Tuning in [S. Worthen

On the train ride back from grading tonight, I made good inroads into Ben Goldacre's Bad Science. I was really enjoying it until I completely stumbled over a sentence that began "Throughout history".* Then, secure in an instance of shoddy history, I felt gullible. It's a book about reading critically, and that one phrase made me realize I'd been reading it uncritically. The rest of it may be entirely sound, but I'd fallen right into the collegial teacher-student relationship implied in its friendly, easy-to-read didacticism, and, being entertained, feel I failed to think.

On the bright side, I felt entirely tuned in yesterday when an insult delighted me. Two teenagers, passed me on the street in bright sunlight when, just past, one muttered, "Ginger nut". And I got it. I knew what it meant! I knew that it was meant to be an insult, and I not only knew that, but I was paying enough attention to hear it in the first place! I was proud of my cultural indoctrination, having been raised without this apparently frequent English baggage. Rarely are insults so pleasing.

* p. 64 "Throughout history, the placebo effect has been particularly well documented in the field of pain, and some of the stories are striking."

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I'm curious now. What does "ginger nut" mean?

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Quite literally, it's a type of biscuit, a ginger cookie. It's also one of an impressive variety of insults for redheads available here in England.

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I wish *I* were a ginger nut - throughout history (see what I did just then!) I have been envious of your hair!!

I did have a moment of feeling sorry for him because he wasn't a sweet biscuit like me. I'm not convinced that "Don't you wish you were a biscuit?" is worth retort-status though, for future opportunities.

Do you get many insults?

It's one of those funny things about the UK - I'm quite sure none of my redheaded friends in the US have ever told me about being publicly insulted for their hair color, whereas ALL my redheaded friends in the UK have mentioned it.

No, I really don't. Or if I do, I've failed to notice them. That's why I was so proud of noticing this time. It may be the first time since second grade that I was knowingly insulted for my hair.

The second grade instance was laughable to me at the time. New school. One attempt at insulting with "Annie", but I'd seen the musical. I knew she was just wearing a wig.

I once saw someone suggest that the UK propensity to mock redheads is a result of latent anti-celtic prejudice, which I thought was a little far-fetched. Isn't 'beat [x] like a red-headed stepchild' a US usage? I've never heard it used elsewhere.

I've certainly never heard that in the UK. *steals it for future fictions*

The only UK instance I remember coming across was in Anne Fine's The Tulip Touch.

Heh. Next time I see Anne, I'll ask where she got it from...

It isn't far fetched at all. Red hair runs in specific populations: the Scottish, the Irish and to a lesser extend among the Welsh as well.

*none* of these groups have insults for red heads. Insulting red heads is an English habit.

There is also a pattern of red hair among Jews, and I am currently keeping a count of the phrase "red-headed Jew" in the books I read. I've found a fair few. I'd forgotten for example that Fagin has red hair.

For a very long time, Judas was painted with red-hair.

Edited Date: 2009-05-17 04:01 pm (UTC)

I wasn't questioning the celtic link per se, rather the fact that the current habit was still an expression of anti-celtic prejudice itself.

Think of it as legacy racism ie no one thinks they are expressing anti-celtic prejudice any more, but the victims still tend to be of celtic/Jewish origin.

(I recently received a picture of my class at my Jewish primary school: of 28 children four had red hair. 18 of the children were Jewish and all of the four with red hair were Jewish. That's astonishingly high.)

Also, did he say it with a hard "G" or a soft one? In the North (at least in Manchester) they use a hard "G", as in "goal". Ghinn-ghurr. Like Gingher scissors.

Soft G, I'm fairly sure.

What are gingher scissors?

A nice brand of sewing/embroidery scissors.

A very tasty biscuit by the way. My favourite.

I'm curious -- unless taken extremely literally the sentence seems one you can't easily take exception to. The placebo effect has been known about for a loooong time. Unless you take the meaning as "from the beginning of recorded history" it just seems absolutely correct.

What do you believe "throughout history" means?

Edited Date: 2009-05-15 11:57 pm (UTC)

I would have assumed "at various intervals in history" and also assume a start early in recorded history. Is there a technical meaning for historians then?

Let me join in with Owlfish here for a mutual *aaaargh*. It's one of those terms that is pretty much a hanging offense in history essays. I have finally beaten it out of this year's crop of students.

