When a person thinks about naughty things, does one side of the brain get more exercised than the other? Eight scientists studied that question. Their report, Hemispheric Asymmetries During Processing of Immoral Stimuli, appears in the journal Frontiers in Evolutionary Neuroscience. The stated goal is to describe “the neural organisation of moral processing”. Debra Lieberman, 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.
Some Men Have Heads Built for Success or for Evil
A new line of American-British research suggests that the shape of a chief executive officer’s head can indicate how well his firm will prosper. The shape also predicts whether the chief executive will act immorally. The research offers a mathematical tool that financial analysts can add to their professional kit bag: the chief executive officer’s facial width-to-height […]
Scientists Gain Insights into and with Cereal Flakes
After generations of humans had been pouring cows’ milk onto breakfast cereal flakes and then pouring that milk/flake mixture into themselves, a researcher named Luigi Degano fed breakfast cereal to 21 cows in Italy. Degano wanted to see how this might affect the milk that later issued from the cows. Degano, based at the Istituto Sperimentale Lattiero […]
Calculations: Insurance for clowns
Clown insurance is for clowns, not for persons potentially afflicted by them. Insurance companies offer it to clowns because clowns – no matter what you may thoughtlessly think of them – are people, and bad things can happen to anyone. Clown insurance exists, as a distinct product category, thanks to the mathematical discipline called risk assessment. […]