Improbable Research

More than a decade has passed since the publication of the research report “Feline Reactions to Bearded Men”..

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

The Harvard News Office has some lovely photographs of the 2003 Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony. See a few highlights here.

Picking your nose and eating it is one of the best ways to stay healthy, according to a top Austrian doctor. Innsbruck-based lung specialist Prof Dr Friedrich Bischinger said people who pick their noses with their fingers were healthy, happier and probably better in tune with their bodies….

So begins a report from the Ananova news service. Read the full report here.

See an alternative report, in German, here.

See Dr. Bischinger here.

All of this in some distant sense builds on the Ig Nobel Prize-winning work of 2001 Public Health Prize winners Chitteranjan Andrade and B.S. Srihari. (For details of that, see here.)

Thanks to investigator Greg Kinney for bringing this to our attention.

Here are some photos from the Nottingham show in this year’s Ig Nobel Tour of the U.K. and Ireland. Over the next several weeks we will be posting photos from the other shows on the tour, too.

If you are in or near Hay-on-Wye, Wales, and are free and at least partially awake at 9:00 AM tomorrow, Saturday, June 5, 2004, drop by the Hay Festival to take in the Improbable Research show. Details are here.

(And… If you happen to be a member of the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists, or would like to nominate yourself to become a member, please come and make your presence known.)

What is the record for the maximum number of authors/co-authors on a published scientific paper? …

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

Veiled women are protecting more than their modesty - they are also less prone to nose and throat cancers because their veils screen out viruses, a Canadian doctor was quoted on Friday as saying.

So reports Reuters. Read the full, if skimpy, report in the May 10 issue of the Daily Times of Pakistan, here.

Celebrate Jenifer Thewalt, Francesca Collins, Allan Fordy, Martin Ryba and Joel Dunn as they become new members of the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists (LFHCfS). See them at the LFHCfS home page, here.