Improbable Research

Every June 5, for 11 years now, a small number of staff members of the Natural History Museum Rotterdam silently celebrated what they call “Dead Duck Day”, to commemorate the sudden and dramatic death on June 5th, 1995 of the mallard (Anas platyrhynchos) that entered the scientific literature as the first victim of homosexual necrophilia in this species. In 2003, the incident was also commemorated with the awarding of the Ig Nobel Biology Prize .

This year the 12th annual Dead Duck Day is open to the public. The Natural History Museum Rotterdam and the European Bureau of Improbable Research invite duck enthusiasts and other people to come to the lawn next to the glass pavilion of the museum [see photo below] — the site where the duck met its fate — and join the short open-air ceremony.

On June 5th 2008, at 17.55 h (the exact moment when the mallard hit the glass fa?ade) bird curator Kees Moeliker will take the now-historic stuffed duck specimen (NMR 9997-00232) out of the museum, say a few words to commemorate the dramatic event and explain -? if asked ?- what exactly happened at that moment thirteen years ago. Participants are invited to bring appropriate snacks and drinks. Click here for the location.

It is the organizers wish that Dead Duck Day becomes a worldwide event on June 5th to commemorate the dramatic death of any duck anywhere and to find ways to prevent the deaths of ducks by traffic, hunting, windows, poison and other unnatural causes. Please report local initiatives to (improbable AT nmr.nl).

Scientifically speaking, exactly what makes April in Paris delightful? A computer scientist of my acquaintance, a Paris native now living abroad, analysed the question and wrote up a study that will be published soon, albeit pseudonymously. His data imply that vacations and strikes are what drive Parisians to behave as they so famously do.

Paris school vacation periods are scheduled with clockwork regularity. This scientist believes that strikes are nearly as predictable. The two quasi-metronomes make Parisians tick…..

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

?Acquired Growth Hormone Deficiency and Hypogonadotropic Hypogonadism in a Subject With Repeated Head Trauma, or Tintin Goes to the Neurologist,? Antoine Cyr, Louis-Olivier Cyr, Claude Cyr, Canadian Medical Association Journal, vol. 171, no. 12, December 7, 2004, pp. 1433-4. (http://dx.doi.org/10.1503/cmaj.1041405).

(Thanks to Doug Hatlelid for bringing this to our attention.)
The authors explain that:

We describe the unique case of a public figure who is well known for having delayed
pubertal development and statural growth (Fig. 1). We believe we have discovered why Tintin, the young reporter whose stories were published between 1929 and 1975, never grew taller and never needed to shave.

(That’s an excerpt from the article “Icky Cutesy Research Review,” published in AIR 11:1.)

When illness or injury strikes, you want to feel relief. Our new Relief Therapy? ensures that you will. When you visit our clinic we will therapeutically decrease your comfort level, using state-of-the-science technology: loud ambient sound; flicker-fluorescent lighting; and chilled air. Three hours of that, and then you go home. You will feel almost instant relief — and the memory of it stay with you, therapeutically, until such time as you make a full recovery.

(That’s an excerpt from the article “HMO-NO News,’ published in AIR 11:1.)

Dylan Tweed has joined the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists. He says:

I started my PhD in 2005, in the field of large scale structure formation. I’m currently working on the semi-analytical galaxy formation model GalICS with the horizon-project french consortium. I don’t know why girls put flowers on my head in spring.

Dylan Tweed, LFHCfS
PhD student in Cosmology.
Centre de Recherche Astrophysique de Lyon
Lyon, France