Improbable Research

Young boys who are allowed to dress up as female characters could become better readers, it has been claimed. The assertion is made in “Boys and Reading,” a report published by the Centre for Language in Primary Education. The report’s joint author, Sue Pidgeon, suggests that boys are poorer readers than girls because their experiences are more limited. While girls are allowed to dress up as male and female characters, boys are discouraged from taking on female roles.

So says a May 7, 1999 BBC report.

(Thanks to investigator Rose Fox for bringing this to our attention.)

‘Teen Facts - Hormones’
Animated educative film showing a scientific experiment. For three minutes two kids are exposed to ten years of puberty.

Made for NEMO Science center ‘TeenFacts’ exhibition, running for the next five years.
Original version: Dutch - Shown here is the English translation

So says FonzTeeVee.

(Thanks to investigator Octavian Bruce for bringing this to our attention.)

A patented process takes ordinary hair color and makes it extraordinary, by adding self-illuminating glow! Voltage does not rely on UV, neon or black lights to create glow.

So say the purveyors of Voltage Self-Illuminating Hair Gel.

(Thanks to investigator Betsy Devine for bringing this to our attention.)

What are abstinence best sellers? Here is the definition according to the purveyor:

Our exclusive copyrighted products to promote sexual abstinence.

Examples of abstinence best-sellers are: ABSTINENCE ROSE PIN; ABSTINENCE DOG TAG; VD MOOD PENCILS; and STD CRAB.

Investigator Noor Mohammad Cheema writes:

I hate cockroaches and rats. After many experiments to get rid of them, I found several techniques . These techniques are to create fear in them — after you apply one of these techniques, the rats have no way except to leave that place immediately. One technique is very funny.

I have found that cockroaches have a great deal of sense. Ten years ago, when I shifted to a new apartment , there were a lot of cockroaches due to sewerage lines.

Whenever I saw them, I became sick emotionally, so I started fighting them with shoes. During those days, at night I kept the lights off in the kitchen and toilet rooms. At night and midnight, I made many raids by switching the lights on in the room. Then I started killing them with my shoes. I killed thousands of them.

After a month, I felt that the remaining cockroaches fully recognized me as a killer, They fear me. Whenever I came back home, if there are one or two in the room they quickly started hiding from me.

Can you imagine what pleasure I felt that I have a great terror on them after three months I have completely got rid off them.

I realized then and there that if somebody chases these things, in the end he wins.

As an unsupervised young chief trader in Singapore in 1995, Nicholas W. Leeson lost $1.3 billion in frenzied trades in Japanese stock futures and bonds, destroying his employer, the 233-year-old Barings Bank, which had Queen Elizabeth as a customer.Now, Mr. Leeson, having served four years in prison and survived a bout with colon cancer, has managed to turn those money-losing bets into a money-making enterprise — warning bankers of their continuing vulnerability to rogue traders.

The paradox is that he is earning a very good living from a notorious past, getting £5,000 ($9,800) a speech.

So says a December 26, 2006 New York Times report about Nick Leeson. The 1995 Ig Nobel Economics Prize was:

Awarded jointly to Nick Leeson and his superiors at Barings Bank
and to Robert Citron of Orange County, California, for using the
calculus of derivatives to demonstrate that every financial
institution has its limits.

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

Gauri Nanda — winner of a 2005 Ig Nobel Prize for inventively solving her chronic oversleeping problem — has made good on her promise to help other oversleepers rise and run.

Clocky is the now-famous alarm clock that runs away and hides, repeatedly. The Boston Globe reports, on December 26, 2006, that:

Clocky’s inventor, Gauri Nanda , a 27-year-old entrepreneur who graduated from MIT last year, said she hoped that her small launch last week — only “a couple of thousand” were shipped — marked the start of a big business…. Most of those receiving the first Clockys last week, in time to put them under the Christmas tree, had been on the waiting list for the past year and a half.

Perhaps, just maybe, there are people who are not excited about Ryff’s Six-Factor Model of Well-Being. But for everyone who is excited, there’s news, albeit bad news.

Kristen W. Springer, Robert M. Hauser, and Jeremy Freese are publishing a report called “Bad News Indeed for Ryff’s Six-Factor Model of Well-Being.” It’s in the journal Social Science Research, vol. 35, no. 4, December 2006, pp. 1120–31.

For many scientists, observation is the key skill. An organization called Diaper Free Baby now offers information and training for anyone who wants to develop good observational skills. They say:

Observation is the first step in EC. While observing, there are a few things to look for. One is timing patterns and rhythms. Many babies need to pee.