"Throughout history" implies that something has always been the case: there is nothing for which this is the case. My favourite has been to point out to students that there is no time at which they can assume monogamy to be a worldwide norm.

In fact (a phrase also verbotten because it's either a fact--in which case show me your evidence--or it's not, but it doesn't need labelling)about the only things you can get away with describing as being consistent throughout history, are the physical laws of the universe and the inconsistency/pick and mix nature of pretty much everything else.

Throughout history" implies that something has always been the case: there is nothing for which this is the case.

Ah... I must admit that that interpretation of the phrase had never even occurred to me.

A related point is that when x is described as occurring 'throughout history,' it can mislead into thinking that x has always been viewed as it is today; this is the historian's hanging offense of presentism.

Examples: 'Throughout history, humans have killed one another' is probably defensible. 'Throughout history, humans have waged war' is already problematic. People in the past certainly engaged in things that looked like war to modern eyes, but the participants' conception of war may have been very different - the significance of the activity may have been religious/ritual to them.

Or to take a medical example: Has tuberculosis occurred 'throughout history'? Many cases of 'consumption' were probably the result of infection with the TB bacterium, but the social understanding of what it mean to be a consumptive in 1820s Italy is very different for what it means to be diagnosed with TB in 2009 London - which is itself very different for what it means for someone to be infected and undiagnosed in a 2009 Mumbai slum.

It's peculiar how in a discipline's own jargon a statement which is unproblematic suddenly seems complex. We had a similar discussion on this journal over the word "technology" which also departs considerably from the everyday meaning aparently.

Possibly because my period is 20th-century history, I don't come across as many 'throughouts' in my reading, so they don't get my goat in the same way. In a non-historical book, I would view it as a sloppy paraphrase of 'evidence for the effects of placebos can be found as long ago as x.'

About the only 'Throughout history' statement that could possibly be acceptable is 'people got born and people died'. Everything else subject to extreme variations.

But Goldacre has annoyed me before with his dissing of humanities people, which to my mind includes historians and their emphasis on the importance of not making unsustainable transhistorical assertions.

Yeah, the humanities jibes are often a bit broad, especially as he usually goes on to say that by humanities people he means (science) journalists with no understanding of the techniques of science. In light of the fact that he has a Masters degree in Philosophy, it's a cheap shot.

about the only things you can get away with describing as being consistent throughout history, are the physical laws of the universe and the inconsistency/pick and mix nature of pretty much everything else.

Would you take it to mean "throughout human history", or does history go all the way back to the big bang? If the latter, then other people's examples herebelow - humans killing each other, etc - don't apply either...

um....

I can't think of any examples from Song medicine. If you don't believe in the effectiveness of Song medicine, then I suppose you have documentation of a sort. But that's more epistemology than the observation from experiments, etc.

"Throughout history, mankind has practiced slavery, and all women have been oppressed."

Um ... yeah. Except that ... no. What kind of slavery? what kind of oppression? Did the women feel oppressed? Were they co-conspirators in the support of the patriarchy?

I just don't trust that kind of lumping. I am a splitter, thanks.

Your hair is gorgeous, and I would love to have it any day. So boo to that kid, because he clearly doesn't know what he's talking about.

I personally think you can read stuff (even serious stuff) for entertainment and not think about it without having to go beg forgiveness from Kleo and sacrifice a hecatomb. Also, there is something to be said for reading something through first and then allowing the critical faculty to savage it.

My objection to "throughout history" is more rhetorical in that it is something of a tired cliché, usually a hyperboyle and overly general for the argument at hand [not quite as bad a start as "Since the beginning of time..."]. Still, I think I've caught myself doing it (I probably should do a penance for that).

Now this sentence is also ambiguous and could easily suggest that people in the past classified things as the placebo effect. Rather than what I assume is happening that he is analyzing reported incidents from some points in the past as examples of the placebo effect.

The only prejudicial thing I ever recall hearing about red heads in my Canadian youth was that they have fiery tempers. Which always struck me as a hilariously unlikely proposition (also risks being self-fulfilling). I had no idea the Brits had so many insults referring to them.

S. Worthen | Weblog

Tuning in

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the celtic link

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October