Improbable Research

Scholar Invents Fan To Answer His Critics

Mary Rosh thinks the world of John R. Lott Jr, the controversial American Enterprise Institute scholar whose book “More Guns, Less Crime” caused such a stir a few years ago.

In postings on Web sites in this country and abroad, Rosh has tirelessly defended Lott against his harshest critics. He is a meticulous researcher, she’s repeatedly told those who say otherwise. He’s not driven by the ideology of the left or the right. Rosh has even summoned memories of the classes she took from Lott a decade ago to illustrate Lott’s probity and academic gifts.

“I have to say that he was the best professor I ever had,” Rosh gushed in one Internet posting.

Indeed, Mary Rosh and John Lott agree about nearly everything.

Well they should, because Mary Rosh is John Lott — or at least that’s the pseudonym he’s used for three years to defend himself against his critics in online debates, Lott acknowledged this week.

So says a February 1, 2003 Washington Post report.

(Thanks to investigator Nancy Obert for bringing this to our attention.)

What is a gerbe? A gerbe is a mathematical object. It happens to be pretty obscure. Many obscure concepts are easy to understand. One just needs (A) a little patience, and (B) a reminder that most ideas are built upon other ideas. So it is, perhaps, with the gerbe.

To grasp a new concept, just (C) find a concept upon which it is built, and then (D) grasp that earlier concept. To grasp the earlier concept, just (E) find an appropriate earlier concept, and then (F) grasp it. And so on.

A few years ago, Nigel Hitchin used this technique to explain the concept of a gerbe….

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

The perfume, which has been blended by Manchester based ID Aromatics for the SCMA, re-creates the earthy and fruity aroma of Blue Stilton cheese in an eminently wearable perfume. Using grape seed as a carrier oil, the Stilton scent features a symphony of natural base notes including Yarrow, Angelica seed, Clary Sage and Valerian

The smell of a Stilton is essential to the grading of the cheese as it enables the grader to determine whether the cheese is up to the mark and able to be sold as Stilton.

So says a May 10, 2007 press release issued by the Stilton Cheese Makers Association.

Physicist Frank Tipler uses physics to prove Christianity.

A quasi-anonymous physics uses physics to prove Islam.

Have other physicists used physics to prove other religions? If so, we would like to hear about it.

(Thanks to investigators Lee Rossi and Andrea Lacan for bringing these to our attention.)

The cost of addiction is $5000 per month. We learn this from a June 21, 2007 Associated Press report that both identifies a newly recognized form of addiction, and gives an instance of its pricing:

When she suggested to therapists that Michael had a video game addiction, “nobody was familiar with it,” she said. “They all pooh-poohed it.”

Last fall, the family found a therapist who “told us he was addicted, period.” They sent Michael to a therapeutic boarding school, where he has spent the past six months - at a cost of $5,000 monthly that insurance won’t cover, his mother said.

The AP report identifies this is all part of a larger, bolder effort:

The culprit isn’t alcohol or drugs. It’s video games, which for certain kids can be as powerfully addictive as heroin, some doctors contend.

A leading council of the nation’s largest doctors’ group wants to have this behavior officially classified as a psychiatric disorder.

Ricardo A. Tejeiro Salguero (at Universidad Nacional de Educaci?n a Distancia, Algeciras)and Rosa M. Bersab? Mor?n (at Universidad de M?laga, M?laga, Spain) have been doggedly on the trail of this for years now. Witness their study:

“Measuring problem video game playing in adolescents,” Ricardo A. Tejeiro Salguero, Rosa M. Bersab? Mor?n, Addiction, Volume 97 Issue 12 Page 1601-1606, December 2002.

Which brave researcher(s) will get the official credit for first declaring that video game playing is an addiction? The world waits, breathlessly, to find out.

(Thanks to investigator Kristine Danowski for bringing the AP report to our attention.)