Improbable Research

In November 1995 Fast Company magazine investigated an example of “everyone knows that…” science:

Manfred Kets de Vries published the fable in his recent book, “Life and Death in the Executive Fast Lane”:

“Take a pot of hot water and a frog. Throw the frog into the pot. What do you think will happen? The obvious, of course: the frog will jump out. Who likes hanging around in a pot of hot water? Now … [t]ake a pot of cold water, put the frog in it, and place the pot on the stove. Turn on the heat. This time something different will occur. The frog, because of the incremental change in temperature, will not notice that it is slowly being boiled. Unfortunately, many organizations, as they grow, begin to resemble the boiled frog.”

Fast Company’s investigative team, the “Consultant Debunking Unit”, put the frog story to the test….

(Thanks to investigator Mark Dionne and several others for bringing this to our attention.)

Fingernails on a blackboard. Why does the very phrase send chills down one’s back? The question has annoyed scientists for at least 2,300 years. Aristotle mentioned “hard sounds”, but didn’t try very hard to explain them.

In the mid-1980s, three scientists subjected volunteers to a battery of electronically synthesised nails-on-blackboard screeching. D Lynn Halpern, Randolph Blake and James Hillenbrand, at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, published details in the journal Perception and Psychophysics. They called their study “Psychoacoustics of a Chilling Sound“.

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

Smoking and Obesity May Increase the Risk of Erectile Dysfunction

Boston, MA — A prospective study by researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) has found that obesity and smoking are strongly associated with a greater risk of erectile dysfunction (ED). Meanwhile, regular physical activity appeared to have a significant impact on lowering the risk of ED. This is the first large-scale prospective study to examine the links between ED and smoking, obesity, alcohol and a sedentary lifestyle. The study appears in the July 2006 issue of The Journal of Urology…

So explains a June 27, 2006 press release.

(Thanks to investigator Sam Ripley for bringing this to our attention. Investigator Ripley writes: “This certainly accords with my experience. But in some cultures fat, smoky women may be attractive.” )

“Improbable Medical Review” is a column that appears in every issue of the Annals of Improbable Research. The column from the May/June 2006 issue also appears online. It gives citations on the following topics:

Shodden Freud

Hamburger: Harmonica

Tales of the Unexpected: Responses of Mistreated Patients

A Loud Noise in the Service of Sleep

Baby Mathematics

That final item refers to a medical study titled “An Empirical Study of Freud’s Penis-Baby Equation.”

Of all the libraries in all the world, which is the most addictive — and the most mysterious? Perhaps it’s The National Library of Addictions.

This addictive entity is located in Brookline, Massachusetts. Founded by Punyamurtula S. Kishore, M.D., M.P.H., it is said to be “an intellectual gathering place for health care professionals and community members.”

The institution is little known to the library-loving public, and information about it is scarce.

Many questions present themselves. What addictions are kept in the library’s collection, and which of them are available for use by the public? Which of these addictions can be taken out on loan? Is there a children’s room, or is the library open only to adults?

Bibliophiles note with pleasure that the library appears to own at least one book.

David Brown describes a simple way to do a “savant” trick: calculate the day of the week for any specified date. (For example: was March 12, 1401, a Sunday, a Monday, a Tuesday, a Wednesday, a Thursday, a Friday, or a Saturday?) He says:

My point here is simply to suggest that though some savant feats are remarkable, things like this can be explained more simply. That a savant may be an idiot, surrounded by a sea of disability, I don’t think, requires us to overestimate what is involved in the little they can do. I should think it’s quite possible for some, to have above average ability in one area and subnormal in many others.

Steve Nadis is the is the chief holy grail hunter in all of science. Years ago, he began a relentless quest to find and document all the holy grails pursued by all the scientists everywhere. His latest collection, fixating on astronomy’s holy grails, appears in the May/June issue of the Annals of Improbable Research.

David Blackburn’s “Dinner a la commode,” published in the February 23, 2006 issue of the Oxford Student, is a small but salient entry in the annals of engineering.

