pstarr wrote:I did pay attention, smart-ass. The study, "a computer game simulating the management of an organization experiencing a series of problems and crises is . . . " bullshit. How reliable are intelligence tests of any kind? Intelligence tests measure cultural memes, the general ability to take tests, confidence at test-taking etc. But one that uses a computer game? Really.
It gets worse: in this instance comfort/discomfort with an unusual physical sensation (harmless CO2 overload) might in itself distress and disable a person's test-taking ability. Nervous people do not do well on tests. Nausea or other secondary effects may make one nervous. Reminds of phony anti-pot 'studies' that Planty posts year on and year out. Boring. Not mentally challenging. jejune.
I think this is a fair point. Physiological tests for effects of different diets for example have to be run over several days in a metabolic chamber to ensure that the air exchange between the subject and the room are measured completely. Otherwise you are feeding the test subject Diet A and assuming that is where they are developing chemical energy from to continue their biological process. If you feed a person in a metabolic chamber test food s that are very high in fiber but very low in calorie content then the energy they expend will by design come from body stores of glycogen, fat and protein. If you do not carefully measure the gasses expelled you can not determine what the mix of substrates catabolized is, so your test is invalid. By the same token to measure the effects of a major shift in diet from the Standard American Diet (SAD) to the Ketogenic Anti-Cancer diet you need not only a metabolic chamber, you need to repeat the metabolic testing weekly for a period of 6 weeks to 8 weeks because it takes the human body that long to shift its catabolic enzymes from being tuned to the SAD diet to the Anti-Cancer diet.
To do a real test of the mental effects of different CO2 levels you would need to borrow a submarine from someone, most likely the navy of some country, where you can house your test subjects for a period of eight weeks. Then you need to alter the air chemistry to those of the test and give the subjects days to weeks to get used to those conditions and relax so that they are not distracted by test anxiety. You also need to screen out people who are claustrophobic or afraid of water or so on and so forth that would skew the test results.
After you do all that you might have a valid testing program to study the mental and physiological effects of a 1000 ppmv or 2500 ppmv CO2 concentration compared to pre-industrial levels. In fact because you have complete control of the atmosphere you can also compare them to current ambient of 400 ppmv and pre-industrial ambient of 275 ppmv and even deep ice age levels of 190 ppmv.
This actually seems like a good study for the government to run to find out results, but as someone pointed out earlier the world navies have been operating submarines for over a century now and they often have quite substantial CO2 readings without severe ill effects happening to the crew. During World War II the US Navy used Potassium Hydroxide pellets for submarines that had to stay submerged for long periods of time and NASA has used the same technology going all the way back to the 1960's. Before nuclear power was adopted by the US Navy submarines would have nothing but potassium hydroxide and to scrub out CO2 and compressed O2 tanks to replace the gas the crew was breathing. Because the ship supply officer had to account for both the scrubber chemicals and O2 in his ships budget report they would not use the scrubbers until CO2 levels were high enough to effect crew performance.