Black Ball Research Articles

The Page Fence Giants: A History of Black Baseball's Pioneering Champions by Mitch Lutzke

Reviewed by: The Page Fence Giants: A History of Black Baseball's Pioneering Champions by Mitch Lutzke Jim Overmyer Mitch Lutzke. The Page Fence Giants: A History of Black Baseball's Pioneering Champions. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2018. 264 pp. Paper, $39.95. Almost fifty years after Robert Peterson's Only the Ball Was White laid the foundation for black baseball history, writers and researchers are still adding missing pieces. Mitch Lutzke has filled an important niche with his book about the Page Fence Giants who, while only in existence for four seasons, rank among the handful of best trailblazing black teams of the late nineteenth century. While it's good to have light focused on the Giants, Lutzke's decision to tell the day-by-day story over four years, while always full of newly unearthed facts, bogs down along the way. The on-field ethos of black ball is one of fast, daring baserunning. This narrative proceeds more on a station-to-station basis, without a powerful cleanup slugger to clear the sacks. The team was based in Adrian, Michigan, a city of about nine thousand people in the mid-1890s. The man who provided the initial spark to bring the team into existence was the well-known black ballplayer and promoter Bud Fowler, who came to Adrian for a game in 1894. In addition to his batting eye, he brought along "masterful marketing ability" (27). He thought Adrian had promise and was back the following spring with an all-black squad. The Page Fence Giants were named after a local firm founded by J. Wallace Page, who also did a great deal to bankroll the squad. Page was an Adrian area farmer who had been convinced for years that there should be a better alternative for keeping livestock than barbed wire, the sharp points on which made it hard to string and potentially injurious to the animals. Significant experimentation produced a fence that looked a lot like the wire farm fences of today. His Page Woven Wire Fence Company supplied just what the farmers of a growing America needed, and made the little Michigan city "the fence capital of the world" (32). [End Page 241] Page Fence supplied its namesake team with a possibly unique feature, its own railroad car, complete with a cook and porter. Black teams in the pre-Negro Leagues era played most of their games on the road, "barnstorming" from town to town. This sort of schedule was rough on players, who constantly forced to hit the road after a game. It was additionally onerous for black teams, where segregation, practiced actively or subtly, could limit options for lodging and meals. If adequate accommodations couldn't be found, "The Giants would simply hitch their fancy car to the rear of a passenger or freight train, arrive in town, uncouple, and sit on a side track to await their daily parade and ball game" (37). The parade referred to was another special Giants feature—the players donned colorful coats and rode bicycles through town to the ballpark, further inciting interest and attendance. The bikes were provided by a cycle manufacturer in return for publicity. J. Walter Page provided the railroad car and his other aid on the same terms—he sent a salesman and fence samples on the road with the Giants, and a display of woven wire fence appeared outside many ballparks where the Giants were competing. Due to no one's fault the Giants' run from 1895 to 1898 was a short one. They were launched just as the US economy went into depression beginning in 1893. Before the team folded, though, it claimed bragging rights to the national black baseball championship of 1896 by winning a long series against the Cuban X Giants from the East. Lutzke is a hardworking researcher; for example, he pursued the Giants' schedule through ninety-four period newspapers. But, having assembled a truckload of information, he falls into the trap of unloading it all for us. The Page Fence Giants chronological structure soon adopts a repetitive "they played here, then they played there, and then they played there" rhythm. Not much is known about many of the...

Black Ball and the Boardwalk: The Bacharach Giants of Atlantic City, 1916–1929

Book Review| April 01 2016 Black Ball and the Boardwalk: The Bacharach Giants of Atlantic City, 1916–1929 Overmyer, James E. Black Ball and the Boardwalk: The Bacharach Giants of Atlantic City, 1916–1929. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2014. Pp. vii + 275. Photographs, appendices, notes, bibliography, and index. $39.95, pb. Christopher R. Davis Christopher R. Davis South Texas College Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of Sport History (2016) 43 (1): 132–133. https://doi.org/10.5406/jsporthistory.43.1.132 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Christopher R. Davis; Black Ball and the Boardwalk: The Bacharach Giants of Atlantic City, 1916–1929. Journal of Sport History 1 January 2016; 43 (1): 132–133. doi: https://doi.org/10.5406/jsporthistory.43.1.132 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveUniversity of Illinois PressJournal of Sport History Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright 2016 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois2016 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Black Ball and the Boardwalk: The Bacharach Giants of Atlantic City, 1916–1929 by James E. Overmyer

