mini-Annals of Improbable Research (“mini-AIR”)
September 2022, issue number 2022-09. ISSN 1076-500X.
<https://www.improbable.com/airchives/miniair/>
Research that makes people LAUGH, then THINK.
01 TABLE OF CONTENTS
02 IN THE MAGAZINE ITSELF: Spinning (and Rotation)
03 Surprising Surprises
04 The 2022 IG NOBEL PRIZE WINNERS
05 A Prize for the Prize, for Science Communication
06 Bark Beetles, in a Book
07 Ig Nobel Exhibition in Osaka
08 Limerick Challenge: Unknown Surprises
09 Stuck-Short-of-Significance Winner
10 MORE IMPROBABLE: Pussy Stimulation, Porkcards, Chili Hotness
11 Macro-Surprises
20 SOME IMPROBABLE EVENTS
30 — Subscribe to the Actual Magazine! (*)
31 — How to start or stop receiving this little newsletter (*)
32 — Contact Info (*)
33 — Standard Gobbledegook (*)
Items marked (*) are reprinted in every issue.
02 IN THE MAGAZINE ITSELF: Spinning (and Rotation)
What you are reading at the moment (mini-AIR) is overflow detritus from the magazine Annals of Improbable Research (AIR).
The special ROTATION & SPINNING) issue (vol. 28, no. 5) is out. See the table of contents and selected articles at:
The special IG NOBEL issue is in prep.
SUBSCRIBE to the MAGAZINE, or get BACK ISSUES (there are more than 150 of them!): <https://gumroad.com/improbable>
Tables of Contents: <http://www.improbable.com/magazine/>
03 Surprising Surprises
This month’s Haphazardly-Selected Study [HSS] of the month is:
“Why Some Surprises Are More Surprising Than Others: Surprise as a Metacognitive Sense of Explanatory Difficulty,” Meadhbh I. Foster and Mark T. Keane, Cognitive Psychology, vol. 81, 2015, pp. 74-116.
<https://researchrepository.ucd.ie/bitstream/10197/8532/1/insight_publication.pdf>
04 The 2022 IG NOBEL PRIZE WINNERS
This year’s ten new winners were revealed at
the 32nd First Annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony
will be webcast on Thursday, September 15, 2022.
The ceremony web page, with full video (with an additional version that is captioned in Japanese):
<https://improbable.com/ig/2022-ceremony/>
Here are the winners (for links, etc., see the winners page <https://improbable.com/ig/winners/> ):
APPLIED CARDIOLOGY PRIZE [CZECH REPUBLIC, THE NETHERLANDS, UK, SWEDEN, ARUBA]
Eliska Prochazkova, Elio Sjak-Shie, Friederike Behrens, Daniel Lindh, and Mariska Kret, for seeking and finding evidence that when new romantic partners meet for the first time, and feel attracted to each other, their heart rates synchronize.
REFERENCE: “Physiological Synchrony is Associated with Attraction in a Blind Date Setting,” Eliska Prochazkova, Elio Sjak-Shie, Friederike Behrens, Daniel Lindh, and Mariska E. Kret, Nature Human Behaviour, vol. 6, no. 2, 2022, pp. 269-278.
LITERATURE PRIZE [CANADA, USA, UK, AUSTRALIA]
Eric Martínez, Francis Mollica, and Edward Gibson, for analyzing what makes legal documents unnecessarily difficult to understand.
REFERENCE: “Poor Writing, Not Specialized Concepts, Drives Processing Difficulty in Legal Language,” Eric Martínez, Francis Mollica, and Edward Gibson, Cognition, vol. 224, July 2022, 105070.
BIOLOGY PRIZE [BRAZIL, COLOMBIA]
Solimary García-Hernández and Glauco Machado, for studying whether and how constipation affects the mating prospects of scorpions.
REFERENCE: “Short- and Long-Term Effects of an Extreme Case of Autotomy: Does ‘Tail’ Loss and Subsequent Constipation Decrease the Locomotor Performance of Male and Female Scorpions?” Solimary García-Hernández and Glauco Machado, Integrative Zoology, epub 2021.
REFERENCE: “Fitness Implications of Nonlethal Injuries in Scorpions: Females, but Not Males, Pay Reproductive Costs,” Solimary García-Hernández and Glauco Machado, American Naturalist, vol. 197, no. 3, March 2021, pp. 379-389.
REFERENCE: ” ‘Tail’ Autotomy and Consequent Stinger Loss Decrease Predation Success in Scorpions,” Solimary García-Hernández and Glauco Machado, Animal Behaviour, vol. 169, 2020, pp. 157-167.
MEDICINE PRIZE [POLAND]
Marcin Jasiński, Martyna Maciejewska, Anna Brodziak, Michał Górka, Kamila Skwierawska, Wiesław Jędrzejczak, Agnieszka Tomaszewska, Grzegorz Basak, and Emilian Snarski, for showing that when patients undergo some forms of toxic chemotherapy, they suffer fewer harmful side effects when ice cream replaces one traditional component of the procedure.
