W3006 - Fall 2001
Writing Assignment #1: What they measured                                         Name:____________________________

Read the article by Jared Diamond, "Pearl Harbor and the Emperor's Physiologists", Natural History, Dec 1991, pp. 2-8. It's on reserve in the Biology Library.

1. The article discusses several experiments that were conducted to try to understand why individuals differ in how comfortable they feel at different temperatures. What specific variables were measured in these experiments. (Just list them.)

2. Consider the experiment described in the paragraph beginning "Measurement of sweat's salt concentration". Diamond states that these experiments show that Japanese people resorb less salt than do Taiwanese, Thai and Filipino people. But he doesn't give details about how the experiments were done. Before accepting his conclusion, what questions would you want to ask about the experimental methods? Your answer should include a) the questions you'd ask, and b) why the question is important for accepting the conclusions.

See how many reasonable questions you can come up with. One example:

a) How old were the people?
b) If the people in one group were older than the people in another group, he might have really been measuring a difference related to age, rather than related to nationality.