A Repsonse to The Honorable Viceroy Fizzlebottom

Dear Sir-bottom:

I write in response to your recent post “An Open Letter to Geneball.” I have done some research and conducted some critical experiments to address your question of luck, and its containment within fine American Lincoln pennies, amongst other objects.

I agree with you that we must foremost establish if such a thing as a good luck penny exists, and that we can then begin to discuss its degrees and ramifications. I addressed this question quite thoroughly.

I myself am a scientist of the genes, so my knowledge of luck and its containment within objects various and sundry is limited. In fact, aside from some rudimentary problems in Introductory Statistics, one could say that I am a veritable tenderfoot in the science of luck. (Sadly, no one has said that as it is a rather cumbersome statement and I hang out with people more inclined to the lowbrow) So, as a good scientist, I turned to the works of others. Namely, I performed a perfunctory literature search. Posting the inquiry “good luck” to my favorite scientific search engine, I found the following articles to be most pertinent. Salient portions from their abstracts, when available, are also included.

Ann Acad Med Singapore. 2007 Mar;36(3):217-20.
Take a bao if you are not superstitious.
Lim EC, Oh VM, Quek AM, Seet RC.

INTRODUCTION: Singaporeans are superstitious, and medical staff are no exception to the rule. We conducted a survey to determine the prevalence of superstitious beliefs and practices amongst doctors, nurses and medical students in Singapore. METHODS: Internet and face-to-face surveys of 68 respondents, all of whom completed the survey after being threatened with curses and hexes. RESULTS: Sixty-eight doctors, nurses and medical students responded to our survey. Only 11 admitted to being superstitious, yet 31 believed in the ill-fortune associated with eating bao or meat dumplings, 6 in the nefarious powers of black (5) or red (1) outfits on call, and 14 believed that bathing (6 insisting on the powers of the seven-flower bath) prior to the onset of a call portended good fortune, in terms of busy-ness of a call. Twenty-four believed in "black clouds", i.e. people who attracted bad luck whilst on call, and 32 refused to mouth the words "having a good call" until the day after the event. We discovered 2 hitherto undescribed and undiscovered superstitions, namely the benefits of eating bread and the need to avoid beef, for the good and ill fortune associated with their ingestion. DISCUSSION: Superstitious practices are alive and well in modern-day Singapore, the practice not necessarily being restricted to the poorly-educated or foolish.

I particularly enjoy hearing about the various types of ill-fortune Singapese believe in, and of course the concluding line is a real whopper. (Given the statements in the introduction, however, their findings don’t seem particularly astounding) However, no mention of pennies nor Singapese 1-cent pieces (they also call their $$ ‘dollars’; alas, no funny names there)

Harefuah. 2003 Nov;142(11):734-5, 807.Links
[Ingestion of an open safety pin--challenging treatment]
[Article in Hebrew]

DeRowe A, Fishman G, Avni H, Reider I, Ogorek D.

A 9 month old girl at the emergency room appeared with an acute onset of restlessness, drooling and suspected foreign body ingestion. An X-Ray revealed an open safety pin in the child's upper aero-digestive tract. The source of the safety pin was a "Hamsah" good luck charm that was attached to her bed. Open safety pins in the aero-digestive tract are difficult to manage and great care must be taken during removal to prevent further injury. Parents should be counseled regarding the presence of safety pins in the child's surroundings in order to prevent such hazards.

This is included simply as a public service: parents, please keep your Hamsah beads away from your children! One could say, however, that in this case the good luck token did not yield the intended result.

J Reprod Med. 1998 Mar;43(3):196-8.Links
Good luck rites in contemporary infertility.
Kemmann E, Cheron C, Bachmann G.

OBJECTIVE: To explore whether contemporary women use good luck rites in the infertility situation. STUDY DESIGN: Prospective study in a tertiary infertility center where women were asked to describe any type of good luck act performed on the day of critical medical intervention (either intrauterine insemination or embryo transfer) to achieve pregnancy. RESULTS: Four hundred thirty-eight consecutive infertile women participated. Good luck rituals, as defined by patients, included prayer, wearing of objects, fantasies and other acts performed specifically on the day of the medical intervention. While 40% of the study population reported engaging in a good luck act prior to intrauterine insemination of embryo transfer, there was no significant difference in pregnancy rates observed in women reporting utilization versus nonutilization of fertility rituals. CONCLUSION: This study indicated that good luck rites are commonly performed by women undergoing infertility procedures on the day of a critical intervention. The fact of their common presence attests to their importance for the well-being of the individual; however, there is no evidence of direct benefit in terms of higher pregnancy rates. The possibility of secondary benefits needs to be explored further.