Black Ball and the Boardwalk: The Bacharach Giants of Atlantic City, 1916–1929 by James E. Overmyer

Black Ball and the Boardwalk: The Bacharach Giants of Atlantic City, 1916–1929

Black Ball and the Boardwalk: The Bacharach Giants of Atlantic City, 1916–1929

Search for low-scale gravity signatures in multi-jet final states with the ATLAS detector at s = 8 $$ \sqrt{s}=8 $$ TeV

We search for evidence of physics beyond the Standard Model in the production of final states with multiple high transverse momentum jets, using 20.3 fb$^{-1}$ of proton-proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS detector at $\sqrt{s} = 8$ TeV. No excess of events beyond Standard Model expectations is observed, and upper limits on the visible cross-section for non-Standard Model production of multi-jet final states are set. Using a wide variety of models for black hole and string ball production and decay, the limit on the cross-section times acceptance is as low as 0.16 fb at the 95% CL for a minimum scalar sum of jet transverse momentum in the event of about 4.3 TeV. Using models for black hole and string ball production and decay, exclusion contours are determined as a function of the production mass threshold and the gravity scale. These limits can be interpreted in terms of lower-mass limits on black hole and string ball production that range from 4.6 to 6.2 TeV.

Thermal Comfort Test and Analysis of an Office Building in Winter

In this paper, an office building's indoor environmental parameters in winter are tested and its comfort and its influencing factors are analyzed. The study used a thermal comfort equipment to obtain parameters including dry bulb temperature, wet bulb temperature, black ball temperature, relative humidity and wind speed. Then these parameters are available to calculate PMV-PPD. The results showed that the range of PMV mean value is from-0.83 to 0.58 and the range of PPD mean value is from 8 % to 22 %.

Analisis Perbandingan Experiential Value antara Hong Tang dan Black Ball serta Hubungannya dengan Customer Satisfaction

Black Ball and Hong Tang are two pioneers of Taiwanese dessert sellers in Jakarta. Both of them have product offering characteristics that are alike and have the same target market. From the initial observation, the researcher found that even though Black Ball has more outlets than Hong Tang, but Black Ball seems to be less popular than Hong Tang. The consumers’ preferences are varied, there are some consumers prefer Hong Tang, but there are also those who choose Black Ball, because of the food quality, the service provided, and also the experiences they get during the consumption process. Therefore, both Black Ball and Hong Tang have to consider about the experiential value to be offered to their customers, in order to increase their customer satisfaction, so that they can sustainably survive in the midst of challenging competition. The objectives of this research are to examine whether there is any difference of experiential value dimensions and customer satisfaction between Hong Tang and Black Ball and to examine the relationship between experiential value dimensions and customer satisfaction of Hong Tang and Black Ball. The result of this research concludes that there is no difference of all experiential value dimensions and customer satisfaction between Hong Tang and Black Ball and there is a strong and significant relationship between all experiential value dimensions and customer satisfaction of Hong Tang and Black Ball.

Production of black holes and string balls in a two-dimensional split-fermion model

We present cross-sections for the black hole and string ball production in proton-proton collisions in a TeV-scale gravity model with split fermions in two dimensions. The cross-section for black hole and string ball production in the split-fermion model is smaller than in the non-split-fermion model. The drop of the cross-section for the string ball production can be one to two orders of magnitude with the increase of the width of the brane from $L=0$ to 15 $\text{TeV}^{-1}$. The cross-section for string ball production in two-dimensional split fermion model reduces more in comparison to black holes. Black holes are quite hard to be observed at the LHC. In fact, taking into account the current experimental limits on the fundamental Planck scale, black holes cannot be produced at the LHC. Cross-section for string ball production depends significantly on string coupling constant, making it very model dependent. We investigate the range of values of string coupling constant from 0.02 to 0.4. There has been no evidence for production of string balls at $\sqrt{s}=8$ TeV. A two-dimensional split fermion model with a extremely thick brane can account for the absence of signature of string balls for a world with the value of fundamental Planck scale even as low as 1 TeV.

