Nathan Efron whores himself for Bausch & Lomb

October 19th, 2006

Now, those of you who are regular War On Error readers probably remember the sad case of Dr Niko Tiliopoulos and his crazy formulas. So imagine my joy when Dr Nathan Efron foolishly released the “results” of his “research” on the Beer Goggle Effect to BBC News Online. An equation to calculate the effect of a colloquialism? Surely not….

Dear Dr Nathan Efron,

Some time ago I read an article on the BBC News Online website discussing your groundbreaking work on discovering the underlying causes of the phenomenon known as the beer goggle effect, leading to the equation:

Where
An = number of units of alcohol consumed
S = smokiness of the room (graded from 0-10, where 0 clear air; 10 extremely smoky)
L = luminance of ‘person of interest’ (candelas per square metre; typically 1 pitch black; 150 as seen in normal room lighting)
Vo = Snellen visual acuity (6/6 normal; 6/12 just meets driving standard)
d = distance from ‘person of interest’ (metres; 0.5 to 3 metres)

I read the article with much interest, and hope you can answer some further questions regarding this research.

Try as I might, I cannot seem to find the full paper. Could you let me know in which journal this research was published?

Being something of an amateur scientist myself, I subjected your equation to a simple sensitivity test. I was shocked to discover that alcohol was not the most important factor in determining the beer goggle effect. Instead, visual acuity appears to have the greatest influence on a persons susceptibility to the beer goggle effect. Is this correct? What evidence did you uncover to support such a discovery?

My friend is a cynic. He says that the article was nothing more than a thinly-veiled advertisement for the sponsors, Bausch & Lomb PureVision, who received a prominent mention in the article. I retorted that no respectable scientist would compromise their integrity to serve as a PR outlet for a company that funds their lab. Please tell him he’s wrong.

Your explanations are much appreciated.

Frank Swain

While we wait for a reply from Dr Efron, let’s have a look a his CV. The BBC article cites him as “Nathan Efron, Professor of Clinical Optometry at the University of Manchester”. Could this be the same Nathan Efron, Director of Eurolens Research, a “research and consultancy unit for the global contact lens industry”? Umm… Yes! And finally, for the grand prize, can anyone tell me who is the major corporate sponsor to Eurolens?

Yes! It’s Bausch & Lomb Incorporated!

A week later, it brings me a ridiculous amount of pleasure to see that Bausch & Lomb of funding scientific nonsense about Beer Goggles fame are in the news again, this time because of a global withdrawl of their contact lens solution after it caused outbreaks of Fusarium eye infections.

“Ronald Zarrella, chief executive officer of Bausch & Lomb, said: “After an extensive investigation involving thousands of tests, millions of dollars and collaboration with government agencies, health authorities and independent experts, there is no evidence of product contamination, tampering, counterfeiting or sterility failure.
That leads us to conclude that some aspect of the MoistureLoc formula may be increasing the relative risk of Fusarium infection in unusual circumstances.”

Really? It leads me to conclude that you should have spent your money testing the product properly rather than paying dodgy scientists to talk bollocks about beer goggles.

In your face, Bausch & Lomb!

Entry Filed under: The Letters

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