At its finest, science journalism is about reporting the latest, greatest discoveries from the best minds in the world and making those findings accessible to everyday people. It is also about debate, as scientists often disagree, sometimes bitterly, over how to interpret cutting-edge research. And occasionally, science journalism is about discussing issues of science policy, and how we can use science to inform society's collective decision-making.

One website that we believe accomplishes these goals and excels at communicating complicated science to the layperson is LiveScience. The site is staffed with talented writers who produce informative, absorbing material. That's why we often link to them on RealClearScience.

However, a recent series of articles published on the site caught us off guard. To be blunt, there was a very noticeable political slant. (See screenshot.)


There are three articles worth discussing: (1) Undecided voters and climate change; (2) Fox News' climate coverage; and (3) Airplane windows.

The first article, about undecided voters' beliefs about global warming, is probably a legitimate story. According to the piece, "Undecided voters are more likely than Romney voters to see climate change as an important issue." That's not particularly surprising, given that conservatives often deny anthropogenic global warming or dismiss the need to do anything about it.

So, the first story passes scrutiny. But, stories #2 and #3 do not.

The second article, about Fox News getting climate coverage 93% wrong, would be an important story if the study had been conducted by a legitimate scientific organization. But, it was not. The "report" was issued by the Union of Concerned Scientists. Don't let their name fool you. They often hold positions that are in stark opposition to the scientific community. (Most notoriously, they are anti-GMO, but they also engage in anti-nuclear scaremongering.) They are widely perceived as being little more than an environmental lobbying group. Thus, a partisan group's "fact-checking" should not be taken too seriously, and it certainly does not warrant an article on such a respected science website.

The third article, about Mitt Romney's alleged confusion about why airplane windows don't roll down, is based on false pretenses. Their opening sentence read: "In his latest gaffe, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney lamented the fact that airplane windows don't roll down." That is an utter distortion. As reported by the famous myth-busting website Snopes, Romney was clearly joking (in his awkward way). To their credit, LiveScience issued an update that Romney "may have been joking," but this is insufficient. The article should be retracted.

All three articles, particularly the last one, appear to have been written in order to score some political points or to cater to a left-leaning demographic of readers. But, that's not good. Increasingly, conservatives are distrusting science. Could it be that science journalism, which clearly favors one side of the political spectrum over the other, is partially to blame for this trend?

Criticism of misguided scientific beliefs is perfectly legitimate. But writing partisan stories, especially when they are inaccurate or biased, discredits science journalism and worse, the scientific enterprise itself.

(Image: LiveScience)

Think of your favorite food. Maybe it's pizza, maybe it's pasta. Perhaps it's ice cream or enchiladas.

Now imagine that your favorite food is right in front of you. Its tantalizing aroma wafts to your nostrils, making your mouth water in anticipation of masticating. The sublime scent is a tease, but a relishing one, because you know that the dish from which it originates is at your mercy, a mercy that always ends happily with chewing and swallowing.

Enough. Utensil in hand, you reach forward and delicately pick up a portion of that which you unabashedly crave. Excitement grows as you inch the morsel to closer and closer to your mouth, until finally... *MUNCH MUNCH MUNCH.*

The explosion of flavor cannot be contained; a sensory overload. It erupts from your mouth and cracks a smile upon your face. But even that isn't enough to truly portray your sheer, orgasmic joy.

"This... tastes... amazing!" you exuberantly proclaim to the ground below, the world around, and the heavens above.

But you're wrong. It does not taste good. Allow me to explain.

First off, taste is not what you think it is. Taste is commonly considered to be the sensation of flavor within the mouth, but technically, it's the sensation produced when a substance in the mouth reacts chemically with taste bud receptors. The difference seems minute and merely semantic, but it really isn't. Perceiving flavor is complex; taste is incredibly basic.

Taste buds -- miniscule flask-like structures found primarily on the tongue and in the esophagus -- are known to detect five distinct tastes: sweet, salty, bitter, umami (savory), and sour. (Fat might be the sixth taste.) These sensations, interpreted by the brain, serve only to produce aversive or appetitive responses. Fundamentally, taste tells us what we should and shouldn't eat.

