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The Textbooks Were Wrong About How Your Tongue Works (www.nytimes.com)
submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/science
34 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

The perception of taste is remarkably complex, not only on the tongue but in organs throughout the body.

The idea that specific tastes are confined to certain areas of the tongue is a myth that “persists in the collective consciousness despite decades of research debunking it.” Also wrong: the notion that taste is limited to the mouth.

https://www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1056/NEJMra2304578

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[–] jordanlund 46 points 5 months ago (3 children)

There's lots of stuff textbooks get wrong simply because there's no easy way to explain how it ACTUALLY works at an appropriate grade level.

For example, wings and lift. We're told that the curved surface of a wing causes air to move faster on one side of the wing than the other and this generates lift.

No, that's not how it works, but you can be forgiven for thinking that since that's all most people are taught.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/video/no-one-can-explain-why-planes-stay-in-the-air/

[–] alilbee 24 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I read the article you posted here (great read btw, thanks for posting) and I think just to quibble, that idea of lift (Bernoulli's Theorem) is not wrong, just insufficient. It sounds like that mechanism definitely contributes to the overall generated lift, but doesn't tell the whole story.

I really enjoyed the bit about Einstein designing an aerofoil and when it was tested, the pilot said the plane "waddled like a pregnant duck". Really interesting to see one of the smartest physicists to ever live just kinda give up on aeronautics and consider it a "youthful folly".

[–] [email protected] 22 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I’ve seen this exact article quoted several times with the “you’ve been wrong about this all along” and it’s like the people saying that don’t even bother to read. No it’s not saying that lift isn’t generated due to low pressure forces, like you’re claiming. It’s saying that it’s not a complete explanation. It’s missing some forces that make up the rest of the lift.

No, that’s not how it works

You can be forgiven for thinking that that’s not how it works 🙃

Like it says, it’s the most popular theory with scientists, they’re just still missing a complete explanation. Lift from low pressure is still the most popular partial explanation.

[–] Paragone -5 points 5 months ago

And, given the fact that having pressure-measurement manometer-arrays built into wings proves that the suction-side lift is greater than the pressure-side lift, and that this has been known since before The Great War..

some of us are inclined to consider the evidence to be valid.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

Causes less air pressure at the upper side, so the lower side pushes up, no?

And the upside down flying is simply due to gliding mechanics, no?

[–] jordanlund 3 points 5 months ago

Nope. Read the link, it's fascinating and complicated.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

And the upside down flying is simply due to gliding mechanics, no?

Not sure what you mean by this. But planes still generate lift when flying upside down. Wings with a symmetrical curve can also generate lift. Flat wings with no curve at all can also generate lift.

Pressure differences are definitely involved. That's the only way air pushes against things, after all, so the fact that there is a lift force implies a pressure difference. However the cause of the pressure difference is rather complicated.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Extremely obvious for anyone who actually questioned this myth. But there were few who did.

[–] venusaur 8 points 5 months ago (6 children)

Where else can you taste food? In your nose?

[–] [email protected] 25 points 5 months ago

Yes, sort of. Taste and smell are almost the same sense.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I always take my food as a suppository. Rectal taste buds hit different.

[–] bazus1 9 points 5 months ago (1 children)

You're not wrong. Super-spicy foods are tasted twice.

[–] victorz 5 points 5 months ago

I felt this comment.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

To our surprise, sweet taste receptors are expressed in most of the organs of the human body, including the stomach, pancreas, gut, liver, and brain

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/fft2.407

There is utility to being able to detect the presence of the things different tastes are supposed to detect (protein, sugars, acid, salt, toxins) at various points in the digestive tract as well, so your body know when to do things like empty the stomach or release certain digestive enzymes in the gut. Or make you vomit if you eat something toxic.

[–] Veraxus 7 points 5 months ago (1 children)
[–] alilbee 3 points 5 months ago

This was a cool read, thanks for posting! That final bit about experiments on both the color and sound while chewing also affecting flavor is super interesting.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

You can actually hear the difference between sweet and salty but most people haven't tried it

[–] Krudler 1 points 5 months ago

Dip your bare feet in a bowl of garlicy water and you'll taste it

[–] Treczoks 7 points 5 months ago

Sadly, that link only provides a simple abstract and a link to a one-page disclosure form, but nothing substantial at all.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

taste embedding taste embedding

[–] [email protected] -5 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

It's not the only "what passes for science curriculum in schools in the United States" factoid that is inaccurate.

The thing about genetics and blue / brown eye color was obviously false to me even as a child. I can look around and see that there are green eyes and that there's some disagreement about what is "hazel" versus "brown" or light brown or whatever. To me it was obviously wrong that it was as simple as a single gene that was dominant / recessive in exactly the way it was described -- like if there are two people with brown eyes, there is a 0% chance that they have anything recessive going on other than that single blue gene -- and it pissed me off that they were teaching us something in school that was wrong, just because it was sort of approximately true, and if we pretend it's always true, it lets us make the point we were trying to make.

There are surely other examples you can draw from; I am sure there are plenty that really do work the way they were telling us eye color did. You don't need to teach the kids to believe the textbook when it doesn't line up with what they can directly observe, and not to ask questions but just say it was how it was described in the book, and ignore counterexamples they can see and interact with on a daily basis.

If you can't tell, I'm still to this day a little pissed off about it. 🙂

[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Punnett squares and gene dominance/recession is a very simplified explanation for a single gene. A lot of things, like eye color, are controlled by multiple genes. And that doesn't even touch epigenetics, where even a dominant gene may not be expressed, usually due to environmental factors. So it's not wrong, just simplified, and that should be explained. If someone told you "this is how it works, and there is nothing else going on" then they lied to you. But the genetics is true.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Newtonian mechanics are not wrong, just simplified. That is fine. What I’m saying is wrong is picking an example which specifically violates the exact parameters of the simplified model you’re teaching. It’s like if you’re teaching Newton’s laws and you decide to model a space probe traveling at 10% of light speed as your example. Just pick another example. For Punnet squares, you could talk about the bean plants, or blood types in people, or whatever you want that is pretty well abstracted as a single gene. Idk, for me I was never told in school that the blue/brown square was any simplified model of what was really going on. It was just, it’s a single gene, it’s brown and blue, that’s what’s up.

So this book actually goes into quite a lot of detail about why I think this is a problem. Page 110-112 talk about the original conclusion by adult scientists that blue and brown eyes work exactly in this simplified model. Pages 114-131 go into the incredible level of genetic and environmental and perceptual factors that actually determine eye color and what the actual spectrum is and why.

What I think is interesting is the pages between, where the author cites a bunch of scientists who had clearly modified their data to get the “right” answers (e.g. swearing confidently that two blue-eyed parents could never produce a brown eyed child, when the actual tested number was 12%). Just kind of clinging to the simplified model because it’s what you were told.

I don’t think we need to give the full hugely complicated model in a genetics class, although I actually think eye color would be a great way to introduce the idea that it’s a lot more complicated than just the Punnet squares in some light touching on it way. But to me, teaching the kids the page 110 explanation is a mistake because it’s teeing them up to commit the same kinds of mistakes from the following pages.