Researchers in one field do not always pick up on good suggestions from those outside their speciality. Take, for example, the case of the Hapsburg lip. “I do not propose to deal with one of the most famous inherited features, the ‘Hapsburg lip’ … because it could almost be described as a medical condition, about […]
Category: Extra-Improbable columns
Our columns in other publications — The ‘Feedback’ column in New Scientist magazine, beginning in September 2022, and the “Improbable Research”column that ran for 13 years in The Guardian newspaper.
Move over, Einstein
The new version of Portfolio of a Genius has just arrived. For the better part of a decade, I have been receiving the laboriously crafted, increasingly thick versions of this wondrous work. They arrive in my mailbox, always unanticipated, always surprising by their very existence…. So begins this week’s Improbable Research column in The Guardian. […]
Devilish Digits
In 1988, Robert W Faid solved one of the oldest and most famous problems in mathematics. Yet almost no one noticed. Cracking the nut that was nearly two millennia old, Faid calculated the identity of the Antichrist…. So begins this week’s Improbable Research column in The Guardian. Read it here.
The David Brent Syndrome
Everyone is incompetent, in one way or another. Psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger supplied scientific evidence that incompetence is bliss, at least for the incompetent person…. So begins this week’s Improbable Research column in The Guardian. Read it here.