For This Research, Queasy Does It

Our thanks to Joe FitzGerald, who called to tell us about two more funny doctor’s names, after last week’s item on that topic: Dr. Fang the dentist, and Dr. Katz the vet. We also should point out that we know of four scientists--Grill, Butter and two named Rolls--who study the science of the human appetite. (What else?)

Any more?

We suppose the following would be funnier if it featured a Dr. Barf or Dr. Hurl, but alas, his name is simply Robert Stern. Stern’s the kind of man who gives talks with titles like “What Is Nausea?” but eschews membership in Club Emesis, a society of vomit researchers who get together for drinks and dinner now and then, because he’s only interested in the sensation, not what happens afterward.

A psychologist at Penn State University, Stern is also the man who has a dastardly machine expressly designed to make you feel ill. It consists of a stool, on which you sit, and a hollow drum painted inside with alternating stripes, which is lowered over your head. The drum starts turning, you stare at the stripes, and electrodes on your skin monitor the churning of your stomach and tell Stern just how “seasick” you’re starting to feel.

We thought of Stern when we got some info in the mail the other day about an over-the-counter anti-nausea device called a ReliefBand, which zaps your wrist with a gentle electric current. Has Stern ever tried it on the brave volunteers in his lab? Did they feel less bilious?

Stern told us that the device is based on principles of acupuncture (there’s a place on your wrist that, when stimulated, supposedly calms your stomach), and that there are other devices on the market that simply apply pressure, no electric tickle. He’s tried both types of devices and both seem to help, he says.

He’s also tested--with less success--a ginger-containing anti-nausea drink, called Sailor’s Delight. Ginger, he adds, is a folk remedy for nausea, and a couple of small studies by ship’s doctors have reported that it’s as good as Dramamine for calming seasickness in sailors.

Be a Lab Rat in the Comfort of Your Home

We’re not sure we’d step into Stern’s infernal nausea machine to help further the cause of science (what the hey, we probably would), but we’d certainly sit on our duffs for an hour or so.

And we can! Recently, we stumbled upon a Web site compiled by the folks at the American Psychological Society titled Psychological Research on the Web (https://psych.hanover.edu/APS/exponnet.html), which lists dozens of Web-based studies going on around the world. All you have to do is answer questionnaires right at your computer--ones with such titles as “Are You a Logical Thinker?,” “Irrational Food Belief Survey” and “Marital Affair Questionnaire.” (How many takers do they get for that one, we wonder.)

The first survey we tried--”Online Neuropsychology Project”--was already all wrapped up. Without even getting our input! Anyway, it was all about public and professional knowledge about head injuries. It found--among other things--that while we, the public, seem pretty well-informed about the need to do things like wear seat belts in cars, we’re pretty ignorant on some counts.

For instance, we tend to believe that when someone wakes up from a coma, their memory is going to be working perfectly normally, which isn’t true. And we don’t know (I sure didn’t) that those who have had head injuries are at greater risk than the rest of us should they hurt their heads again.

Next, we checked out “Ewww . . . That’s Disgusting,” a survey on whether people who enter the health care profession are less squeamish than folks who take up other jobs. (Which reminded us of a friend who once applied for a job in an anatomy department--and mentioned, in support of his application, that he could watch the movie “Re-Animator” all the way through without flinching.)

Then we moved on to “Memory for Spider-Related Words,” in which we were flashed words to do with babies and spiders that we later--after doing some bothersome arithmetic--had to recall.

I’m distressed to learn that my ability to recall words is awful. And, more troubling, that I did better with the spider words than the baby words.

They can have my brain when I die.