Category: Extra-Improbable columns

The Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists (LFHCfS) has just chosen its new Woman of the Year and Man of the Year. The choices this time are triply luxuriant and flowing… So begins this week’s Improbable Research column in The Guardian

The Christmas season is a time to pause and ponder. Here are some ponderous Christmas-related research reports to give you pause, perhaps…. So begins this week’s Improbable Research column in The Guardian.

"The study of Marlene Dietrich‘s relationship with her dolls has taken me into some new research territory." With these words Judith Mayne, the distinguished professor of French studies and Italian studies and women’s studies at Ohio State University, takes all of us into new territory…. So begins this week’s Improbable Research column in The Guardian.

Four years ago, Marie-Christine Cadiergues demonstrated that dog fleas jump higher than cat fleas. Cosmopolite flea fans are probably still gaga over Cadiergues’s report – city folk tend to care about cats and dogs (and by extension, their little passengers) more than about other animals. But a new report by Boris Krasnov compares the jumping […]

The purpose of this study was to examine meanings assigned by observers to an adolescent wearing an alcohol-promotional T-shirt." So begins a study published in the September issue of the Family and Consumer Sciences Research Journal. Scholars had never tackled this exact question. Now they have…. So begins this week’s Improbable Research column in The […]

Do shoes cause schizophrenia? Jarl Flensmark of Malmo wants to know, and in a recent paper in the journal Medical Hypotheses, he explains why…. So begins this week’s Improbable Research column in The Guardian.

Dr Judith A Reisman wants you to avoid looking at dirty pictures. Reisman wants you to look at her explanation of the horrible things dirty pictures can do to your brain, your nervous system and your civil rights. To make it easy for you to know what she is talking about, the good doctor has […]

There is one individual who, above all others, has plumbed the effects of custard. Ren? A de Wijk is based at the Wageningen centre for food sciences in the Netherlands. De Wijk is enjoying a stunning burst of productivity… So begins this week’s Improbable Research column in The Guardian. Read it here.

The juicy phrase “corruption in sumo wrestling” seems doubly delicious when you see it in the title of an economics research report…. So begins this week’s Improbable Research column in The Guardian. Read it here.

Some science books are deadly dull. But there is no dullness in Robert Cohen’s “Deadly” adventure series. It’s got plenty of good, old-fashioned deadliness… So begins this week’s Improbable Research column in The Guardian. Read it here.