http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16290-evil-water-linked-to-mysterious-drownings.html
"…it
is not uncommon for triathletes to complain that the water is behaving
badly - even that it is “evil”. Now a study suggests what they are
feeling is real.
That’s very interesting.
I suppose that the conditions that would result in this phenomenon affecting swimmers would be very specific…ie. the depth of the layer and how ‘disburbed’ it’s been.
Unless you are leading out a race, the swimmers ahead of you have probably chopped things up so much that you won’t experience it further back.
The idea that this has been the cause of mysterious drownings by strong swimmers doesn’t strike me as plausible. If a strong swimmer were slowed by 40 percent due to this, they would simply adjust their stroke, their stroke rate or in some other way decrease their power output (like a runner simply slowing down). Unless they were swimming the English Channel it’s not likely they would simply swim to absolute exhaustion and just sink.
An interesting article, but with pretty stupid implications IMHO.
This kind of stuff fascinates me, but I don’t believe that even slowing an experienced swimmer “by 15%, with a 40% loss of propulsive power” will cause them to drown. Any experienced swimmer should be able to stay afloat with almost zero motion.
And really, “evil” water? I mean, come on…
Oh, wait, I just noticed they point out that “it is not uncommon for triathletes to complain that the water is behaving badly”. That explains it. The “experienced swimmers” are triathletes. Enough said. 
Hello Cogsci and All,
Balderdash!
Revoke their research grant if this is the best they can come up with.
Cheers,
Neal
I am tired of this thing called science… We have spent million on this sort of thing for the last few years and it is time it should be stopped.
Senator Simon Cameron, 1909
Other than being interesting, this article tells me two things:
- The researchers have a few screws loose.
- If they can get money to do this, then there is hope that I can make some major coinage off my research into the relationship between breast size and 5K times.
The only excuse for a sane person to draw this ridiculous conclusion is that he can’t swim at all.
bigger= faster?