Category: Extra-Improbable columns

Scientific reports don’t have to be dull or overly complex. Consider this passage: “OBJECTIVE: To find out whether taking images of the male and female genitals during coitus is feasible and… So begins this week’s Improbable Research column in The Guardian. Read it here.

Many people, especially academics and taxi drivers, take pride in having arcane knowledge at their fingertips. Dr William B Bean bested them all. Dr Bean’s arcane knowledge was not only at his fingertips; it was about them. Dr Bean spent much of his adult life monitoring the growth of his fingernails…. So begins this week’s […]

A typical adult knows almost nothing about the psychology of repetitive reading. That is not surprising. Research psychologists, as a group, know little about the subject. Human beings can be induced to read repetitively. In one experiment, a scientist named Borgovsky… So begins this week’s Improbable Research column in The Guardian. Read it here.

What is the yellow cake, and what makes it yellow rather than merely cake? “The Yellow Cake” is the title of an article by Andrzej Roslanowski and Saharon Shelah, published in the Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society… So begins this week’s Improbable Research column in The Guardian. Read it here.

Exactly how dangerous is it to think? The question matters, because for some people it truly is dangerous – physically, life-threateningly dangerous. So begins this week’s Improbable Research column in The Guardian. Read it here.

There are few peer-reviewed papers on the subject of designing and testing an improved packaging for hollow chocolate bunnies. Of these articles, the most bouncily thorough is one called “Designing and Testing an Improved Packaging for Large Hollow Chocolate Bunnies.” So begins this week’s Improbable Research column in The Guardian. Read it here.

One’s aspirations can kill – if Dr Sakae Inouye, of Otsuma Women’s University in Tokyo, is correct – and Chinese aspirations are particularly deadly. So begins this week’s Improbable Research column in The Guardian. Read it here.

‘This study assessed the effects of the odour and ingestion of garlic bread on family interactions.” With those opening words, Alan R Hirsch of the Smell and Taste Treatment and Research Foundation, in Chicago, Illinois, declared the purpose and the breadth of his research. So begins this week’s Improbable Research column in The Guardian. Read […]