Academic Study of a Young Man’s Sexual Attraction to Human Gas

Professor Mark D. Griffiths [pictured here] of Nottingham Trent University has published a remarkable new study.

Here’s how we know this study is remarkable:  The university’s press office sent copies of it to many prominent science journalists, remarking that (1) “It’s the world’s first paper on eproctophilia – sexual arousal from flatulence” and (2) “Professor Griffiths would be more than happy to talk to you in more detail”. A remarkable number of those journalists immediately sent it on to us at the Annals of Improbable Research. We are, in this blog entry you are reading right now, remarking upon that study. The study is:

“Eproctophilia in a Young Adult Male,” Mark D. Griffiths, Archives of Sexual Behavior, epub July, 2013.

Professor Griffiths explains, in copious detail:

“One subtype of olfactophilia [a paraphilia where an individual derives sexual pleasure from smells and odors] is eproctophilia. This is a paraphilia in which people are sexually aroused by flatulence. Therefore, eproctophiles are said to spend an abnormal amount of time thinking about farting and flatulence and have recurring intense sexual urges and fantasies involving farting and flatulence. To date, there has been no academic or clinical research into eproctophilia. Therefore, the following account presents a brief case study of an eproctophile and given a pseudonym (Brad). Brad gave full consent for his case to be written up on the understanding that he could not be identified and that he was guaranteed full anonymity and confidentiality….”

There is more. Lots more.

In other respects, too, Professor Griffiths is an expert. So renowned is he that Wikipedia devoted an entire web page to him.

One of the many things on which he is an expert is the academic study of gamblers. We have celebrated some of his abundant work on that subject.

(We express our thanks, and other emotions, to the many journalists who instinctively decided that they should alert us to the existence of Professor Griffiths’s new line of research.)

BONUS (unrelated): The 1998 Ig Nobel Prize for literature was awarded to Dr. Mara Sidoli of Washington, DC, for her illuminating report, “Farting as a Defence Against Unspeakable Dread” [Journal of Analytical Psychology, vol. 41, no. 2, 1996, pp. 165-78.]