Search for microscopic black holes and string balls in final states with leptons and jets with the ATLAS detector at s $$ \sqrt{s} $$ = 8 TeV

A search for an excess of events with multiple high transverse momentum objects including charged leptons and jets is presented, using 20.3 fb^-1 of proton-proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider in 2012 at a centre-of-mass energy of sqrt(s) = 8 TeV. No excess of events beyond Standard Model expectations is observed. Using extra-dimensional models for black hole and string ball production and decay, exclusion contours are determined as a function of the mass threshold for production and the fundamental gravity scale for two, four and six extra dimensions. For six extra dimensions, mass thresholds of 4.8-6.2 TeV are excluded at 95% confidence level, depending on the fundamental gravity scale and model assumptions. Upper limits on the fiducial cross-sections for non-Standard Model production of these final states are set.

Crystal Spheres as the World

A geometric concept of the world (W ) is considered where the manifold W is identified with a locally trivial fibre bundle pr: W ! U of so–called crystal spheres over a manifold U called the universal time. For every point p 2 U, Mn = pr 1 (p) is a n–dimensional crystal sphere and close crystal spheres are called the parallel universes. There exists a geometric black hole on the smooth manifold M n. Tensor fields, fibre bundles, operators (physical structures and equations) can be deformed towards the black hole into continuous and sectionally smooth those, further, they can be retracted together with the black hole into a small black ball to initiate the Big Bang.

Building Resilient Communities

This paper will explore the concept of resilience from its roots in ecology to the application of this ecological concept of resilience to social and community resilience in the context of climate change. In this context, resilience is seen as a property of complex adaptive communities rather than of individuals. This paper will explore how this ecological concept of resilience has been taken up both by climate adaptation research and by the Transition Town movement. This ecological concept of resilience is at odds with the individualism of both psychological and economic approaches to resilience in relation to climate change.

Book Review: Emigrant Clippers to Australia: The Black Ball Line, its Operation, People and Ships 1852–1871

Book Review: Emigrant Clippers to Australia: The Black Ball Line, its Operation, People and Ships 1852–1871

Editors' Note: House Style

The true mystery of world is visible, not invisible.-Oscar WildeFind out who you are and do it on purpose.- Dolly PartonHouse of Dior. House of Chanel. House of St. Laurent. House of Mizrahi. House of Labeija. House of Pendavis. House of Ninja. House of Xtravaganza. Emerging in 1970s and 1980s within underground black drag ball scene, house networks provided a critical community for queer youth of color. The ball circuit, whose history extends to Harlem drag balls of 1930s, was revitalized in 1960s by black drag queens frustrated by restrictiveness of existing drag culture. Balls were held in early morning hours in Harlem, allowing for safe passage of contestants in their finery through streets, and for participation of ballgoers who worked late hours hustling. The performances, and fashions, were legendary. The first house was created in 1972, when Crystal LaBeija, in an inspired promotional move, co-sponsored the first annual House of LaBeija ball. With a nod to glamour and patronage system of great fashion houses, drag houses instituted their own family structure, headed by mothers, and sometimes fathers, who oversaw their children, some of whom faced rejection from their biological families or their working-class African American and Latino communities. While houses were initially formed to prepare and promote their competitors in upcoming balls, they provided space for much broader, adaptable family roles, with room for members not interested in walking to offer support and companionship.The range of roles enabled by queer house culture has resulted in an ever- expanding roster of contestants and categories represented at balls. Butch queens, femme queens, butch queens in drag, (lesbian or female-tomale trans) butches, or females battle for top scores in face, model's body, luscious body, muscular body, thugrealness, banjee girl realness, executive realness, designer's delight, or European runway. Costumes might be selfcrafted, or in label-based competitions, purchased or mopped (shoplifted). The spectrum of identities performed on floor, and craft and spectacle of performances themselves, move to center stage routine labor of self-presentation. Ball culture entered mainstream consciousness, briefly, in early 1990s, in wake of Jennie Livingston's documentary Paris is Burning (1991), Malcolm McLaren's Deep in (1989), Design Industries Foundation for AIDS Love Ball (1989), and Madonna's Vogue (1990), which appropriated dance style invented by ball participants. But nuances of house society exceed its stylistic cooptation, and its socioeconomic context remains persistently unfashionable. The house communities have continued to evolve and flourish, regardless, below mainstream radar, incorporating a host of new stylistic influences and performing a critical social function.1The dynamics of house ball culture intersect in provocative ways with questions addressed by diverse works in Fashion issue of WSQ. How do we negotiate and perform identity, collectively and as individuals, via spectacle of fashion? In what ways do social and economic conditions coincide with politics of sexuality, idiosyncrasies of personal practices, and swirl of commercial images to result in broader shifts in cultural style? How can we reconcile tension between youth, innovation, and subcultural creativity, and a highly adaptable, image-hungry, global industry? When does style become part of a life philosophy, or a broader social compact? How can fashion navigate murky territory between resemblance, identification, and difference? Is it possible to actualize a new identity, or a new reality, through a rigorous regimen of selfpresentation, even in shadows of commercial fashion industry? As authors and artists who take part in this issue argue so forcefully, fashion never exists in a vacuum and is never just about clothes. …

AMY MILNE-SMITH. London Clubland: A Cultural History of Gender and Class in Late Victorian Britain.

