Improbable Research

The November 26, 2005 issue of BMJ describes a drug-free treatment for depression which, were one to judge solely by the lead sentence, sounds startlingly simple:

Dolphins can help alleviate symptoms of depression after two weeks of treatment.

That issue of BMJ includes a detailed study written the experimenters, Christian Antonioli and Michael A Reveley. The dolphin duo is  based at the University of Leicester Medical School.

[NOTE: This study appears to be another good candidate for the Gillinov standard.]

Today (the day after Thanksgiving) is the day for the annual Ig Nobel broadcast on National Public Radio’s "Science Friday with Ira Flatow" program. It’s a specially edited (down to an hour) recording of the 2005 Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony.

Listen on an NPR station or on the web — for details consult the Science Friday web site.

If you’d like to read the words to the mini-opera "The Count of Infinity" (which was performed as part of the ceremony), then please do.

The random frog generator is, presumably, intended for people who wish to see randomly selected photographs of frogs.

Investigator Tina Helpern writes:

After reading about that study where two professors got some students to masturbate, I read an article in the November 2005 issue of Fast Company magazine about one of them — Dan Ariely. Fast Company says that Professor Ariely "is spending a year off from MIT figuring out how to quantify the value
of simplicity at Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study."

"Once again, someone has build a better mousetrap, and obtained a patent (U.S. # 6,739,086) for it, this coming on the heels of his earlier (U.S. #5720126) mousetrap patent. This time the someone is Keith Lamb of Gruver, Texas. Details — including an engineering diagram and a photograph of the device, are reported by the November 21, 2003 issue of  The Amarillo Globe News:

Mousetrap requests overwhelm Gruver man
By GREG CUNNINGHAM
The Amarillo Globe-News

GRUVER - Maybe the world is going to beat a path to Keith Lamb’s door after all.

The 80-year old Gruver inventor and retired farmer has been inundated with phone calls since an article in Tuesday’s Amarillo Globe-News informed the area about his new, improved mousetrap.

"Boy, I’ll tell you what," Lamb said. "This has been a big shock to me. I’ve probably got 50 phone calls and probably sold another 30 traps, just like that."

Lamb said he got calls from as far away as Dallas and Austin asking about his new mousetrap….