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behavior change: the difficulty of this endeavor was illustrated, if indirectly, by Barack Obama as he ran for president in 2008. While preparing for a debate, Obama was caught on tape complaining about how shallow the debates could be: “So when Brian Williams [of NBC News] is asking me about what’s a personal thing that you’ve done [that’s green], and I say, you know, ‘Well, I planted a bunch of trees.’ And he says, ‘I’m talking about personal.’ What I’m thinking in my head is, ‘Well, the truth is, Brian, we can’t solve global warming because I f—ing changed light bulbs in my house. It’s because of something collective.’” As reported in “Hackers and Spending Sprees,” Newsweek web exclusive, November 5, 2008.

DIRTY HANDS AND DEADLY DOCTORS: For Semmelweis’s sad ending, see Sherwin B. Nuland, The Doctor’s Plague: Germs, Childbed Fever, and the Strange Story of Ignatz Semmelweis (Atlas Books, 2003). / 204 “A raft of recent studies”: see Didier Pittet, “Improving Adherence to Hand Hygiene Practice: A Multidisciplinary Approach,” Emerging Infectious Diseases, March–April 2001. / 204–205 “To Err Is Human”: Linda T. Kohn, Janet Corrigan, and Molla S. Donaldson, To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System (National Academies Press, 2000). It should be noted that hospitals had already been trying for years to increase doctors’ hand-washing rates. In the 1980s, the National Institutes of Health launched a campaign to promote hand-washing in pediatric wards. The promotional giveaway was a stuffed teddy bear called T. Bear. Kids and doctors alike loved T. Bear—but they weren’t the only ones. When a few dozen T. Bears were pulled from the wards to be examined after just one week, every one of them was found to have acquired at least one of a host of new friends: Staphylococcus aureus, E. coli, Pseudomonas, Klebsiella, and several others. / 205–206 Cedars-Sinai Medical Center: see Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt, “Selling Soap,” The New York Times Magazine, September 24, 2006. It was Dr. Leon Bender, a urologist at Cedars-Sinai, who led us to this story. / 205 The Australian study: see J. Tibbals, “Teaching Hospital Medical Staff to Handwash,” Medical Journal of Australia 164 (1996). / 207 “Among the best solutions”: for disposable blood-pressure cuffs, see Kevin Sack, “Swabs in Hand, Hospital Cuts Deadly Infections,” The New York Times, July 27, 2007; for the silver-ion antimicrobial shield, see Craig Feied, “Novel Antimicrobial Surface Coatings and the Potential for Reduced Fomite Transmission of SARS and Other Pathogens,” unpublished manuscript, 2004; for neckties, see “British Hospitals Ban Long Sleeves and Neckties to Fight Infection,” Associated Press, September 17, 2007.

FORESKINS ARE FALLING: See Ingrid T. Katz and Alexi A. Wright, “Circumcision—A Surgical Strategy for HIV Prevention in Africa,” New England Journal of Medicine 359, no. 23 (December 4, 2008); also drawn from author interview with Katz.

Table of Contents

SuperFreakonomics

AN EXPLANATORY NOTE

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

NOTES