In this study, rituals are found to have no statistical effect. They do not, however, provide the results for individual rites in this abstract; it is entirely possible that considered alone the totemic luck objects we are interested in would be seen to have an effect. Nevertheless, I would consider this a null result in that luck did not produce an outcome better than what was seen in the people who weren’t mildly delusional.

MD Comput. 1994 Sep-Oct;11(5):318-24.Links
Cables.
Cushing M Jr.

If you want to control your own computer installation, get the satisfaction of doing your own maintenance, and compensate for an inept or uninformed vendor, the information in this article will help you achieve these ends. Good luck and good cabling!

Another PSA: You can do it! Control your own installation! It’s not too hard! M Cushing Jr. Will show you how! Good cabling everyone!

Vet Hum Toxicol. 1981 Aug
Mexican good-luck charm potentially dangerous.
Sullivan G, Chavez PI.

I cannot access this article, but I’d say the title does not bode well for the presence of luck of this charm.

Med Hypotheses. 1979 Jul
The varieties of chance in scientific research.
Austin JH.

Four kinds of luck can be defined --- one that is pure "blind" luck, and three others that are influenced to some degree by certain behavioral characteristics. The term, altamirage is introduced to call attention to that special personal quality by which good luck is prompted as a result of personally distinctive actions (Chance IV). In contrast, serendipity involves finding valuable things as a result of happy accidents (Chance I), general exploratory behaviour (Chance II), or saga-city (Chance III). The most novel scientific discoveries occur when several varities of chance coincide.

In this report, Dr. Austin discourses about the various types of luck. He omitted Chance V: by carrying a bit of copper about in your pocket, but I reckon he might throw this in with Chance I.

Infirm Can. 1975 Aug
[The child as a good-luck object or the child as a burden]
[Article in French]
Vaillancourt-Wagner M.

I cannot access this article, and I fear this may be our best chance to address your issue directly. Note here, however, that both options are considered- basically pro-lucky or anti-lucky. Perhaps I should collaborate with this individual for further studies.

Tijdschr Gastroenterol. 1970
[Good luck letter to patients with an artificial anus]
[Article in Dutch]
Ceulemans G.

Huh. Yeah, I have to agree with the Dutch guy. Good luck with that.

So it appears that we have learned some interesting things about luck, but unfortunately the literature search was mostly for naught. First, not a single mention of pennies. Second, we have not reached any scientific conclusion on whether or not luck can be bestowed upon any object, penny or otherwise. I refined my search a bit, this time querying “lucky penny.” I obtain a singular hit.

Ulster Med J. 2004 Nov
"The lucky penny"--an incidental finding of hip dysplasia in a child with foreign body ingestion.
Hanratty BM, Thompson NW, Cowie GH, Thornberry GD.


CASE REPORT A two-year-old girl was brought to the emergency department following
the ingestion of a one pence coin. A thoracoabdominal radiograph demonstrated the presence of a coin within the first part of the duodenum.

This report contains two images: first, the X-ray showing the penny. Note also the young girl's bling (necklace and earring oddly left on during the scan).

And the important figure. The issues is that the child's right hip (left side of image) has less bone in the hip socket region than the left hip.

And finally, from the concluding paragraph of this very report:

In this case, a thoraco-abdominal radiograph which was taken to investigate an ingested coin, revealed a previously undiagnosed and asymptomatic dysplastic hip joint highlighting the fact that significant hip dysplasia can exist undetected until complications develop. A reconstructive pelvic osteotomy is planned in an attempt to minimise the associated risk of premature arthritis. The swallowed coin may prove to be this child's 'lucky penny'.

And so it appears that pennies can be lucky! Except, in this case, we are not actually dealing with a penny- this study was reported by a group from Belfast. So we have determined scientifically that the Irish one pence piece is lucky.

As a man of rigor, however, I cannot let this determination slide as a scientific truth. As noted, the result technically says nothing about lucky pennies. So I devised a brief experiment to test this in the confines of my own laboratory.

