Improbable Research

The heaps of Harry Potter scholarship ought not be overlooked as the world awaits the July 21, 2007 arrival of the seventh and final Harry Potter book.

The September/October 2005 issue (vol. 11, no. 5) of the Annals of Improbable Research was the special Harry Potter and the Exploding Toads issue. Several of the scholarly articles can be downloaded free of charge and/or curse:

• Selected Works of Harry Potter, by Alice Shirrell Kaswell
• Potter: Hairy, by Stephen Drew
• Exploding Toads: The Storied Remains, by Mark Benecke, C.W. Moeliker, Richard Wassersug, Marc Abrahams

Is LSD a good treatment for autism? There were some experiments to find out. But…

The major lesson to be learned from this little known set of studies is that all too often controversial treatments are touted as promising on weak evidence and flawed studies. It is extremely difficult to evaluate the evidence from methodologically flawed studies, especially when the available data are largely qualitative (i.e., narrative descriptions). Whatever promise LSD might have had was never going to be validated through these types of studies.

So says the study:

“Flashback to the 1960s: LSD in the treatment of autism,” Jeff Sigafoos, Vanessa A. Green, Chaturi Edrisinha and Giulio E. Lancioni, Developmental Neurorehabilitation, January ? March 2007; 10(1): 75?81.

The authors of the new study are variously at the University of Tasmania, the University of Texas, and the University of Bari.

(Thanks to investigator David Jackson for bringing the study to our attention.)

NOTE: The image shown here is from the US Drug Enforcement Agency, which so far as we know takes no official position for or against the efficacy of LSD as a treatment for autism.

NOTE ON THE NOTE: Investigator (and law professor) Jonathan Weinberg writes: “For what it’s worth, it *is* DEA’s position that LSD has ‘no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.’ (That’s consistent with your statement: the agency might in theory be open to the possibility that LSD is effective in treating autism, and still take the position that such a use is not ‘currently accepted.’) DEA also takes the position that marijuana has ‘no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States,” so its metric for what is ‘currently accepted’ may be different than some other folks’.”

Benford and Newcomb stumbled upon the law in the same way: while flipping through pages of a book of logarithmic tables, they noticed that the pages in the beginning of the book were dirtier than the pages at the end. This meant that their colleagues who shared the library preferred quantities beginning with the number one in their various disciplines?

So says Betsy Devine quoting Lisa Zyger. Devine then elaborates, digging happily and skillfully in the dirt.

Miss Conduct devised this simple graph to analyze a faux pas:

Despite the existence of a simple treatment for intractable hiccups, yet another long-suffering victim is being celebrated in the press for going untreated. (A teenage girl in Florida got was similarly untreated and celebrated earlier this year.)

The treatment, for which Dr. Francis Fesmire was awarded the 2006 Ig Nobel Medicine Prize, is digital rectal massage.

The new victim is celebritized both by himself and in a July 12, 2007 report in the Telegraph:

Man hiccups for five months (and counting)

A musician who has been hiccuping for the last five months has launched a blog in an attempt to find a cure.

Christopher Sands says he has not slept or eaten properly since the bout began in February and he is now unable to concentrate on his music.

The 23-year-old from Lincoln has been recording his experience on the social networking site MySpace in ?The hiccup diary?.

(Thanks to Spluch for bringing this victim to our attention.)