For example, umami and sweet -- both appetitive tastes -- often indicate that the food we're eating is nutrient dense and thus that we should eat more. Fruit, for example, is sweet and sugary, and our taste buds and brain pair-up to say, "Eat more!"

On the other hand, bitter and sour tastes often indicate toxicity and acidity, respectively, sending the opposite message: "Don't eat this, it could be dangerous!" For example, alcohol, which is both debilitating and toxic, gives off a bitter, displeasing taste, telling us that we probably shouldn't drink a lot of it (a bodily message that is frequently ignored). 

So if taste buds only partially contribute to the perception of flavor, then what is the primary detector? The answer, of course, is your second sense of smell. That's right, we have two.

The first, most well-known type of smell is termed orthonasal. It's what happens when we sniff environmental odors, like the sultry scent of perfume or the dastardly stench emanating from the trash bin. Air flows in our nostrils from an external source and eventually wafts past the approximately six million olfactory cells in our olfactory epithelium, which detect odors.

Our second, lesser known sense of smell is called retronasal smell. This is where almost all of our flavor perception -- what we commonly know as taste -- comes from. When we exhale while eating, the odor from the food in our mouth travels through our internal nares and past the same olfactory receptors that smelled the food externally before we ate it.

According to Yale neuroscientist Gordon Shepherd, since retronasal smells are experienced along with a myriad of mouth sensations in the lips, cheeks, tongue, and jaws, our brains "refer" them to our mouths, lending to the ubiquitous, incorrect notion that flavor is produced by the taste buds.

An excellent experiment to showcase how little our taste buds actually contribute to flavor perception is to obstruct your retronasal sense of smell. Do this by simply holding your nose while eating. You'll swiftly realize your taste bud's paltry contribution to sensing flavor, because you'll only be able to detect the fundamental sweet, salty, bitter, umami, and sour tastes.

That's why your favorite food really doesn't taste good. It actually smells good.

(Image: Favorite Dish via Shutterstock)

Team sports are so fabulously entertaining to watch partly because pure physical ability doesn't solely determine the outcome. A highly skilled, superior team playing without teamwork can easily be defeated by a lesser skilled, inferior team playing with it.

This truism indicates that there are other, less overt qualities that contribute to success besides skill or physical ability. For example, trust, cohesion, cooperation, and social motivation are key emotional and social factors that underpin good teamwork.

Realizing this, scientists Gert-Jan Pepping and Erik J. Timmermans of the Center for Human Movement Sciences in The Netherlands recently published a review on the potential role of the hormone oxytocin in team sports. Oxytocin is well-known for its function in mammalian sexual reproduction, but mounting evidence has demonstrated the neurotransmitter's capacity to mediate social emotions like empathy, trust, generosity, and altruism as well.

In their review, Pepping and Timmermans cite nearly one hundred separate studies which clearly establish this link, all in order to drive home their primary point: that oxytocin, by positively affecting social factors associated with team success, plays a key role in enhancing team sport performance. In light of this plausible contention, they call for new research to specifically study how oxytocin affects team chemistry.

Oxytocin can easily be administered to subjects via nasal spray, so a myriad of experiments could easily be performed. Such research has the potential to produce both highly amusing and fascinating results. One basic experimental design instantly comes to mind. Scientists could treat an entire NFL or NHL sports team with oxytocin before an exhibition game and observe what happens. Since replays and statistics from past games are readily available, there would be a plethora of data for comparison.

Take a moment and think of the potential outcomes of this research. If studies showed oxytocin to boost team performance, would it be a legal method of doping? Or, what if the oxytocin treatment backfired? Imagine players becoming more empathetic, but to the other team! Would they be more genial and less competitive?

These theoretical musings can grow even more hyperbolic. Would a hockey team on oxytocin engage in fewer fisticuffs? Would there perhaps be less taunting and football spiking in the NFL? Would a poor call from a referee evoke a polite, understanding response instead of one along the lines of, "What the #%&% were you looking at?" Would oxytocin turn a team of powerful, elite athletes into a group of hulking, muscled teddy bears?

