Improbable Research

Some 30 years ago, beachgoers in three countries found that strangers were coming up to them, asking strange questions. The strangers turned out to be fairly harmless. They were academics, driven by a fierce desire to understand how much space people appropriate for themselves when they plop down on a beach….

So begins this week’s Improbable Research column in The Guardian

Investigator Machiel Stolk writes:

You probably have heard about the following article "The Polymeal: a more
natural, safer, and probably tastier (than the Polypill) strategy to reduce
cardiovascular disease by more than 75%" by Oscar H Franco, Luc Bonneux,
Chris de Laet, Anna Peeters, Ewout W Steyerberg, and Johan P Mackenbach, BMJ,
2004; 329: 1447-1450.

Browsing through the readers’ responses I noticed that some readers take the
article seriously and others don’t. One reader in particular suggests that
"In most Internet forums, everyone would have recognized this article as a
cheerful tongue-in-cheek piece worthy of the Annals of Improbable Research."

My question is, is AIR worried about the sudden competition from the BMJ?

Yours sincerely
Machiel Stolk
Centre for Science and Math Education
Utrecht University
The Netherlands

Investigator P.J. Wichsand alerts us to another deadpan techno-satire from the good folks at Accenture Technology Lab. This one is called "The Caring Plant." The official Accenture Labs description says:

The plant can even look after itself with requests around its own
needs??More water please? or ?I need sun!? Through the use of artificial
intelligence, the plant just gets smarter. Feel like reminiscing? The plant can
prompt memories or repeat previous stories.

As with the Personal Awareness
Assistant, which we profiled a day or two ago, "The Caring Plant" is an exercise in subtly leaping logic. It is another concoction meant to delight experienced computer programmers, who can always use a little relief from the tedium of their necessarily-painstaking work. Non-programmers may not see all the subtleties, but almost everyone can appreciate the broad, slapstick outlines of the humor.

Historical research sometimes brings up that which was once cast down a dark hole, such as the  British civil service’s 1963 inquiry into toilet paper quality, and the complaint that triggered the investigation. A report in the January 4, 2005 issue of The Daily Telegraph seems to have unfurled this once tightly-wrapped secret. The report includes a possibly-incriminating photograph.

(Thanks to investigator Charles Bergquist for bringing this to our attention.)

Accenture Technology Labs has produced a wonderful satire that every experienced computer programmer can savor. The satire is about how simple it will be for the company to combine lots of advanced technology into a device that makes intuitive, everyday kinds of decisions. The satire is in two parts, written and video. The text begins:

Supplementing the Human Memory
Bank
Using a speech recognition engine, two small microphones,
an inconspicuous camera and a scrolling audio buffer, the Personal Awareness
Assistant is always on, passively listening to what a user says. What catapults
the Assistant past a simple recording device is its ability to respond to
particular contexts and situations….

The text is accompanied by a nifty, brief, deadpan video about a prototype "Personal Awareness Assistant."