Improbable Research

Nigel Tomm’s 2008 novel, The Blah Story, composed almost entirely of the word “blah,” is a delightfully cheap knock-off or follow-on to Doug Zongker’s delightfully cheap research study “Chicken Chicken Chicken Chicken Chicken,” which was published in the September/October issue of the Annals of Improbable Research.

We would be pleased to learn about earlier, equally substantive works in this genre.

Physicists enjoy it when someone pontificates jerry-built nonsense ? nonsense based on assumptions that are known to be wrong. Physicists see this as an invitation to use their most famous dismissive phrase: “It’s not even wrong.”

Authority figure Michael Medved, in a column about deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) published May 14, 2008, demonstrates the concept of “not even wrong”:

In today?s ruthlessly competitive international economy, the United States may benefit from a potent but unheralded advantage: the aggressive edge sustained by the inherited power of American DNA…. The insight carries crucial political implications…

(Thanks to investigator Paula Trowbridge for bringing this to our attention.)

Newspaper editors, some of them, are eternally fascinated by intestines, and sometimes let this creep into their work. Today’s example, from the Boston Globe, is the headline in a report about a baseball player named Bartolo Colon, who might replace an injured player on the local team. The headline: “Colon may fill the void Tuesday“.

People say a ?bird in the hand is worth two in the bush?, but try masturbating a two metre tall, 120 kilogram male ostrich with powerful legs and toenails and you?ve got a challenge on your hands.

Dr Irek Malecki, co-supervisor of the project, said the technique, which involved using a dummy female for collecting ostrich ejaculates, evolved out of animal behaviour observations, where captive reared birds become imprinted and perceived humans as ?sexy? and worthy of their sexual display.

Researchers in the School of Animal Biology at The University of Western Australia (UWA) have achieved a world-first by developing animal and human-friendly methods for semen collection and artificial insemination in ostriches. [The photo shows Dr? Malecki "collecting semen from
a male emu, who is much gentler than a male ostrich,?using an artificial cloaca."]

So says a May 15, 2008 Science Alert report.

The research builds, directly or indirectly on the Ig Nobel Prize winning study “Courtship Behaviour of Ostriches Towards Humans Under Farming Conditions in Britain.” Charles Paxton, co-author of that study, will discuss it and its implications as part of the Ig Nobel Cabaret at the Cheltenham Science Festival on Friday night, June 7.

(Thanks to investigator Nicole Bordes for bringing this to our attention.)

A pound of lead feels heavier than a pound of feathers - a thing long suspected, but not carefully tested until recently, when Jeffrey B Wagman, Corinne Zimmerman and Christopher Sorric ran an experiment involving lead, feathers, plastic bags, cardboard boxes, a chair, blackened goggles, and 23 volunteers from the city of Normal, Illinois.

The scientists are based at Illinois State University, which is located in that unassumingly named metropolis. In a study published in the journal Perception, they explain why they took the trouble: “‘Which weighs more - a pound of lead or a pound of feathers?’

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