Design: I have included five subjects: left computer speaker (the left audio channel speaker for my desktop at work), right computer speaker (as above, but the right speaker), box of entropy (I cannot explain this properly in this parenthetical statement), Renaud (the only other member of my lab presently available), and myself. Multiple subjects are included to minimize individual effects. There are three test conditions: without a lucky penny, with a penny which is not lucky, and with a lucky penny. The first two conditions are controls for luck, the third is the experimental condition.

A brief description of the process by which five lucky pennies were come upon specifically for the purposes of this experiment: I set aside one moderately lustrous penny for each subject. Pennies were tossed until the second time they landed heads, as of course only pennies which are heads up should be picked up, as tails up do not give the picker luck. Pennies were then dipped into a fountain to endow with the fullest capacity of luck. As no actually fountain was available, pennies were dragged across my computer screen over five different fountains, depicted below.

Left speaker's lucky fountain:

Right speaker's lucky fountain:

Box of Entropy's lucky fountain:

Renaud's lucky fountain:

Geneball's lucky fountain:

The experiment: if a tail is thrown on a luck-neutral coin (shiny Oklahoma quarter), the subject is shot (flesh wound only). Five survived tosses suffice as thoroughly lucky. (For all objects not sufficiently animated to perform the toss, the coin must strike the object before hitting the desk to count.)

Results (no. of tosses until shot)

No penny/ ‘Neutral’ penny/ Lucky penny

Left speaker 0/ 1/ 2

Right Speaker 0/ 3/ 0

Box of Entropy 1/ 1/ 2

Renaud 0/ 1/ 0

Geneball 1/ 0/ 0

Results: It appears that having a penny at all is preferable to not having any sort of totem, as both ‘neutral’ and ‘lucky’ pennies result in more successful tosses. However, this experiment can say nothing to the end of the validity of lucky coins as of the five results, in two cases the lucky penny was actually lucky, in two cases it was unlucky, and in one case it was ineffective.

In conclusion, I suppose it would be perfectly reasonable for this man to believe his penny to be lucky, as this study shows that having a penny is preferable to not having a penny, if you want to avoid being shot. The significance attached to the individual penny, as opposed to the one he got from the Popeyes around the corner, is not scientifically verified, however.

And now, to philosophize, based on these studies and my highly scientific personal opinions. First, we have clearly seen that pennies can be lucky, as can low-monetary units in other currencies. I would argue that this concept is best left to the low-value units, because I’m sure the Hobo would be able to provide you a detailed luck/benefit analysis wherein the actual value of the currency will, in short order, outstrip its value as a bearer of good fortune. Such a financial analysis is hardly conclusive, however, as it is limited by the scope of the analysis as well as confounding factors such as “what made you actually get the raise, being more competent than high school students at taking movie tickets or carrying around a penny?”- some things just cannot be known, or take longer than his short-term analysis can adequately quantify. All the same, I bet your friend would be quite remiss to show you a lucky $100 bill, because if he’s showing you all the shit he’s got that’s lucky he probably doesn’t have too many c-notes at his ready disposal to not be disposed of.

I would feel confident in then taking this further and believing that other objects might also have money. I see no reason why an object would be more or less lucky just because it is not legal tender for all debts, public or private.

And of course things can carry as much bad luck as good. I cannot believe you did not consult the Johnny Depp epic Pirates of the Carribean: Curse of the Black Pearl before inquiring. If Johnny Depp shares the screen with something, it must be true. Note: this does hold for scissor-handed people and cocaine. Yes, cocaine is true.

On your final point: it does seem that more lucky things would find their way to you upon acquisition of the first lucky item. However, this probably depends heavily on the type of luck the initial item bequeaths: if it is luck with acquiring more luck, then goody for you. If, however, it is luck with ladies, I am sorry but you will not be acquiring a rabbit’s foot anytime soon. Go cry to your new girlfriend about it.

I hope this correspondence finds you in good health, etc. etc. and I hope that I have scientifically put to rest some of your questions about lucky pennies and so forth by updating you on the current state of luck research in the scientific community.

Heigh ho!

Geneball

P.S. If you liked my trawling of scientific literature for purposes of entertainment, I suggest you check out this blog, where it is done with some regularity and a good amount of hilarity.