Marcel Goverde’s study “Helmets Make You Bicycle Faster” appears in AIR 15-5 (which you can read online). Goverde, who is based at the University of Basel, Switzerland, describes the big question and how he tackled it: There seems to be a lack of profound, scientific studies investigating the risk compensation theory for helmet wearing cyclists. […]
Year: 2009
Google’s lousy search oddity
A google search for the pair of terms louse and .gov produces, as its first-found item, the web site for US Congresswoman Louise Slaughter. Here’s a screen capture:
The limited power of Santa Claus
As Christmas approaches, Santas appear in shopping malls (in at least some countries). Ig Nobel Prize-winner John Trinkaus’s series of studies [discussed here] illuminate a sad truth about the situation. The first and last of them: 1. “Visiting Santa: an informal look,” John Trinkaus, Psychological Reports, 2004 Oct;95(2):587-8. “Using a modified six cartoon-face rating scale, […]
He watches hands not being washed
In this hand-sanitiser-obsessed era, Professor John Trinkaus, a man who studies things that annoy him, got annoyed. This resulted, inevitably, in a study called Hand Sanitising: An Informal Look.Trinkaus saw people being urged “to frequently wash their hands, or otherwise sanitise their hands, as a precaution against the flu”. But, he wondered, to what extent […]