Category: Extra-Improbable columns

Because race is an uncomfortable topic for many people, certain questions simply do not get discussed. It is now nearly 20 years since the publication of Beth A Scanlon’s blockbuster report Race Differences in Selection of Cheese Colour…. So begins this week’s Improbable Research column in The Guardian. Read it here.

On Mediterranean shores, there’s always something in the air. Romance, perhaps? Well, research shows that sometimes it’s just marijuana pollen wafting in from Africa. And sometimes, it’s snails…. So begins this week’s Improbable Research column in The Guardian. Read it here.

Abstruse communication has had no more generous friend in the past century than the newly late Howard J Brannd. Brannd gave new words to a field that was starved of vocabulary. It was he who brought technical jargon from the world of electric appliance repair to the field of mental health therapy…. So begins this […]

More than a decade has passed since the publication of the research report “Feline Reactions to Bearded Men”.. So begins this week’s Improbable Research column in The Guardian. Read it here.

What is the record for the maximum number of authors/co-authors on a published scientific paper? … So begins this week’s Improbable Research column in The Guardian. Read it here.

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 […]

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. […]

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.

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.

When, if ever, does a person stops learning? Stephen Rushen, an educationalist based at Penn State University in the United States, conducted an experiment, or says he conducted an experiment, to find out…. So begins this week’s Improbable Research column in The Guardian. Read it here.