(Thanks to investigator Ann Denion Hoskins for bringing this to our attention.)

Investigator Hugh Price writes:

Myriad questions present themselves about the two toilet stall studies.

The most obvious: was it a men’s or a women’s lavatory? One would expect that the bathroom behavior of men and women is quite different. Second, neither of the environments selected is at all typical. While an antarctic outhouse might not be as malodorous as a tropical one, the concentration of unpleasant smells might tend to drive users to the outer stalls. Conversely, a public lavatory at the beach might be partially exposed to outside observers.

The time that the user expects to remain may also be a factor. The antarctic facility is more residential, and hence a place where one might seek solitude for reading, whereas this would be much less probable in the California case. [EDITOR'S NOTE, based on an angry note from an entirely different investigator: temperature may contribute opposing effects.]

Finally, I question the measurement technique in both cases. Both methods measure the aggregate utilization, but give only a hazy clue to which stall will be chosen when one or more stalls are occupied.

Clearly this is an area that calls for much more careful research. Perhaps an informal look by Professor Trinkhaus is in order.

Become one of life’s ultimate insiders! In PARASITES UNLEASHED! you control a wily parasite, racing to complete your life cycle, mate, and lay eggs before your opponents. Do all the entertainingly gross things real parasites do — bore into vital organs, hide inside a blood cell, hitch a ride inside a mosquito, even take over your host’s brain! But beware, because your enemies can add stages to your life cycle, and zap you with medicine!

PARASITES UNLEASHED! is a simple and fast-paced non-collectible card game for 2-4 players ages 8 and up.

So say the manufacturers. But this parasite-infested game, unlike the parasites that infest it, is still leashed. The manufacturers say they will be “shipping” it several months from now.
(Thanks to investigator Sally Shelton for bringing this to our attention.)

Investigator Kristina McCormack writes:

This may not meet the technical requirements for a formal Nomination to the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists, but I believe it merits further inquiry on behalf of that noble institution. Perhaps an honorary membership is in order, at least. From an article by Space.com:

Astronaut Cuts Her Hair in Space for Charity

They appear as two line items in a final transfer list between the space shuttle Discovery and the International Space Station: items 811 and 811.1. Uplinked to the shuttle crew as a final preparation for the undocking of Discovery from the station on Tuesday, the list identifies 811 as Sunita Williams, FE-2, and 811.1 as a ponytail….

“Remove ponytail from 811 prior to transfer of 811″ reads the resupply transfer list. “Report final stowage location.”

“We believe 811.1 has been completed, please confirm,” ground controllers wrote to the crew elsewhere in the list.

Williams, who arrived at the outpost last week with long flowing - and floating - hair, arranged to have her locks cut last Sunday and the clippings stowed on Discovery for a future hairpiece to be donated to a patient suffering from long-term medical hair loss.

Such sacrifice is a noble thing.

This study compares the mean and normalised distribution of the Body Mass Index of women and men in the Marvel Universe, and with women and men in the “real” world.

So reads the abstract of a study published online: “Comparative Sex-Specific Body Mass Index in the Marvel Universe and the “Real” World,” by Karen Healey and Terry D. Johnson.

(Thanks to investigator Michael Croft for bringing this to our attention.)

Horseshoe Fixation versus Hoof Colour, a Comparative Study, by five scientists at the University of Guelph, in Canada, digs deep into an old question. Some horses have white hooves, some have black, some have an assortment. Which colour holds horseshoes most reliably?

Professor RJ Runcimen and his colleagues write: “In an application that is as much art as science, it is not surprising that a certain amount of common mythology would develop. In the case of horseshoes, one commonly held belief is that black hooves hold their shoes more securely than white.”

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

Investigator Machiel Stolk writes:

The research of the famous Gert Holstege has reached another climax! Recently, a Dutch national newspaper [de Volkskrant] reported that Holstege has scientifically proved that “women lose control when they are having an orgasm”. Holstege used his favorite research instrument, the PET scan, to investigate women’s brain activity during an orgasm. He found out that during periods of sexual excitement, less blood circulates through the left frontal lobe in the brain. Less blood circulation means less brain activity, and as is commonly known, the left frontal lobe is responsible for keeping our temper and anger under control.

The importance of Holstege’s research is immediately demonstrated by a [December 13, 2006] report in the Times of London which describes the case of a 29 year old Christian newly-wed who filed a £3.5 million compensation claim against his employers, saying that his marriage was ruined because his sex drive spiralled out of control after a head injury at work.