Amy Milne-Smith's book on gentlemen's clubs in late Victorian London is a useful addition to the literature on British elites. The governing class in Britain was not a narrowly aristocratic caste but a broader coalition of the well-educated and propertied, and it was in institutions like these clubs that aristocrats, leading professionals, and businessmen forged a sense of corporate identity as “gentlemen.” In this way, consciousness of class took on a particularly gendered form. In a series of thematic chapters Milne-Smith examines the efforts of club members to create a community of shared sensibility, starting with the processes by which clubs sought to exclude (“black ball”) those men whose status, character, manners, or politics did not pass scrutiny. Those accepted were “less defined by any formal sense of class than by a commonality of activities, lifestyle, and taste” (p. 37). Highlights of the book are the colorful accounts of the various transgressions of respectable masculinity that endangered club membership, ranging from Percy Douglas's public fistfight with his father to the member of the Savage Club who smuggled in his wife disguised as a man. Using bad language, treating servants poorly, drinking excessively, and incurring bad gambling debts were all deemed incompatible with gentlemanliness and merited disciplinary action. But the creation of a cohesive governing class rested on more than conforming to normative ideals, which leads Milne-Smith to an important argument. She claims that historians of men ought to be as sensitive to the importance of gossip as historians of women have been, because clubs were places where men shared rumors, stories, and jokes in a way that created and strengthened social networks. In order for these gossip networks to operate as mechanisms of social closure, however, their knowledge had to be kept secret, and so revealing to the public or the press what was heard in club conversation was considered a grave social offense. As a contribution to the history of privacy, this is timely.

Effects of aging and tai chi on a finger-pointing task with a choice paradigm.

Background. This cross-sectional study examined the effect of aging on performing finger-pointing tasks involving choices and whether experienced older Tai Chi practitioners perform better than healthy older controls in such tasks. Methods. Thirty students and 30 healthy older controls were compared with 31 Tai Chi practitioners. All the subjects performed a rapid index finger-pointing task. The visual signal appeared randomly under 3 conditions: (1) to touch a black ball as quickly and as accurately as possible, (2) not to touch a white ball, (3) to touch only the white ball when a black and a white ball appeared simultaneously. Reaction time (RT) of anterior deltoid electromyogram, movement time (MT) from electromyogram onset to touching of the target, end-point accuracy from the center of the target, and the number of wrong movements were recorded. Results. Young students displayed significantly faster RT and MT, achieving significantly greater end-point accuracy and fewer wrong movements than older controls. Older Tai Chi practitioners had significantly faster MT than older controls. Conclusion. Finger-pointing tasks with a choice paradigm became slower and less accurate with age. Positive findings suggest that Tai Chi may slow down the aging effect on eye-hand coordination tasks involving choices that require more cognitive progressing.

Theory of Mind in Children with Traumatic Brain Injury

Theory of mind (ToM) involves thinking about mental states and intentions to understand what other people know and to predict how they will act. We studied ToM in children with traumatic brain injury (TBI) and age- and gender-matched children with orthopedic injuries (OI), using a new three-frame Jack and Jill cartoon task that measures intentional thinking separate from contingent task demands. In the key ToM trials, which required intentional thinking, Jack switched a black ball from one hat to another of a different color, but Jill did not witness the switch; in the otherwise identical non-ToM trials, the switch was witnessed. Overall accuracy was higher in children with OI than in those with TBI. Children with severe TBI showed a larger decline in accuracy on ToM trials, suggesting a specific deficit in ToM among children with severe TBI. Accuracy was significantly higher on trials following errors than on trials following correct responses, suggesting that all groups monitored performance and responded to errors with increased vigilance. TBI is associated with poorer intentional processing in school-age children and adolescents relative to peers with OI; furthermore, children with TBI are challenged specifically by intentional demands, especially when their injury is severe. (JINS, 2012, 19, 1-9).