Most fundamentally, would a sports team under the influence of oxytocin even be fun to watch? It sure would be interesting to find out!

Source: Gert-Jan Pepping and Erik J. Timmermans, "Oxytocin and the Biopsychology of Performance in Team Sports," The Scientific World Journal, vol. 2012, Article ID 567363, 10 pages, 2012. doi:10.1100/2012/567363

Benjamin Franklin was a man of many talents: scientist, inventor, diplomat, writer, sage, musician, postmaster, founding father, and fitness guru.

That's right, a fitness guru.

Wiser than Dr. Oz, less annoying than Richard Simmons, and long-lived like Jack Lalanne, Benjamin Franklin was touting proper diet and advocating exercise over two centuries before the United States Department of Agriculture constructed their food pyramid.

But wait, you might be thinking, wasn't Benjamin Franklin portly and plump, a pudgy and wise old owl? Not true!

Sure, Mr. Franklin may have let himself go (just a tad) in his seventies, when he was living in Paris, eating rich food, and fraternizing with elderly ladies, but for most of his life, Franklin was a physical specimen. Biographer Walter Isaacson described him as muscular, barrel-chested, and almost six feet tall.

Franklin's fascination with fitness began at the young age of seventeen. Working as a typesetter in London, he garnered respectable physical prowess by running up and down stairs with heavy trays of lead type. Often, he would carry two trays instead of one, a feat which wowed his colleagues. At the same time, he eschewed drinking alcohol, choosing water instead, and convinced his co-workers to do the same.

A genius by birth, he was an athlete by choice. According to PBS:

In an age when few people knew how to swim, Franklin taught himself how to swim. He was an avid swimmer all his life and even contemplated becoming a full-time swim instructor. Benjamin Franklin is the only founding father in the Swimming Hall of Fame.

Franklin later returned to the colonies and, in 1733, began to publish the famous Poor Richard's Almanac in Philadelphia. In it, he frequently proffered advice on diet and health. "Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise," he coined. "Eat to live; live not to eat," "A full belly makes a bad brain," and "To lengthen thy life, lessen thy meals," he also quipped. 

In terms of diet, Franklin practiced mindful observation. Pay attention to your weight and heed what you eat, he suggested. Be abstemious and utilize self-control. If you find yourself rotund, eat less. If you find yourself too thin, eat more. If you find yourself in good health, eat the same amount. His approach was simple and scientific, emphasizing self-experimentation.

Franklin continued to be a religious exerciser throughout his life. He especially enjoyed swimming, walking, and leaping. When old age restricted his activity choices, he would focus on lifting and swinging weights. "No gains without pains," he'd say when hobbling from muscle soreness the following day.

Franklin's moderate, balanced lifestyle led to a long life of 84 years, about 30-40 years above the average estimated lifespan of the time! It may have worked for him, but could it work for modern-day Americans?

Benjamin Franklin never had to contend with harbingers of obesity like fast-food, flat-screen TVs, and computers, but the universal principles of his lifestyle --  balance, mindfulness, and moderation -- still apply today. One only requires the constitution to use them.

If you were asked about a moral issue, say prostitution or illegal immigration, and were then asked about it again a few moments later, would you hold the same belief? You might think so, but new research from Sweden shows there's not only a good chance that you will change your mind, but that you will vehemently defend the very opposite of the position you reported merely moments ago.

The authors used a questionnaire to ask people about various moral principles and politically-sensitive issues. A scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 9 (strongly agree) was used, with 5 representing neutrality. However, there was a trick. A couple of the questions were manipulated using a "stage magic" trick that fooled the volunteer into filling out the exact opposite viewpoint. For instance, if the volunteer disagreed with illegal immigration, he (unbeknownst to him) filled out that he supported illegal immigration.

And now, the fun part: In a follow-up interview, conducted moments later, the volunteers were asked about their answers to the questionnaire. What the authors found is stunning: 69% of volunteers didn't notice that their answer had been reversed, and, according to the authors, "a full 53% of the participants argued unequivocally for the opposite of their original attitude."

