Improbable Research

Not every publication admits that it, on occasion, contains errors. The British Medical Journal (or, as it’s known these days, the BMJ) is more pleasingly straightforward than most of its peers, as you can see here.

Troy Hurtubise, Ig Nobel winner “for developing, and personally testing a suit of armor that is impervious to grizzly bears,” is going to put that suit — and its successor — up for sale on Ebay. They will go on sale Wednesday, May 5, 2004. Please help spread the word!

These are the same suits that inspired an entire recent episode (”The Fat and the Furriest,” 2004) of “The Simpsons.”

See some background info here.

When, if ever, does a person stops learning? Stephen Rushen, an educationalist based at Penn State University in the United States, conducted an experiment, or says he conducted an experiment, to find out….

So begins this week’s Improbable Research column in The Guardian. Read it here.

Investigator Dwight Fisher sent us this report from the field:

I was taking a much needed rest from my scientific pursuits with a collection of technical support staff in a local vegetarian restaurant located on a busy street near downtown Athens, Georgia.

One of the staff looked out the window and said, “What is that?”

I replied, “It is a groundhog or a woodchuck”. We were in a heavily populated area and it seemed the odds of a groundhog successfully navigating to this point were very small. In addition, it was April and I’m really not too familiar with groundhogs outside of February in Pennsylvania.

The groundhog appeared to be interested in crossing the street toward the vegetarian restaurant. As the groundhog approached the street we attempted to warn the animal not to cross the street. This consisted of speaking English behind a plate glass window and probably was not effective in alerting the groundhog to the danger it was facing. However, the ground hog looked across the street toward us and hesitated as cars whizzed by in both directions. We were at least somewhat relived when the animal turned around and began to move up a side street but it disappeared under a parked Chevrolet Suburban. We never saw the animal emerge and so we ate our meal while watching the parked car.

Eventually a woman entered the Suburban to drive away. We all stopped eating and watched intently as the vehicle began to move. The groundhog had not wandered away but rather had climbed up on the driveshaft of the vehicle. It made a valiant but misguided attempt to hang onto the driveshaft but groundhogs are simply not equipped for gymnastics and it fell off. In horror we watched as the animal began to run in front of the rear wheel. We all gasped and cried “NO!” having become somehow attached to a small animal that appeared interested in our vegetarian restaurant but strangely took refuge in the bowels of a Chevy Suburban. Suddenly it spun around and only the tail of the groundhog was impacted by the rolling rear wheel of the Suburban. While this was not fatal or even apparently debilitating it was clearly motivational and the groundhog ran off.

Other customers had noticed our attention to the window and the event was witnessed in part by at least one other customer and the waitress did see the groundhog after it had sprinted 50 meters or so and required a bit of a breather before continuing to panic.

I don’t yet know what to make of this.

If you know what to make of it, please get in touch with Investigator Fisher at .

Lal Bihari, the founder and head of the Association of Dead People — and winner of the 2003 Ig Nobel Peace Prize — is standing for elective office. See a video news report here.

See a further news report about it here.

And that’s not all. As head of the Association, Lal Bihari is encouraging other members to show a little life. One of them, Shivdutt Yadav, is standing for election against India’s prime minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee. See details here.

Prime Minister Vajpayee is himself an Ig Nobel winner, having been awarded an Ig Nobel Peace Prize in 1998.

The first major international seminar which drew more than 80 participants from across the globe to discuss the depth and profundity of the concept of Gross National Happiness (GNH) agreed that GNH combines spirituality with secular science of technology and that the global community should protect and enhance it.

So says a report from Bhutan, where the seminar on “Operationalization of Gross National Happiness” was held. Read the entire report here.

Professor Buddhadasa Hewavitharana, Emeritus Professor of Economics at the University of Peradeniya, was specially invited to participate. read about that here.

(Thanks to investigator V. Wieloch for bringing this to our attention.)

“It is striking that the drying process familiar to most people, namely, that of drying laundry hung from a clothes line, does not seem to have been investigated in a quantitative, scientific manner.” With those words, and many more, Eric B Hansen introduced a generation to the subtle mathematical pleasures of damp cloth….

So begins this week’s Improbable Research column in The Guardian. Read it here.

Group wiggling, shrunken heads, and the incomprehensibility of soprano singers — research about all these topics is highlighted in the “AIRhead Research Review” column in the current issue (vol. 10, no. 2) of the Annals of Improbable Research.

Read the column here.

Science is a social activity — very social. That’s why the Annals of Improbable Research has a brand-new regular column called “Socially Scientific.”

Read the very first appearance of “Socially Scientific here.

If you are intrigued about “On The Existence of Mikhailov,” if you can’t stop wondering about Mikhailov, if you crave more info no matter how tenuously connected it may be, then read the article “Notes on the Existence of Mikhailov.” It appears in volume 10, number 2 of the Annals of Improbable Research. Read the article here.

the author was prompted to examine the evidence for the existence of A.I. Mikhailov, the legendary and apparently near-ubiquitous Soviet information scientist. At first glance this might seem unwarranted and gratuitous. After all, the appearance of Mikhailov, or at least his name, in the program was a fixture of international library and information science conferences for years, even decades. However, the actual appearance of Mikhailov at those conferences has been exceedingly, indeed it would appear vanishingly, small…

So writes Michael E.D. Koenig. the author of the classic — but too little-known — article “On the Existence of Mikhailov.”

The article originally appeared in 1993, in the Journal of the American Society for Information Science. The author and the publisher kindly granted us permission to reprint it in the Annals of Improbable Research, where it appears in volume 10, number 2. Read the article here.

When Prof. Yukio Hirose of Kanazawa University expressed his warmest gratitude for pigeons and crows upon receiving the Ig Nobel Chemistry Prize (a parody of the Nobel Prize) in October, the audience at Harvard University exploded into cheers….

So begins a report about the 2003 Ig Nobel Chemistry Prize winner, who won his prize for investigating a bronze statue that fails to attract pigeons. Read the entire report, in the Daily Yomiuri.

Do you find yourself pregnant, and wanting some mathematical amusement? Here’s something simple and pleasing.

During the course of the pregnancy, use a lamp to project your silhouette on the wall once a week. Have someone trace the outline in pencil.

You might want to write the date next to each curve. (You might also want to do the tracing onto a large piece of paper affixed to the wall, rather than onto the wall itself.)

[NOTE: It may be that this is an old form of amusement, but that we simply haven't heard of it. In any event, it is not as widely known as it might be. To help remedy that, we would love to post links to a few good sets of growth curves. When you have produced your full set, we invite you to post a photo of it on your web site and send us the URL that points to that photo. We would like to then publish a set of links to the first few, as examples that others may follow.]

When guests come to dinner, a question may arise: “Do people chew delicious food faster than they chew distasteful food?” The answer seems to be yes…

So begins this week’s Improbable Research column in The Guardian. Read it here.

“Where can I find your remarkable collection of fingerprint art?” writes investigator Sheila Soames.

She, and anyone else who wants a look, can see it here. By clicking on successive links, one can see a total of eight majestic artworks, each composed within the confines, yet taking advantage of the conformations,of human fingerprints.

The originals are on display in Germany at the Deactyloscopy Deprartment of the Cologne Criminal Police Headquarters. Thanks again to Mark Benecke for bringing the art of artist Martin Ehses to our attention.