Improbable Research

Educator Naomi Johnson concludes that the Improbable.com website — and in particular a statistics article called “Who Will Win the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election?”, written by Eric Schulman and Daniel Debowy — is “unreliable, bias[sic] and has no authenticity.”

Johnson says “We do not know who the authors are.” Eric Schulman, unknown author, is surprised and impressed. In an inspired-by-Johnson essay he concludes:

My advice to educators using the web is to be careful in evaluating the information you find. Some pages that look reliable are not. And others that look strange may end up, upon closer look, being reliable, unbiased, and authentic.

To read Naomi Johnson’s colorful critique, click on the image of it, below:

Research on the effects of thick versus thin bar glasses on injuries incurred in bar fights has paid off big for Professor Jonathan Shepherd of Cardiff University. The university notes:

Professor Jonathan Shepherd, Professor of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery and Director of the University’s Violence and Society Research Group, has been appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for his services to healthcare and the criminal justice system…. Professor Shepherd conducted the first field research comparing injuries from toughened glasses used in bar and nightclub fights to those of glass which becomes sharp-edged. His work prompted many bars to switch to tougher glass in the late 1990s, leading to a fall in injuries. [His work] was recently recognised with the 2008 Stockholm Prize in Criminology, an international prize recognising outstanding achievement in the field of criminological research and its application.

(Thanks to investigator Betsy Devine for bringing this to our attention.)

In early 2004, we glanced at Professor Lester’s then-approximately 1500 published studies (see “Way to Go, David Lester,” AIR 10:2). Later, we looked at a few of his several hundred publications from the years 2005 and 2006 (see “Lester’s Latest: 2005 & 2006,” “The Economic Art of Suicide,” “Tips from a Master,” and “A Rivalry is Joined: Lester vs. Voracek,” all in AIR 13:3). Since then, in this series called “Lester’s Latest,” we have been attempting to keep up with at least some of his subsequent work.

(That’s an excerpt from the article “Lester’s Latest,” published in AIR 14:1.)

E. Edward Bozoyan received US patent #2929336, issued in March 1960, for a “valve structure.”

Alas for Mr. Bozoyan, search engines now identify him as “Bozo Van”.

As for Bozo (not Mr. Bozoyan), his history appears to be a muddle. To dip into the saga, begin with a report called “The Unusual History of Bozo the Clown - unraveling who did what when in the creation of Bozo.” Here is its beginning:

Most clowns are created and performed by one individual. There are exceptions, of course, such as the Harlequin, a character from the Comedia del Arte. A more contemporary exception is Bozo the Clown, who is owned, copywritten, and trademarked property of Larry Harmon. But although Mr. Harmon has done an admirable job of marketing Bozo the Clown worldwide, the story of Bozo does not begin with him. Instead, it begins at Capitol Records, in 1946….

Need a cure? Dr. S. Seckiner Gorgun may have one. His web site offers Gorgunistic treatments for many diseases, including:

• Glioblastoma Multiforme
• Plasmocitoma Bone Metastasis
• Breast Cancer
• Breast Cancer With Bone Metastasis
• Cancer of Lung and Mediastenum
• Liver Cancer with Bone Metastasis
• Lung Cancer
• Nasopharynx Cancer
• Cancer of Trachea

And that’s not all. Dr. Gorgun invented “The Method of Gorgun.” He also “developed a Novel Antenna Technology that has significantly different wave characteristics from regular Electromagnetic waves.”

Who is he? According to Dr. Gorgun:

“S. Seckiner GORGUN was born in Istanbul on 12th of May, 1950. During the high school he has been subjected to special tests at the University of Istanbul and officially designated as a “genius”. At the age of 18 while still a high school student he developed an artificial heart that did not require external energy or controls, through a Turkish Scientific Research Organization funded project.”

(Thanks to Samil Ozavar for bringing this to our attention.)

Brady Barr is to hippos as Troy Hurtubise is to grizzly bears, more or less. Troy won a 1998 Ig Nobel Prize for for developing, and personally testing a suit of armor that is impervious to grizzly bears. Brady Barr built and used a hippo suit, so as better to go lightly amongst the hippopotami.

“No one’s ever retried sweat from an un-drugged hippo. I’m going to give it a try,” says Barr in a National Geographic video, which shows him using a hippo costume to try to infiltrate into a group of real hippos. He gets stuck in the mud.

(Thanks to investigator Maureen Suki for bringing this to our attention.)

In this video, 2005 Ig Nobel Peace Prize winner (for photographing every meal he consumed during a 34-year period) Dr. Yoshiro Nakamats sings a version of “Do-Re-Mi” on a Tokyo Street, attempting to leverage the performance into being elected mayor of the city.

(Thanks to investigator Annalee Newitz, whose January 26, 2008 article about the many worlds of Dr. Nakamats brought this to our attention.) (NOTE: Click here to see an alternative look at Dr. Nakamats.)

In this quick video, U.S. congressman Jack Kingston demonstrates a subtle point of logic: not wearing a pin is bad, but not wearing it is not bad.

