By reputation, stockbrokers have manipulative personalities. So do people who sell cars or buildings. Professor Abdul Aziz took the measure of these groups of professionals, hoping to see whether each lives up or down to the legend. Aziz, who teaches business at Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland, together with colleagues published three studies a […]
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.
He industriously measured ears and other body parts
Dr Robert Bennett Bean [pictured here] took the measure of his fellow men almost fanatically. Women, too. He measured the parts, then published the copious details, and sometimes pictures, for all to see. Bean worked at the University of Michigan, then at the Philippine Medical School, then at Tulane University, and finally at the University […]
Experiments with inflatable & other life-size dolls
A generic life-size doll, with no modifications, was the key element in at least one unplanned experiment — the experiment documented in a 1993 monograph called Transmission of Gonorrhoea Through an Inflatable Doll, published in the journal Genitourinary Medicine. But generally, scientists who conduct planned experiments that rely on life-size dolls prefer to carefully optimise, or […]
Slimeball: A sticky weapon to immobilize large ships
Slime would become the US military’s prime weapon to immobilise large ships under a scheme outlined for the US Air Force’s Air Command and Staff College. Lieutenant Commander Daniel Whitehurst, a student at the college, figured out how to combine a raft of existing technologies to produce the officially “non-lethal” armament he calls The Slimeball. He prepared a report in […]