The Retraction Watch web site has the story behind, or beneath, its headline that says “Psych journal in revolt as it publishes paper saying masturbation and gay sex are harmful“.
Category: Research News
Research — on any and all subjects — that makes people LAUGH, then THINK.
Specialized Looking: “How Eating Shapes Antarctic Tourists’ Perceptions of Climate Change”
‘Meals as Micro-rituals: How Eating Shapes Antarctic Tourists’ Perceptions of Climate Change’ is the title of a seminar that happened on January 14, 2022, online, organized by The SOAS Food Studies Centre in London, UK. Professor Clare Sammells of Bucknell University led the micro-exploration. This was one of the few scholarly gatherings to address in […]
Should Ice Cream Melt, Legally?
How hard is it to determine whether ice cream should melt, in the context of international law? Edwin Vermulst attempts to lick that problem, in this lengthy exposition: “EC Customs Classification Rules: Should Ice Cream Melt?” Edwin A. Vermulst [pictured here], Michigan Journal of International Law, vol. 15, 1993, pp. 1241-1327.
Nit-Picking Confidence, Algorithmically in Parallel
For people who like to find faults, good news appeared in 1989, in this study: “Locating Faults in a Constant Number of Parallel Testing Rounds,” Richard Beigel, S. Rao Kosaraju [pictured here], and Gregory F. Sullivan, Proceedings of the First Annual ACM Symposium on Parallel Algorithms and Architectures, March 1989, pp. 189–198. The authors, at […]
Everything: What’s Missing Is What Gets Scientists Most Excited
What makes most scientists most excited is the same thing that—if they’ve heard about it—makes many non-scientists wonder if scientists are nuts: Way more than half of “the stuff the universe is made of” is still a mystery to scientists. Which may strike you as a crazy thing to realize, and a crazy thing to say. […]
Popular Medicines as In-a-Pinch Radiation Sensors
If all hell breaks loose, so to speak, and you are fortunate to still be alive in a spot that is suddenly in a torrent of dangerous ionizing radiation, you can use any of several popular medicines to start to gauge the radiation level that you’re begin exposed to. That’s the theme of this new […]
Secrets in the Scat
Yes, the wombat-cubical-poo acceptance speech at the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony does get a moment in the sun in the NOVA television documentary “Secrets in the Scat.” NOVA describes the episode this way: “Scott Burnett is ‘Scatman’—an Australian ecologist on the trail of the secrets of poop. By identifying and analyzing animal scat for DNA […]
Southern Hairy-Nosed Wombats: When, Where, How Many, Why
All the traditional (in some traditions, if not all traditions) basic questions about southern hairy-nosed wombats are addressed in a doctoral thesis: “Southern Hairy-Nosed Wombats: When, Where, How Many, and Why,” Michael Swinbourne, Ph.D. thesis, University of Adelaide, School of Biological Sciences, 2019. (Thanks to Tom Gill for bringing this to our attention.)
Exchanging Shit for Brains, Postmortem [research study]
Although they perhaps were not allowed to say it plainly in their published study, three scientists have identified a clear case of exchanging shit for brains. Details (with some euphemisms) are in the study: “Coprolites From Calvert Cliffs: Miocene Fecal Pellets and Burrowed Crocodilian Droppings from the Chesapeake Group of Maryland, U.S.A.“, Stephen J. Godfrey, […]
“Sarsaparilla in Syphilitic Cachexia” is Not a Song
In response to a question from a “please do not use my name” reader, we want to clarify that “Sarsaparilla in Syphilitic Cachexia” is not a song title. “Sarsaparilla in Syphilitic Cachexia” is the title and subject of a letter in the British Medical Journal: “Sarsaparilla in Syphilitic Cachexia,” Felix Semon, British Medical Journal, vol. […]