves lying discombobulated in a privet hedge having been submitted to your filthy, potty-mouthed ranting?
Well, never mind them, that’s their look out. You, on the other hand, can rejoice. Because there is now enough evidence to prove, beyond all f***ing doubt, that swearing is good for you.
“The Latinist” is ingenious in its sinister simplicity. In the opening pages of Mark Prins’s novel, Tessa Templeton, a Ph.D. candidate in classics at Oxford, discovers that her mentor has written a recommendation letter that damns her with faint praise, torpedoing her chances of securing an academic job. His motive? Obsession. Professor Christopher Eccles wants to keep Tessa close to him, toiling as an adjunct. He’s the ultimate “Professor of Desire.”