(Thanks to Investigator Alasdair Kergon for bringing this to our attention.)

We have written about Professor Frank Fish (of West Chester University) before. He studies fish. We may write about him again. In the May/June 2006 issue of the Annals of Improbable Research, we celebrate his career, in words and pictures. The article also appears online, which is why we mention it here.

Hitler Cats is a blog about cats that look like Hitler.

(Thanks to Metafilter for bringing this to our attention.)

A team led by fertility expert Dr. Shevah Friedler at the Assaf Harofeh Medical Center studied 186 women aged 25 to 40 over 10 months, all of whom were undergoing embryo transfer treatment. While half were simply given the treatment and nothing else, the other group was entertained by a clown for up to 15 minutes as they recuperated in bed after the treatment.

The results? 33 of the women who ‘clowned’ around became pregnant, compared to only 18 women in the control group….

“We were very surprised by the results. And frankly, I can’t explain it,” said Friedler.

He presented the findings before the Israel Fertility Association meeting in May and submitted an abstract to the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE) that met this month in Geneva, resulting in a high profile response from colleagues and the media.

So says a June 22, 2006 report in Israel21C.

(Thanks to investigators Diana Lutz and Karen Hopkin for bringing this to our attention.)

(NOTE: “inexplicacality” may not be a recognized word, but it seems to be the correct word for this phenomenon.)

The medical advice “Don’t stand in an open field during a lightning storm” may be too old-fashioned. A letter in the June 24, 2006 issue of BMJ brings it up to date:

Injury from lightning strike while using mobile phone

Editor—We report the case of a 15 year old girl who was witnessed being struck by lightning while using her mobile phone in a large park in London during stormy weather…. To our knowledge, no similar cases have been reported in the medical literature….

This rare phenomenon is a public health issue, and education is necessary to highlight the risk of using mobile phones outdoors during stormy weather to prevent future fatal consequences from lightning strike injuries related to mobile phones.

The letter was signed by Swinda Esprit, Prasad Kothari and Ram Dhillon (seen in the phto here) of the Northwick Park Hospital in Middlesex, U.K.

Dr. Kothari, of course, is also co-author of the classic “Application of cocaine to the nasal mucosa: a novel method” [Journal of Laryngology and Otology, 2001 Aug;115(8):650-1.]
(Thanks to investigator David Holzman for bringing this to our attention.)

Added fuel expense (due to drag) turns out to but one of who-knows-how-many hazards incurred by flag-flying, auto-owning fans of England’s World Cup team. Here is another, reported by the BBC on June 21, 2006:

Monkey gangs steal England flags

A safari park in Merseyside is urging patriotic football fans to remove England flags from their vehicles to stop gangs of baboons pinching them. Bosses at Knowsley Safari Park say the 120-strong troop of baboons usually swipe windscreen wipers but have turned to stealing World Cup flags instead.

(Thanks to investigator Adiyasa Dwitama for bringing this to our attention.)

A research project in Turkey examined whether and how drinking affects the quality of one’s writing. This was “hard”, rather then “soft” science - it ignored anything fuzzy and hard-to-measure, such as the literary quality of the writing, or its emotional content. The experiment focused, with great discipline, on something that can be more objectively gauged: the extent to which drinking makes people’s penmanship go wobbly.

The goal: to establish that a sometimes-suspect criminal justice tool is dependable, accurate and precise.

Faruk Acolu, of the Council of Forensic Medicine, Istanbul, and Nurten Turan, of the University of Istanbul, published their study, “Handwriting Changes Under the Effect of Alcohol“, in the journal Forensic Science International…

…

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

Is it totally nerdy/creepy/loser-ish of me to say that I feel strangely compelled to send this guy an email and say hi? I also wonder if other people are looking at this entry and thinking the same thing.

So writes the blogger known as Stochasticgirl, referring to recent Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists inductee Vicente Martinez.

(Thanks to investigators Donna N. and Thalia D. Borland — who write that they are “both totally in resonance with Stochasticgirl’s intentions” — for bringing this to our attention.)