Public Profile
The Institute for Occupational Cognitive Health is a research organization based in Baltimore, Maryland, dedicated to studying the psychological effects of sustained cognitive labor across high-focus professions. Founded in 2018 as a joint initiative between Johns Hopkins University and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, the institute conducts longitudinal studies on attention fatigue, symbolic reasoning under sleep deprivation, and what its founding charter describes as “the cognitive consequences of extended immersion in abstract representational systems.”
The institute’s research portfolio spans air traffic controllers, surgeons, financial traders, and software engineers, though its work on the latter group has attracted the most public attention. A 2024 study on developers who had worked more than thirty consecutive hours found that 14 percent reported some form of anthropomorphic ideation about their code — attributing emotions, desires, or moral status to software constructs. The study was widely cited in technology media, though its methodology was subsequently questioned after it was revealed that several respondents had been actively coding during the survey, raising concerns about whether the cognitive distortions being measured had influenced the self-reporting.
Since 2022 the institute has maintained a running count of “unassisted reasoning events” in operating rooms, and in 2026 it extended the inquiry to theoretical physicists, whom it regards as its control group. The 2026 survey found that 14 percent of respondents had rederived a textbook result in the past year for reasons they described as “not teaching,” and that 3 percent had done so more than fifty times. The institute does not recommend the practice. It recognizes it.
The institute is led by Dr. Franklin Krause, an occupational psychologist who has described the organization’s mission as “understanding what happens to the human mind when it spends too long thinking about things that aren’t real.” He has acknowledged that this description applies to several other academic disciplines but maintains that “we’re the only ones who consider it a problem.”
The institute publishes the Journal of Occupational Cognitive Science, a peer-reviewed quarterly that has been described by critics as “niche” and by its editorial board as “precisely as niche as it needs to be.”
Articles
- Solidity Developer, After 41-Hour Coding Session, Reports Firm Belief That Each Token Possesses a Soul — its 2024 study on anthropomorphic ideation among developers provided the statistical backdrop
- Surgeon Dismisses Robot Midway Through Operation, Vowing to Finish With ‘Pure Artisanal Thinking’ — its running count of “unassisted reasoning events” in operating rooms, and its director’s view that thinking is a tool improved upon by a committee
- Artisanal Physicist Laments That All the Easy Problems Have Been Solved, Most of Them Before 1930 — its 2026 survey of theoretical physicists on the rederivation of textbook results for reasons other than teaching
Articles
- Artisanal Physicist Laments That All the Easy Problems Have Been Solved, Most of Them Before 1930 — “A gallbladder is an easy problem,” Dr. Ekelund said of a Berkeley surgeon who recently removed one by hand. “He had one. I would like to know where he got it.”
- Surgeon Dismisses Robot Midway Through Operation, Vowing to Finish With 'Pure Artisanal Thinking' — The remaining 112 minutes were narrated aloud by Dr. Lindqvist, including several decisions he described as 'not strictly necessary, but mine.'