(Thanks to Josh Marshall for bringing this to our attention.)

A supervisor at a motivational coaching business in Provo is accused of waterboarding an employee in front of his sales team to demonstrate that they should work as hard on sales as the employee had worked to breathe.

In a lawsuit filed last month, former Prosper, Inc. salesman Chad Hudgens alleges his managers also allowed the supervisor to draw mustaches on employees’ faces, take away their chairs and beat on their desks with a wooden paddle “because it resulted in increased revenues for the company.” …

[Prosper president] Dave Ellis said the exercise was a dramatization of a story in which a young man asks Socrates to become his teacher. Socrates responds by plunging the student’s head underwater and telling him he will learn once his desire for knowledge is as great as his desire to breathe.

So reports the Salt Lake Tribune (Salt Lake City, Utah) on February 28, 2008. The company explains:

Our mission is to provide our students with the education and hands-on experiences they need to achieve their personal and professional goals. We strive to make the road to personal achievement meaningful, rewarding, and enjoyable.

Peter Hurd, Seeker of Hockey Players and Depressed Men

Peter Hurd is Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Alberta. He is a prolific finger-length researcher. A March 3, 2005 press release from the university says:

Hurd is conducting ongoing research in this area, including a study that involves measuring hockey players’ finger lengths and crossreferencing the results with each player’s penalty minutes.

That’s an excerpt from the article “Finger Celebrities,” published in AIR 13:5.

How hard is it to write a book about an abstruse subject? Steve Nadis is determined to find out. Here is one of his personal progress reports:

Yesterday I met with a prominent mathematician (a number theorist) to discuss my book, which involves math and string theory and vice versa. Early on in our conversation, when I confessed to not being up on certain math concepts, he said: “I think you’re going to have a hard time writing this book.” We talked some more and before long reached another of those junctures where I did not know what I should have known and he mentioned again, “I think you’re going to have a hard time writing this book.” I shrugged it off, we continued our conversation, and before long I hit another tough spot and he interjected, once again, with the familiar refrain. Well, three times a charm, as they say, and this time I believed him: I AM going to have a hard time writing this book.

Dr. O.R.L. Pretzel—perhaps the foremost Pretzel in the ranks of living mathematicians—has retired.

He states that he will maintain links with Imperial College London as a Senior Research Investigator.

Your recent discussion about “Fall Guys in Science” reminded me of a scientist who, to me, is legendary. She is no fall guy. Her laboratory’s web site describes her as “our fearless leader.” Her name is Margaret McFall-Ngai, which I believe is pronounced “Margaret McFall Guy.” If that really is how she pronounces her name, she is now my hero. My hero studies squid, and publishes lots of studies. They call her collected works “The McFall-Ngai Papers,” and you can find lots of them online.

So writes besotted investigator Hans Dielos.

My revelation yesterday has prompted a number of people to say I’ve sold out. In fact, one commenter went so far as to say I will soon go on to “a full time job reviewing carbon bottle cages.” And that really made me angry. Why? Because that person clearly has never used a nice, high-quality carbon fiber bottle cage.

So writes The Bike Snob.

(Thanks to investigator Mark Dionne for bringing this to our attention.)

Non-philosophers sometimes ask “What do philosophers do?” One thing philosophers do is: quarrel with other philosophers. Here is a small extract of one side of piece of a philosophers’ quarrel:

My attention has been restricted to three chapters of a fifteen chapter book. For those who are convinced by the arguments that did not convince me, or by similar ones, Rosenberg has much to say about the general worldview that results. I have not ventured to say anything about Rosenberg’s proposal, which he calls Liberal Naturalism. Nor have I said anything about his account of causation, constructed to be with Liberal Naturalism. That, I suppose, must stand or fall in its own right; and its presentation might have been a separate book. I think that Rosenberg will not be surprised that he has failed to convince me. As he says, “Reinventing nature is hard work.” A Place for Consciousness is no doubt only a first pass at the task.

So writes philosopher Thomas Polger in “A place for dogs and trees?,” his 20-page take at a few aspects of fellow philosopher Gregg Rosenberg’s quarrelicious book.

Gregg Rosenberg, by the way, has own answer to the question “What do philosophers do?” They get hired to be consultants. Rosenberg writes: “I am currently managing research at the [Washington-D.C.-based consulting firm] Corporate Executive Board.”

Not only are philosophers conscious that they love to quarrel—they consciously love to quarrel about consciousness. A web page called “Online Papers in Consciousness” lists and links to many fine consciousness quarrels. Like all good quarrels, these can be enjoyed even by the casual passerby who chooses a quarrel at random and dips into it midstream. Here are dipping points for three of the many quarrels available for dipping into:

• Charles Birch (1999). Why I became a panexperientialist.
• Roberto Casati (2003). Qualia domesticated.
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://jeannicod.ccsd.cnrs.fr/docs/00/05/32/47/PDF/ijn_00000057_00.pdf
  http://jeannicod.ccsd.cnrs.fr/ijn_00000057
• David Chalmers (online). What is it like to be a thermostat?