Improbable Research

The danger of cigarettes is mostly not in smoking them, argues a study by three doctors at the KS Hegde Medical Academy in Mangalore, India. Or, put another way: the danger comes from not smoking. Figuratively blowing smoke in the face of conventional wisdom, the study asks: “Are lung cancers triggered by stopping smoking?”

Arunachalam Kumar, Kasaragod Mallya and Jairaj Kumar take little for granted….

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

A friend of the Bush family has asked us to state, for the public record, whether the Ig Nobel Board of Governors has any connection with the person or persons who produced this video (click on the image to see the video).

The video has just appeared on Youtube. It is a response to the recent announcement of the 2007 Ig Nobel Peace Prize.

Here is our statement: The Ig Nobel Board of Governors has no connection with whoever produced that video, nor are we in any way responsible for or against the content of their message, or for their peculiar manner of spelling the word “prize.”

UPDATE: Nor are we? in any way responsible for or against the content of this gentleman’s video on the same subject.

Congratulations to Sweden! The Swedish Bombina Boygroup has won the first round of the European Bombina Song Contest. Denmark, Latvia and Germany had no reasonable chance. On Friday, 11th of May, they tried to use their second chance…

So say the organizers of the 2007 European Bombina Song Contest, who also say:

Six new ponds for the fire-bellied toad are created in Latvia.

(Thanks to investigator Uwe Hermann for bringing this to our attention.)

People who do not love data — pure data, of any kind — sometimes fail to understand that there are indeed people who love data. Here are some data that anyone could love.

While visiting the web site tripadvisor.com we stumbled across a collection of reviews of the Eden Plaza Hotel. The hotel is located in the South Kensington section of London (mere footsteps away from several of the world’s best museums — these museums themselves hold magnificent collections of data).

These reviews are, we believe, data that demand to be savored. Here is a sampling:

“bring disinfectant”
“Never Ever Stay here!!!!!”
“Most disgusting hotel ever”
“Horrific!”
“Dire”
“Nightmare”
“Where to start?! Too disgusting for words!”
“Really Unpleasant”
“Horroroso y asqueroso”
“Un cauchemar”
“good value for money”

On October 11, 2007, we received a lengthy email message labeled “(UNCLASSIFIED) Military Applications of Ig Nobel Peace Prize Research.” The author, Dr. David Leffler, urged us to share it with you. Here is an abridged version:

You may recall that in 1994 world-renowned quantum physicist Dr. John Hagelin received the Ig Nobel Peace Prize for his experimental conclusion that 4,000 trained Transcendental Meditation (TM) experts caused a significant decrease in violent crime in Washington, D.C. His groundbreaking research was later published in Social Indicators Research.

A lot has happened since this time. The advanced TM-Sidhi program is now also known as Invincible Defense Technology in military circles. I am the Executive Director at the Center for Advanced Military Science (CAMS). We advocate the use of Invincible Defense Technology by the military to prevent terrorism and war. We have an impressive group of military-related experts at CAMS including retired generals and a former military aide to President Ronald W. Reagan and President George H. Bush. Their pictures and bios are available at our website at: http://www.StrongMilitary.org

Please view a MUST SEE online video (1:17:00) by Dr. John Hagelin, who is now the executive director of the International Center for Invincible Defense in New York City. The Harvard trained physicist recently addressed UN ambassadors, government leaders, and the world press to call for establishing in every country a group of experts in ?Invincible Defense Technology? (IDT) to render every country impervious to attack…. The video is available at: http://www.invincibledefense.org/videos/2007_04_11_hagelin.html

[Furthermore,] I hope you and your colleagues will carefully read this paper.

Sincerely,

David R. Leffler, Ph.D.
Executive Director
Center for Advanced Military Science (CAMS)