REFERENCE: “Ice-Cream Used as Cryotherapy During High-Dose Melphalan Conditioning Reduces Oral Mucositis After Autologous Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation,” Marcin Jasiński, Martyna Maciejewska, Anna Brodziak, Michał Górka, Kamila Skwierawska, Wiesław W. Jędrzejczak, Agnieszka Tomaszewska, Grzegorz W. Basak, and Emilian Snarski, Scientific Reports, vol. 11, no. 22507, 2021.
ENGINEERING PRIZE [JAPAN]
Gen Matsuzaki, Kazuo Ohuchi, Masaru Uehara, Yoshiyuki Ueno, and Goro Imura, for trying to discover the most efficient way for people to use their fingers when turning a knob.
REFERENCE: “How to Use Fingers during Rotary Control of Columnar Knobs,” Gen Matsuzaki, Kazuo Ohuchi, Masaru Uehara, Yoshiyuki Ueno, and Goro Imura, Bulletin of Japanese Society for the Science of Design, vol. 45, no. 5, 1999, pp. 69-76.
REFERENCE: “Experimental Studies on the Rotary Control of Columnar Knobs — The Number of Fingers used at the Time of starting Rotary Control,” Gen Matsuzaki, Goro Imura, and Maseru Uehara, Proceedings of the Third Asia Design Conference, 1998, pp. 37-40.
ART HISTORY PRIZE [THE NETHERLANDS, GUATAMALA, USA, AUSTRIA]
Peter de Smet and Nicholas Hellmuth, for their study “A Multidisciplinary Approach to Ritual Enema Scenes on Ancient Maya Pottery.”
REFERENCE: “A Multidisciplinary Approach to Ritual Enema Scenes on Ancient Maya Pottery,” Peter A.G.M. de Smet and Nicholas M. Hellmuth, Journal of Ethnopharmacology, vol. 16, no. 2-3, 1986, pp. 213-262.
PHYSICS PRIZE [CHINA, UK, TURKEY, USA] [AWARDED JOINTLY TO TWO GROUPS]
Frank Fish, Zhi-Ming Yuan, Minglu Chen, Laibing Jia, Chunyan Ji, and Atilla Incecik, for trying to understand how ducklings manage to swim in formation.
REFERENCE: “Energy Conservation by Formation Swimming: Metabolic Evidence from Ducklings,” Frank E. Fish, in the book Mechanics and Physiology of Animal Swimming, 1994, pp. 193-204.
REFERENCE: “Wave-Riding and Wave-Passing by Ducklings in Formation Swimming,” Zhi-Ming Yuan, Minglu Chen, Laibing Jia, Chunyan Ji, and Atilla Incecik, Journal of Fluid Mechanics, vol. 928, no. R2, 2021.
PEACE PRIZE [CHINA, HUNGARY, CANADA, THE NETHERLANDS, UK, ITALY, AUSTRALIA, SWITZERLAND, USA]
Junhui Wu, Szabolcs Számadó, Pat Barclay, Bianca Beersma, Terence Dores Cruz, Sergio Lo Iacono, Annika Nieper, Kim Peters, Wojtek Przepiorka, Leo Tiokhin and Paul Van Lange, for developing an algorithm to help gossipers decide when to tell the truth and when to lie.
REFERENCE: “Honesty and Dishonesty in Gossip Strategies: A Fitness Interdependence Analysis,” Junhui Wu, Szabolcs Számadó, Pat Barclay, Bianca Beersma, Terence D. Dores Cruz, Sergio Lo Iacono, Annika S. Nieper, Kim Peters, Wojtek Przepiorka, Leo Tiokhin and Paul A.M. Van Lange, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, vol. 376, no. 1838, 2021, 20200300.
ECONOMICS PRIZE [ITALY]
Alessandro Pluchino, Alessio Emanuele Biondo, and Andrea Rapisarda, for explaining, mathematically, why success most often goes not to the most talented people, but instead to the luckiest.
REFERENCE: “Talent vs. Luck: The Role of Randomness in Success and Failure,” Alessandro Pluchino, Alessio Emanuele Biondo, and Andrea Rapisarda, Advances in Complex Systems, vol. 21, nos. 3 and 4, 2018.
SAFETY ENGINEERING PRIZE [SWEDEN]
Magnus Gens, for developing a moose crash test dummy.
REFERENCE: “Moose Crash Test Dummy,” Magnus Gens, Master’s thesis at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, published by the Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute, 2001.
COMING ATTRACTION: THE IG INFORMAL LECTURES
The Ig Informal Lectures are in prep. The new winners will explain, if they can, what they did and why they did it. Because of the pandemic, the lectures will again this year (as in 2020 and 2022) happen entirely online, rather than as live events at MIT. They will be released, one at a time, in the coming weeks and months, on our web site.
