Not being a barber, and not having had an adulthood that spanned 130 years, Dwight E Robinson was in no position to report firsthand the frequency of changes in relative prevalence of sideburns, moustaches and beards in London during the years 1842-1972. He used an indirect source: issues of the Illustrated London News published during that time. […]
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.
Buttock and breast ogling: Britain vs. Argentina
Sex clearly drives Britain and Argentina as they vie to dominate islands of interest. The two great nations are rivals in producing academic studies of whether and how people stare at women’s breasts or buttocks. Britain fired the first shot in this war. In 2007, Adrian Furnham [pictured here] and Viren Swami of University College London published […]
The suggestibility of itching and scratching, videorecorded
Observations During Itch-Inducing Lecture is a study published by German researchers in the year 2000. It delivers exactly what the title promises. Professor Uwe Gieler [pictured here] at Justus-Liebig University in Giessen and two colleagues begin with the basics: “Itching is defined as a sensation associated with an impulse to scratch.” They invited people to attend a […]
Detecting nervousness on the telephone (patent)
Businesses need a way to detect nervousness on the telephone, says a recent patent, which offers a computerised means of accomplishing this. Inventor Valery Petrushin obtained his doctorate in computer science from the Glushkov Institute for Cybernetics, Kiev, and now works in Illinois in the US. His patent, granted last year, is for “detecting emotion in voice […]