This study brings up several (rather disturbing) points: First, what is the value of conducting surveys if people can literally change their mind -- and argue against their original position -- moments after taking it? Second, is there any real value to research that is based on surveys? (A substantial proportion of social science research is based on surveys.) Third, what does this say about our "deeply held" moral beliefs, if they can be so easily discarded and manipulated?

It is worth noting that Jeremy Lott, a friend and colleague, once wrote a book called In Defense of Hypocrisy. And that was long before this study was released.

Source: Hall L, Johansson P, Strandberg T (2012) Lifting the Veil of Morality: Choice Blindness and Attitude Reversals on a Self-Transforming Survey. PLoS ONE 7(9): e45457. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0045457

(Survey image via Shutterstock)

Last month, researchers reported that cutting calories didn't extend life in primates--but 3 years earlier, another study seemed to show the opposite. The findings underscore confusion about how calorie restriction affects the body and whether it can be counted on to slow aging. Why did the two long-running studies get different results? What do we really know about this closely studied--and heavily hyped--life extender?

Tune in to Newton Blog at 3 p.m. EDT today to catch this live chat!

Sometime in the 1370's, French scrivener Nicolas Flamel purchased a strange 21-page book penned in a language unbeknownst to him. The minute, yet mystifying tome utterly engrossed Flamel, who promptly decided to dedicate his life to unraveling its secrets. Around 1378, Flamel's quest led him to Spain, where he met a sage who identified the tome as a copy of the original Book of Abramelin the Mage. Armed with this knowledge, Flamel and his wife Perenelle deciphered enough of the writing to reveal the recipe for the prized Philosopher's Stone, which they then used to transmute dung to gold and to concoct the "Elixir of Life," a highly sought after potion that bestows the drinker with immortality.

Or so the story goes...

In reality, the alchemists of antiquity unrelentingly toiled to attain immortality and achieve chrysopoeia -- the transmutation of other substances into gold -- but by all factual accounts of history, they came up empty-handed. In the process, however, they laid the foundations for modern day chemistry, so their efforts weren't completely fruitless.

If those ancient alchemists of yore magically came back to life today, that knowledge might be of little consolation. And they might be even more jaundiced to learn that present-day alchemists routinely transmute gold on a daily basis.

That's right. Thanks to modern science, alchemy is quite real.

Today the discipline's practitioners have different titles: nuclear and particle physicists. That's because gold can be manufactured within nuclear reactors by irradiating either platinum or mercury. Particle accelerators accomplish the same feat, though through a different process. By accelerating particles to monumental speeds and smashing them together or into certain target materials, neutrons and protons are knocked free and new elements are created.

The particle accelerator GSI in Germany can create an astounding two million new gold atoms each second, prompting the obvious question, "Where are physicists hoarding all of that bling?"

The answer of course is that they keep it in caves defended by dragons there isn't much bling produced in the first place. Two million atoms of "Au" may sound like a lot, but because those atoms are so infinitesimally small, GSI would have to operate around-the-clock for 50 million years just to produce one gram of gold! So while the gold-transmuting facet of alchemy is entirely real, it's not in the least bit efficient or profitable.

But who knows? Perhaps Nicolas Flamel is out there right now, leading a quiet and unassuming immortal life with his wife Perenelle and their gold-producing Philosopher's Stone, chuckling at our comparatively meager alchemical abilities.

(Image: Vials via Shutterstock)

Last week, as I was casually perusing YouTube for purposes of procrastination, I stumbled across an attention-grabbing headline: "Science Finds God Inside Of Us." Instantly intrigued, I gave the video a click.

My laptop screen was quickly adorned with the image of a man dressed in black, wielding what I presumed to be a Bible in his left hand. He had sharp, hawkish features and short, styled hair smattered with gray. He was delivering a sermon to a crowded hall and a tiny wisp of air trailed many of his spoken words, as if to give the impression that a great, secret truth was leaking out.

"I'll tell you how you can know tonight that God will always hold you together no matter what," he said, almost in a whisper. "It's a little protein molecule called laminin."

