Improbable Research

THEORY: It sounds like a great idea to hire a psychopath as long as they’re ambitious and will leave for another job after a couple of years.

SUGGESTIVE EVIDENCE: This June 14, 2007 report in the Tasmania Mercury (which we referred to two days ago):

“Psychopaths are very comfortable in successful corporations because they are actually rewarded for their behaviour.

“In business you are encouraged to make money for the company and if you appear to be doing whatever it takes to make money, you are often promoted.

“They are seen as rising employees who are full of energy and creativity.”

But behind the facade, such workers were “ego-centric, grandiose, pathological liars with a lack of conscience, remorse and guilt”, Dr Clarke said.

Do fish suffer from exposure to Uriah Heep?

A Finnish researcher is to study fish in an aquarium while a rock group performs nearby, to see if the sound causes any ill-effects or distress.

Bands including aging rockers Uriah Heep will perform on Friday night to about 3,000 fans in a tent just a couple of dozen metres away from the aquarium.

“I will be looking for any abnormal behavior or activity,” said researcher Mikko Erkinaro.

The 500,000-liter tank is home to salmon, trout, pike and perch and other species common in Finland’s brackish coastal waters.

“It could be quite nasty to arrange such an aquarium and a performance venue (so close),” Erkinaro said, “especially when the (band) is a bit old-fashioned.”

So says a July 20, 2007 Reuters report.

(Thanks to investigator Mike Hoyt for bringing this to our attention.)

President Bush will undergo a routine colonoscopy Saturday, and will transfer power to Vice President Dick Cheney during the procedure, expected to take about two and a half hours, the chief White House spokesman said.

So says a July 20, 2007 CNN report. Colonoscopy enthusiasts will recall our pocket history of colonoscopy booms, which begins:

Here is a brief guide to some unfortunate explosions of a particular type. The details sit quietly in back issues of medical journals. Only occasionally does anyone come to see them. The visitor is, in most cases, either a doctor in sudden need of information or a scholar in search of violent titillation.

BOOM (Italy, 1952) - Unusual Complication in Electrosurgery: Explosion of Gases in the Cecum During Operation of Cecal Fistula, by G Pezzuoli and C Ghiringhelli (published in L’Ospedale Maggiore, September 1952).

BOOM (Spain, 1964) - Pneumatic Explosion of the Cecum in Patients with Carcinoma of the Colon, by N Antonelli and E Borenstein (in Prensa Médica Argentina, October 1964)….

Dr Clarke, who has penned two books about workplace psychopaths and will speak at the state government-sponsored Queensland Safety Show in Brisbane next week, today said up to three percent of the Australian population was psychopathic.

“I would say that in every major company there would be at least one,” Dr Clarke said.

“Psychopaths are very comfortable in successful corporations because they are actually rewarded for their behaviour.”

So says a June 14, 2007 report in the Tasmania Mercury.

But beware! John Clarke, expert on psychopaths, should not be confused with John Clark, actor, celebrity divorcee (who then remarried), and connoisseur of certain kinds of psychopaths.

(Thanks to investigator Kristine Danowski for bringing Dr. Clarke to our attention.)

The Bible tells of frogs that fall from the sky. Biologists, on the other hand, tell of lizards that fall from trees.

The biologists - William Schlesinger, Johannes Knops and Thomas Nash - recount in great detail how they discovered an unsuspected truth about lizards. Their study Lizardfall in a California Oak Woodland, published in the journal Ecology, is a blow to the reputation of a species once admired for its surefootedness. It’s the story of the reptiles’ ungraceful fall into the abyss - in this case a plastic bucket - and of the detectives who documented it.

Western fence lizards spend a lot of time in trees, walking up and down the branches. But, when running after insects or away from predators, say Schlesinger, Knops and Nash, they frequently lose their grip….

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