HARPER’S

FINDINGS

Australia’s Rabbit Plague was determined to have begun on Christmas Day in 1859, and its Black Summer of 2020 was found to have introduced roughly 1.1 million tons of soot particles into the stratosphere, altering the climate of the Southern Hemisphere for a year and a half. California’s cannabis farms were deemed particularly vulnerable to wildfires, and scientists expected a total collapse of the water supply in Afghanistan and Central Asia and a neartotal collapse in Kashmir, northern India, and Pakistan by the middle of the century. Falling river levels caused by European droughts were revealing centuries-old hunger stones. Rainwater is now unsafe to drink anywhere on earth. Despite enjoying superior sanitation, the Augustinian friars of medieval Cambridge had nearly twice the incidence of intestinal parasites as the general population, possibly because they fertilized friary gardens with their own feces. The toes of British Columbian grizzly bears were being lost as fur-trapping bycatch, a Thai elephant forced to work in extreme heat tore his handler in half, and long-tailed macaques were using stone tools to masturbate. Female Costa Rican capuchins with female friends were found to live longer. Incels do not exhibit marked political differences from sexually active men.

Japanese children walk differently, and among a newly discovered species of walking shark, both slender juveniles and neonates with bulging bellies move identically whether they are walking slowly, walking quickly, or swimming. Pescatarianism and vegetarianism are highly heritable. Human differentiation of infants’ cries of pain must be learned, Asian elephants nasalize their rumbles, and mouse pups born to older fathers exhibit a severely limited repertoire of vocalizations. Ketamine relieves the depression of mice when it is administered by men but not by women, although the lack of efficacy in women’s administration can be corrected if the mice are injected with corticotropin-releasing hormone. Supplementary testosterone makes male Mongolian gerbils more cuddly with their pregnant mates. Dogs shed tears when joyously reunited with their owners or when oxytocin drops are added to their eyes. Neither dogs nor wolves can form opinions about the generosity or selfishness of individual humans. Killings of pets in murder- suicides often fall under the “family annihilator” type.

Functional MRI scans as well as a consistent 10 percent drop in charitable giving after the onset of daylight saving time suggested that sleep loss makes people less generous. Americans who hold conspiratorial beliefs about scientific matters will reduce their cognitive dissonance when presented with conflicting evidence by becoming more conspiratorial. The increased prevalence of multiple sclerosis in countries farther from the equator may not be due to lower vitamin D intake, as was assumed, but due to the fact that those countries are richer and spend more on health care. Religiousness improves the cardiovascular health of African Americans. Among Americans, LSD use has quadrupled, and among young Americans, marijuana and hallucinogen use has reached historic highs. PTSD may be effectively treated by hepatitis C drugs. Finnish researchers explored the origins of children’s gamer rage. The ashes of dead rulers may have been incorporated into the rubber balls of the Mayan ball game once their remains had spent 260 days in the Cave of Death. A half-billion-year-old creature with a mouth but no anus was not, after all, the earliest human ancestor. NASA scientists admitted that the name of Uranus has become a distraction. n

30 ICON | NOVEMBER 2022 | ICONDV.COM

INDEX

Portion of American men who believe they will run out of money after retiring: 2/3 Of American women who do: 4/5 Average minimum salary that U.S. men say they are willing to accept when offered a new job: $86,259 That U.S. women say they are willing to accept: $59,543 Portion of Americans who quit their last job who do not regret it: 3/4 Factor by which the net worth of married couples aged 25 to 34 is greater than that of single households of the same age: 9 Factor by which this disparity has increased since 2010: 2 Portion of Americans who plan to buy a home in the event of a housing market crash: 3/4 % of Gen Z-ers who say they want the housing market to crash so they can purchase a home: 84 Portion of Gen Z-ers who plan to live at home with relatives long-term: 3/10 % by which Gen Z-ers are saving more of their income than their parents: 17 Average cost of an abortion in the United States: $606 Of giving birth: $13,393 % change this year in American adults who say they are “thriving”: −14 Who say they are “suffering”: +100 Estimated age at which adults are unhappiest: 48 Portion of Americans who say political divisions have worsened since Joe Biden took office: 2/3 Who would prefer an alternative to the electoral college system: 3/5 % of U.S. adults who consume “severely problematic” amounts of news: 17 Factor by which these individuals are more likely to have a serious mental illness: 9 By which they are more likely to have a serious physical illness: 10 Portion of Americans aged 18 to 34 who have at least one chronic health condition: 1/2 Who have at least two: 1/4 % increase since 2019 in the number of children who are unvaccinated against polio: 35 Minimum percentage of Facebook and Instagram content that comes from accounts a user does not follow: 15 Minimum factor by which this is projected to increase next year: 2 % decrease since 2014 in the number of U.S. teenagers who use Facebook: 55 % by which black teenagers are more likely than white ones to say they use the internet “almost constantly”: 51 % change in total sales of smartphones this year: −8 In sales of smartphones that cost more than $900: +25 Average age at which parents say they intend to give their child a smartphone: 13 At which they actually do: 10 % of the top 25 box office hits of 1981 that were sequels, spin-offs, or remakes: 16 Of 2019: 80 Minimum number of countries in which euthanasia is legal: 7 % increase last year in deaths by euthanasia in Canada: 32 % decrease since 2010 in the number of philosophy majors at U.S. colleges: 14 In the number of English majors: 33 Religion majors: 41

SOURCES:1,2 Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America (NYC); 3,4 Federal Reserve Bank of New York; 5 Joblist (San Francisco); 6,7 Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis; 8,9 ConsumerAffairs (Tulsa, Okla.); 10 Credit Karma (Oakland, Calif.); 11 BlackRock (NYC); 12 Ushma Upadhyay, University of California, San Francisco; 13 Health Care Cost Institute (Washington); 14,15 Gallup (Washington); 16 David G. Blanchflower, Dartmouth College (Hanover, N.H.); 17 YouGov (NYC); 18 Pew Research Center (Washington); 19–21 Bryan McLaughlin, Texas Tech University (Lubbock); 22,23 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Atlanta); 24 United Nations Children’s Fund (NYC); 25,26 Meta (Menlo Park, Calif.); 27,28 Pew Research Center; 29,30 Counterpoint Research (Hong Kong); 31,32 Keystone Tutors (London); 33,34 Eric Krebs (NYC); 35 Thaddeus Pope, Mitchell Hamline School of Law (St. Paul, Minn.); 36 Health Canada (Ottawa, Ontario); 37–39 Benjamin Schmidt (NYC).