76 Scientific American, August 2020 Illustration by Matt Collins
ANTI GRAVITY
THE ONGOING SEARCH FOR
FUNDAMENTAL FARCES
Steve Mirsky has been writing the Anti Gravity column since
a typical tectonic plate was about 36 inches from its current location.
He also hosts the Scientific American podcast Science Talk.Here’s something I thought I’d never say: Donald Trump was cor-
rect. Back in 1997, anyway. About shaking hands.
“The Japanese have it right,” the allegedly germaphobic Trump
wrote (with co-author Kate Bohner) in the book Trump: The Art
of the Comeback. “They stand slightly apart and do a quick, formal
and very beautiful bow in order to acknowledge each other’s pres-
ence ... I wish we would develop a similar greeting custom in
America. In fact, I’ve often thought of taking out a series of news-
paper ads encouraging the abolishment of the handshake.”
Of course, because of COVID-19, the handshake is out. Unfor-
tunately, it could make its own comeback without vigorous lobby-
ing against it. I will now do some of that lobbying.
“Recent medical reports,” Trump also wrote, “have come out
saying that colds and various other ailments are spread through
the act of shaking hands. I have no doubt about this.”
Indeed, a search using the terms “handshake” and “infection”
in journal articles between 1990 and 1997 turns up a 1991 write-
up in the Journal of Clinical Microbiology with the title “Potential
Role of Hands in the Spread of Respiratory Viral Infections: Stud-
ies with Human Parainfluenza Virus 3 and Rhinovirus 14.”
This piece is undoubtedly the one that Trump
read in his comprehensive and careful research—
it stood out as his likely source because most of the
search results for that time period were for articles
talking about the molecular “handshake” between
an HIV protein and human cells. Such studies
might only have brought him unpleasant remind-
ers that led him on the Howard Stern Show to com-
pare his risk of STDs to fighting in Vietnam.
In another piece I turned up, published in the
journal Medical Record, Nathan Breiter wrote about
running into a friend and automatically shaking
hands, only to find the hand “rough and oily.” Brei-
ter later learned that what he felt was syphilide: a
skin lesion caused by syphilis. This experience got
Breiter, as a trained physician, to thinking.
After considering how handshakes happened—
“the custom of shaking hands originated in the
ancient and universal practice of grasping the
weapon hand during a truce as a precaution against
treachery”—Breiter suggests banishing the practice
to the medical waste bin of history: “So we see that
from a comparatively dark and illiterate period a
custom having a rational origin, which rationale
dwindled into nothingness during its spread and
migration through successive centuries, was ush-
ered into our glorious civilization, unnecessary in its essence,
devoid of all intelligence, and positively injurious to public health.”
As the florid writing gives away, this article appeared well
before any of Trump’s “recent medical reports.” It’s from 1897,
exactly a century before The Art of the Comeback, so the antishake
notion has been around for a while. By the way, the comeback book
is a sequel to Trump: The Art of the Deal (ghostwritten by the now
regretful Tony Schwartz). The second book was motivated by one
of Trump’s artful corporate bankruptcies.
Sadly, as president, Trump went from disdaining the handshake
to weaponizing it. Videos with various world leaders depict him
grabbing his counterpart’s palm, yanking it—and them—closer
and holding their hand hostage for a while. The move seems to be
an attempt to physically dominate but makes it look like he heard
only the first word in “bully pulpit.”
We can do better. In addition to bowing, other nontouch greet-
ings exist in many cultures. There’s the Hindu palms-together and
head bow; the Islamic hand on the heart; the military salute; the
Vulcan split-hand gesture. ( Star Trek star Leonard Nimoy based
Spock’s smooth move on a Hebrew blessing symbol. Go to a Jew-
ish cemetery if you want to see plenty of graves adorned with what
most people think of as Vulcan.)
I like any and all of the alternatives better than the traditional
Western grope. The time has come to say, “Look. No hands.”JOIN THE CONVERSATION ONLINE
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or send a letter to the editor: [email protected]Hand Out
The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed
that we don’t need handshakes
By Steve Mirsky
© 2020 Scientific American