How can horseflies be captured by solar panels? A new concept of tabanid traps using light polarization and electricity produced by photovoltaics

Horseflies (Diptera: Tabanidae) can cause severe problems for humans and livestock because of the continuous annoyance performed and the diseases vectored by the haematophagous females. Therefore, effective horsefly traps are in large demand, especially for stock-breeders. To catch horseflies, several kinds of traps have been developed, many of them attracting these insects visually with the aid of a black ball. The recently discovered positive polarotaxis (attraction to horizontally polarized light) in several horsefly species can be used to design traps that capture female and male horseflies. The aim of this work is to present the concept of such a trap based on two novel principles: (1) the visual target of the trap is a horizontal solar panel (photovoltaics) attracting polarotactic horseflies by means of the highly and horizontally polarized light reflected from the photovoltaic surface. (2) The horseflies trying to touch or land on the photovoltaic trap surface are perished by the mechanical hit of a wire rotated quickly with an electromotor supplied by the photovoltaics-produced electricity. Thus, the photovoltaics is bifunctional: its horizontally polarized reflected light signal attracts water-seeking, polarotactic horseflies, and it produces the electricity necessary to rotate the wire. We describe here the concept and design of this new horsefly trap, the effectiveness of which was demonstrated in field experiments. The advantages and disadvantages of the trap are discussed. Using imaging polarimetry, we measured the reflection-polarization characteristics of the photovoltaic trap surface demonstrating the optical reason for the polarotactic attractiveness to horseflies.

Investigating cloud absorption effects: Global absorption properties of black carbon, tar balls, and soil dust in clouds and aerosols

This study examines modeled properties of black carbon (BC), tar ball (TB), and soil dust (SD) absorption within clouds and aerosols to understand better Cloud Absorption Effects I and II, which are defined as the effects on cloud heating of absorbing inclusions in hydrometeor particles and of absorbing aerosol particles interstitially between hydrometeor particles at their actual relative humidity (RH), respectively. The globally and annually averaged modeled 550 nm aerosol mass absorption coefficient (AMAC) of externally mixed BC was 6.72 (6.3–7.3) m2/g, within the laboratory range (6.3–8.7 m2/g). The global AMAC of internally mixed (IM) BC was 16.2 (13.9–18.2) m2/g, less than the measured maximum at 100% RH (23 m2/g). The resulting AMAC amplification factor due to internal mixing was 2.41 (2–2.9), with highest values in high RH regions. The global 650 nm hydrometeor mass absorption coefficient (HMAC) due to BC inclusions was 17.7 (10.6–19) m2/g, ∼9.3% higher than that of the IM‐AMAC. The 650 nm HMACs of TBs and SD were half and 1/190th, respectively, that of BC. Modeled aerosol absorption optical depths were consistent with data. In column tests, BC inclusions in low and mid clouds (CAE I) gave column‐integrated BC heating rates ∼200% and 235%, respectively, those of interstitial BC at the actual cloud RH (CAE II), which itself gave heating rates ∼120% and ∼130%, respectively, those of interstitial BC at the clear‐sky RH. Globally, cloud optical depth increased then decreased with increasing aerosol optical depth, consistent with boomerang curves from satellite studies. Thus, CAEs, which are largely ignored, heat clouds significantly.

Cuban Star: How One Negro-League Owner Changed the Face of Baseball (review)