The man, I later found out, was Louie Giglio, a prominent Christian pastor (with over 250,000 Twitter followers) and founder of the Passion Movement. As I more swiftly learned from his YouTube sermon, he loves laminin.

From a scientific standpoint, this is completely understandable. Laminins are a group of glycoproteins which are absolutely vital for the maintenance and survival of living tissues in all organisms. They are integral to structural scaffolding and influence cell differentiation, migration, and adhesion. What's not to love?

Giglio was enamored with the scientific aspect, but for him, the ultimate kicker was an image of the protein. Here's a rough sketch:

"How crazy is that? The stuff that holds our bodies together, that's holding the lining of the organs together, holding your skin on, is in the perfect shape of the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ!" Giglio boisterously proclaimed.

To Giglio, and others, this revelation provides proof of God's signature on his living creations. "You would never in a quadrillion years convince me that is anything other than the mark of a Creator who knew EXACTLY what laminin "glue" would look like long before Adam even breathed his first breath!!" spouts an anonymous online believer.

You can even purchase T-shirts and coffee mugs glorifying the protein. "Great designers always leave their mark," one of the designs says.

So is laminin proof of God's existence? Simply put, no; it's just another example of pareidolia. Some religious people see an image of a cross and instantaneously perceive it as significant. It's like finding the Virgin Mary in a grilled cheese sandwich or witnessing Christ in a tortilla. 

When looking at laminin under an electron microscope, the resemblance actually diminishes significantly. I think the protein looks more like a flower personally.

According to research conducted by the animated and intelligent British psychologist Dr. Richard Wiseman, people are living more fast-paced and stressful lives than ever before. One would not be hard-pressed to find others who agree with that assertion...

Just kick back, tune out, and switch off. It sounds easy enough, but for almost all who experience that yearning, relaxation can be quite tricky to obtain. The demands of daily life are shackling, and even with a reprieve, the mind and body are beasts not easily tamed.

If true tranquility were as simple as La-Z-Boy might have us believe, then mental and physical repose is only one lackadaisical session of couch-sitting away. But while sinking into the soft recesses of a sofa is indeed soothing, it's not always enough to assuage the anxieties and agitations that our modern, "always on" society presents. This rings especially true for the approximately 40 million American adults that suffer from some form of anxiety disorder.

Thus, we turn to squeezing stress-balls, getting poked with needles, thinking about wine, listening to preachy self-help gurus, perusing internet forums, watching mental movies, and engaging in a myriad of other wonky ways to alleviate stress. Some prove helpful, others not.

Wouldn't it be nice if there were a tried, time-tested method for alleviating stress? One that has consistently stood against the rigors of skeptical scientific inquiry?

Progressive Muscle Relaxation (PMR) may very well be that method. Pioneered by physician, psychologist, and psychiatrist, Edmund Jacobson in the early 1920s, PMR remains exceedingly popular with modern physical therapists as a stress reliever.

This basic gist of PMR is this: The subject, with his or her eyes closed, sequentially tenses and relaxes certain muscle groups, spending about ten seconds tensing and twenty seconds relaxing. A session often lasts for 20-60 minutes and will hit all of the major muscle groups at least twice. Throughout the process, the subject is supposed to focus on the difference between the feelings of tension and relaxation.

On the surface, PMR seems just as kooky as other nonsensical relaxation techniques. However, unlike many of its counterparts, PMR has regularly proven to be significantly more effective than a placebo in clinical trials. A large systematic review of 60 randomized, controlled, clinical studies conducted before 2003 concluded that PMR was as effective as pharmacological, cognitive, or exposure-based interventions for panic disorder, general anxiety disorder, and dental phobia.

For most people, PMR works, but less is known about why it works. Jacobson originally argued that since muscle tension accompanies anxiety, one can reduce anxiety by learning how to relax the muscular tension. While this supposition may make intuitive sense, empirical evidence to back it up is lacking.

