Noted

Alex Eben Meyer

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Increases in political polarization made Yale researchers wonder if professional golfers’ performance would suffer if Democrats and Republicans played side by side. 

Players on the PGA Tour are randomly assigned to tee pairings. The researchers compared the performance of groups in which all players had similar political leanings to groups containing at least one Democrat and one Republican. Controlling for factors such as age, race, and player ranking, they found that golfers in mixed groups averaged 0.2 more strokes to complete a round, with the size of the gap ranging from 0 to 0.55 depending on the intensity of national political conflict. Those gaps can translate to a loss of thousands of dollars per tournament. 

The study, the researchers say, suggests that political differences do influence people’s ability to work effectively—even when they are not talking to their coworkers.

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Egyptian pharaohs were buried with all the earthly accoutrements needed for an afterlife befitting their station. Those provisions, Yale researchers say, may have included opiates. 

When the contents of alabaster vessels found in King Tutankhamun’s tomb were first analyzed in the 1920s, determining the exact composition was not possible. Now, Yale scientists analyzing a similar vase from the Yale Peabody Museum have detected chemical traces of opiates. The finding supports the idea of widespread opium use in ancient Egypt, including the distinct possibility that the material in the vessels from King Tut’s tomb also contained opiates. The researchers note, too, that finger marks inside some jars suggest looters tried to scrape out the contents. Whatever was stored in these vessels was considered important enough to accompany Tutankhamun to the afterlife, and valuable enough to embolden grave robbers.