Reviewed by: Cuban Star: How One Negro-League Owner Changed the Face of Baseball Roberta Newman Adrian Burgos Jr. Cuban Star: How One Negro-League Owner Changed the Face of Baseball. New York: Hill and Wang, 2011. 302 pp. Cloth, $28.00. Once consigned to the background of baseball history, segregated black baseball has garnered a great deal of interest over the last two decades, producing a veritable flood of publications. The focus of much of this work has either been on presenting sweeping histories of the Negro leagues or on biographies of individual African American players and, less frequently, executives. Scant attention, however, has been paid to the considerable role played by Latinos in black baseball as well as in the organized, professional game. Adrian Burgos Jr.’s comprehensive study of the influence of Latin Americans on both sides of the segregated game as well as on the desegregated major leagues, Playing America’s Game: Baseball, Latinos, and the Color Line, is the notable exception. Burgos’s most recent work, a biography of Alejandro “Alex” Pompez (1890– 1974), adds to the body of literature. The child of Cuban immigrants, Pompez, once a power in Harlem’s numbers rackets, would become owner of the [End Page 108] Cuban Stars and later the New York Cubans, the “Latins from Manhattan.” Eventually, he would use his considerable knowledge of both Latin American and African American baseball talent to become an influential major-league scout. His story, as presented by Burgos, is a compelling one. Cuban Star is, first and foremost, a scholarly biography. Very well researched and annotated, the book provides ample socio-cultural analysis, while avoiding virtually all the clichés of popular baseball bios, most particularly the overly familiar tone. This is not to say that Cuban Star is dry, dense, or overly formal. Quite the contrary, its rich detail and clear writing make for entertaining reading. From the outset, Cuban Star tells a compelling story. In addition to recounting Pompez’s journey from Florida, through Havana, to New York, with several necessary forays to other locations, most notably time spent on the lam in Mexico City, the author pays close attention to the personal, social, and cultural influences on Pompez’s life and career. Particularly interesting is the story of Pompez’s father, Jose, a cigar factory owner and committed follower of Jose Marti, who was twice elected town clerk of West Tampa and left all his money to the cause of Cuban independence, leaving his family with little. The fact that Pompez financed the Cuban Stars with proceeds from the numbers rackets is not at all unusual. Numbers and policy kings often played the part of financiers in urban African American communities under the reign of Jim Crow, and more than a few Negro league owners made their money from the rackets. But Pompez’s connection to Dutch Schultz, however unwanted, and his prosecution by Thomas E. Dewey make up one of the central episodes in the baseball man’s life and one of the central episodes in Burgos’s book. Reading like something out of a crime novel, Burgos pays close attention to Pompez’s flight to Mexico City, where he was arrested. Extradited to the United States, Pompez eventually turned state’s evidence and helped to convict key figures in the organization Schultz left behind after his untimely, but not altogether unexpected, demise. Of course, Cuban Star is about a baseball man, and Pompez’s life in baseball makes up the lion’s share of this book. Just as his background and his legal history were unusual for a baseball executive, so was his background in the business. Unlike his fellow team owners, many of whom were at the financial mercy of white promoters for bookings, venue rental, and publicity, Pompez learned the ropes from Philadelphia’s Nat Strong, one of the most successful and least popular white booking agents. Prior to his legal troubles, Pompez acquired control over Dyckman Oval in upper Manhattan’s Inwood, allowing his team the luxury of its own ballpark, something few other black ball clubs could boast. Particularly interesting is Burgos’s discussion of the role played [End Page 109...

Black Balls and Diagnostic Reasoning

To the Editor: In their report in Academic Medicine, Coderre and colleagues1 claimed to prove that “querying an initial diagnosis … allows students to rectify an incorrect diagnosis.” Their study presented students with a series of eight written cases, in a two-part sequence. In the first part, students were given a brief initial scenario, with (as shown by an example included in the report) a chief complaint and some background. The students then provided an initial diagnosis. The experimental manipulation occurred in the second phase, where students were then provided extensive additional information from history, physical findings, and lab tests. In the example, we counted 2 pieces of information in the initial scenario and 23 additional pieces of information. For half the students, the information was “concordant” with the initial data; for half, it was “discordant.” Students were instructed to “consider these additional data before deciding on their final diagnosis.” Most students (84%) provided with concordant data stayed with their first diagnosis. For discordant data, 76% switched to the correct diagnosis after seeing the additional data. The authors concluded that “querying offers a potentially large benefit to diagnostic performance with little associated risk.” Might we suggest an alternative explanation—the “black ball” hypothesis? Providing students with an overwhelming amount of additional data suggesting a different diagnosis would make many students revise their diagnoses automatically. For example, if the first two balls you pull out of a bag are red, you may well consider that the bag contains mostly red balls. If the next 23 balls are red, you are likely near certain that it contains mostly red balls. But if the next 23 balls are black, you will likely change your mind and favor a “mostly black ball” hypothesis. We suspect that someone in this situation needs no encouragement and very little deep thinking to query the red ball hypothesis. Since Coderre and colleagues' intervention completely confounds the effect of introducing a large amount of new data and instruction to query the initial diagnosis, they have insufficient evidence to conclude as they did that instruction to think is the critical factor. Jonathan Sherbino, MD Associate professor, Department of Medicine, McMaster University Faculty of Health Sciences, Ontario, Canada. Geoff Norman, PhD Professor, Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, McMaster University Faculty of Health Sciences, Ontario, Canada; [email protected].