In 2006, Doctors Angsar Conrad and Walton Roth put forth a more refined theory: "...muscle relaxation in the periphery results in a centrally mediated shift of the bodily system towards a trophotropic response [(a state associated with rest or relaxation)]." But they admitted that this formulation, even with the science-y jargon, still unsatisfactorily explains the successful workings of PMR.

Conrad and Roth were blunt in showing their frustration with the lack of causal understanding for PMR's effectiveness. "...simply knowing that [muscle relaxation] therapies are clinically effective is not enough," they said. "To be able improve them and to apply them optimally, we must have a better idea of how and for whom they work."

Perhaps with additional research, psychologists and physiologists will one day decipher the neurological and biological mechanisms of PMR, and thus discern the secrets of relaxation. Oh wouldn't that be nice...

But hidden within the arduousness of this quintessential challenge, there is inspiration. Armed with science, we have the power to shape our existence and our future. Here on Earth, we are masters of our destiny.

Lest you forget this heartening verity, the videos below are impassioned reminders.

Human immunity, specifically the adaptive immune response, is based on recognizing and remembering molecules which pose a threat. After fighting off the initial assault, the body "remembers" the pernicious molecule via the long-lived memory T- and B-cells. The next time your body is exposed to the molecule, an overwhelming army of immune cells are poised for attack. This immunological memory is the scientific basis for vaccination.

The human immune system is incredibly complicated, and it involves several organs (e.g., thymus, lymph nodes, spleen) as well as multiple cell types (e.g., T-cells, B-cells, macrophages, etc.). Bacteria aren't nearly as complex as humans, yet they too, have an adaptive immune system. How does it work?

Remarkably, the bacterial adaptive immune system, known as CRISPR (don't worry about what it stands for) is based on a similar principle: Recognizing and remembering foreign invaders. (See diagram.)


In the upper-left corner, the thing that looks like a lunar lander is a bacteriophage -- a virus which infects only bacteria. It injects its DNA into the bacterial cell. If everything goes well (for the virus), it will commandeer the bacteria's machinery. Instead of making bacterial DNA and proteins, the bacterium will start making viral DNA and proteins. After the virus has had its way with the bacterium, it causes the bacterium to explode, immediately killing it and ejecting thousands of new virus particles into the environment -- searching out their next victim.

Occasionally, things don't go well for the virus. (See diagram.) Sometimes, an immunological protein system called CAS recognizes the viral DNA as foreign. When it does, the bacterium will snip out a piece of the viral DNA and then incorporate it into its own genome! This DNA sequence then serves as something of a bar code, allowing the bacterium to "remember" this DNA as dangerous and to pass on this information to its offspring.

As shown in the diagram, the viral DNA bar code is referred to as a "spacer." The bacterium has a unique location (called a "locus") in its genome where it accumulates many different bar codes from the many different viruses it has encountered. The DNA is then transcribed to produce non-coding (which means it doesn't encode protein) RNA which contains the same bar code information as the DNA.

Then, other proteins in the CAS system pick up this RNA and use it to identify foreign, invading DNA. The next time a bacterium (or one of its offspring) encounters the exact same foreign DNA, it will match the RNA bar code, and the bacterium will know that this DNA is dangerous and must be destroyed immediately. The virus is toast before it even has a chance to inflict any damage on the bacterium!

The CRISPR system is a relatively new discovery in microbiology, but its potential applications are already known. Friendly bacteria are used in the food industry, and knowledge of bacterial immunity could allow the creation of bacteria which are resistant to viruses. Also, it is possible such knowledge could be useful for genetic engineering of higher organisms.

Source: Manuela Villion and Sylvain Moineau. "The double-edged sword of CRISPR-Cas systems." Cell Research advance online publication 4 September 2012; doi: 10.1038/cr.2012.124

(Diagram: James atmos/Wikimedia Commons)

Hard knocks to the head are unfortunate staples of contact sports like football and hockey, and mounting research shows that repeated head injuries can lead to early-onset dementia and other terrible neurological conditions. What, if anything, can be done to make these sports safer?

Tune into the Newton Blog at 3 p.m. EDT on Thursday for a live chat hosted by Science Magazine.

I'd like to say that it was always unintentional. That I painstakingly struggled to keep my eyelids from closing, my head from drooping, and my consciousness from waning. But no, more often than not, I embraced it.

The lecture hall had stadium seating. Steep steps led down to the bottom floor, from where the professor delivered his physical science sermons. Each level of the hall featured long, connected tables with chairs positioned at regular intervals. There were no individual desks.

The lecture hall's layout was highly conducive to sleeping for two important reasons. One, the professor rarely craned his head upwards to glance higher than the third or fourth row, so students seated in the upper levels could snooze without suffering his reproachful gaze. And two, the surfaces offered plenty of room to sprawl out comfortably. Many times I laid my arms out flat before me and used my forearms as pillows. I'm a skinny guy, so they weren't incredibly cushioning, but with the help of lulling lectures on thermodynamics, circuits, magnetism, and momentum, they more than sufficed.

About twenty minutes into a lecture, I was usually snoozing soundly or locked in the nonsensical stupor of sleep stage one. I could tell the exact moment when I began to drift off by appraising the legibility of my handwritten notes. Occasionally, the notes themselves would be directly subject to my dreariness, and I'd pop out of a daze to look down and read inane stories that had little to do with physics and more to do with a surprising coalescence of dragons and soccer.

With about ten minutes left in class, however, I would snap back to alertness. This abrupt awakening often coincided with the beginning of a demonstration. Physics may not always be engaging in an auditory sense, but it sure is entertaining to watch.

Despite my lackadaisical attitude to attentiveness in physics lectures, I garnered excellent grades in both course semesters at UW-Madison, which I attribute mostly to studiousness and partly to luck. But I also think it has to do with something else. Traditional college physics lectures, by and large, have little effect on grades or even learning in general.

But don't take my word for it. (After all, I slept through at least 40% of my physics lectures. So I'm certainly not a reputable source.) Take the word of Professor Graham Giggs, former Director of the Oxford Learning Institute, who says that lecturing does not achieve educational objectives, nor is it an efficient use of the lecturer's or the student's time and energy.

Giggs is not alone in this belief. Dr. David Hestenes, a noted theoretical physicist who for 30 years taught at Arizona State University, firmly believes that the physics lecture is ineffectual. It doesn't reinforce concepts or understanding, only memorization, he says.

"The classes only seem to be really working for about 10 percent of the students," Hestenes told NPR. "And I maintain, I think all the evidence indicates, that these 10 percent are the students that would learn it even without the instructor. They essentially learn it on their own."

"Students have to be active in developing their knowledge," he furthered. "They can't passively assimilate it."

During a typical physics lecture, students have five actionable options. They can text, peruse Facebook, sleep, listen, or take notes. The problem here is that the last two choices -- the only ones that might actually aid in learning -- are mutually exclusive. You can listen, and try to wrap your head around what the professor is hastily lecturing about, or you can furiously take notes and throw comprehension out the door. More often than not, this conundrum simply boils down to having your mind boggled now -- during class -- or later -- when you try to decipher your hurried academic scribbling. There's got to be a better way.

For 20 years, Harvard physics professor Eric Mazur has been using a lecture method he calls "peer instruction," also known as "deliberate practice." The method divvies students in large lectures into smaller groups within the classroom. Students are presented with a multiple-choice question and asked to answer it as a group using an electronic device. Mazur monitors the percentage of correct answers, which is low initially. He then has the groups discuss the problem and answer it again. The percentage of correct answers rises. Mazur then informs the entire class of the correct answer and leads a brief discussion on the reasoning behind it.

"What we found over now close to 20 years of using this approach is that the learning gains at the end of the semester nearly triple," Mazur told NPR.

A study appearing in Science last year corroborated Mazur's amazing results. Physics Nobel Prize winner Carl Wieman put the method to the test at the University of British Columbia. After 15 weeks of using deliberate practice, students performed over twice as well on a 12-question multiple choice test as their peers learning the same material in a traditional lecture control group.

The results speak for themselves. Physics departments have nothing to lose by trying out this new, innovative method of teaching. Students, however, may be deprived of nap time.