05 A Prize for the Prize, for Science Communication
The Ig Nobel Prize is itself winning a prize.
The Heinz Oberhummer Award is presented every year for “outstanding scientific communication”. In 2022 it will be awarded to the Ig Nobel Prize, at a ceremony in Vienna, Austria. Marc Abrahams and several Ig Nobel Prize winners will be part of the festivities.
The ceremony will be livestreamed.
Details: <https://oberhummeraward.at/>
06 Bark Beetles, in a Book
If you somehow are not already in love with bark beetles, we self-interestedly recommend this wonderful new book: The Surprising Lives of Bark Beetles, by Jiri Hulcr and Marc Abrahams.
Details: <https://floridapress.blog/2022/09/13/the-surprising-lives-of-bark-beetles/>
07 Ig Nobel Exhibition in Osaka
A special Ig Nobel Prizes exhibition, will happen in Osaka, Japan, from October 1 through November 13, 2022. The event is a collaboration with Dream Studios and Asahi TV.
Details: <https://asahi.co.jp/event/ig2022/> and <https://shinsaibashi.parco.jp/event/detail/?id=18986>
08 Limerick Challenge: Unknown Surprises
This month’s RESEARCH LIMERICK challenge — Devise a pleasing limerick that encapsulates this study:
“What Surprises May Lurk in the Unknown?” Witold Nazarewicz, APS Division of Nuclear Physics Meeting Abstracts, pp. 1WA-004, 2000.
<https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2000APS..DNP1WA004N/abstract>
Submit your perfectly formed, delightfully enlightening limerick to:
UNKNOWN SURPRISES LIMERICK COMPETITION
c/o <MARC aaattt IMPROBABLE dddooottt COM>
09 Stuck-Short-of-Significance Winner
The judges have chosen a winner in last month’s Competition, which asked for a limerick to explain this study:
“Analysis of 567,758 Randomized Controlled Trials Published Over 30 Years Reveals Trends in Phrases Used to Discuss Results that Do Not Reach Statistical Significance,” Willem M. Otte, Christiaan H. Vinkers, Philippe C. Habets, David G.P. van IJzendoorn, and Joeri K. Tijdink, PLoS Biology, 20, no. 2, 2022, e3001562. (Thanks to Dany Adams for bringing this to our attention.) <https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001562>
Winning limerickicist STEPHEN HALE writes:
Although my results were magnificent,
They were “marginally significant.”
Reviewers said to me
“Please just report the P
And our reviews will be more munificent.”
This month’s take from our LIMERICK LAUREATE, MARTIN EIGER:
They’ve seen thirty years worth of stuff,
Statistically, not up to snuff.
The number of phrases
Examined amazes,
But is five hundred thousand enough?
10 MORE IMPROBABLE: Pussy Stimulation, Porkcards, Chili Hotness
Recent improbable research bits you may have missed…
BLOG: <http://www.improbable.com/>:
* Pussy Stimulation Study
* Visions of Pork Production, on French Belle Époque Pig Postcards
* Chili Pepper Hotness Research
*…and much more
LUXURIANT FLOWING HAIR CLUB FOR SCIENTISTS (LFHCfS)
<https://www.improbable.com/category/lfhcfs-hair-club/>
PODCAST:
<https://www.improbable.com/category/the-weekly-improbable-research-podcast/>:
FACEBOOK: <http://www.facebook.com/improbableresearch>
TWITTER: @ImprobResearch, @MarcAbrahams, #IgNobel
INSTAGRAM: <https://www.instagram.com/improbable_research/>
PATREON: <www.patreon.com/ImprobableResearch>
11 Macro-Surprises
This month’s Other Haphazardly-Selected Study [OHSS] of the month is:
“Surprise and Uncertainty Indexes: Real-Time Aggregation of Real-Activity Macro-Surprises,” Journal of Chiara Scotti, Monetary Economics, vol. 82, 2016, pp. 1-19.
<https://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/ifdp/2013/1093/ifdp1093.pdf>
TREAT YOURSELF TO (MUCH) MORE IMPROBABLE STUFF. SUBCRIBE TO THE (PDF) MAGAZINE!
<www.improbable.com/magazine/>
20 SOME IMPROBABLE EVENTS
Sharper Night, Italy Sep 30, 2022
Ig Nobel Prizes Exhibition, Osaka, Japan Oct 1-Nov 13, 2022
Ig Informal Lectures (online) Oct & Nov, 2022
Café Scientifique, Muret, France Oct 12, 2022
Heinz Oberhummer Ceremony, Vienna, Austria Nov 24, 2022
“Science Friday” Ig Nobel radio broadcast Nov 25, 2022,
Ig Nobel Euro (and Brexitannia) Tour March-April, 2023.
[All live events in 2022 and 2023 are subject to pandemical constraints and adventures.]
For details and additional events, see
<http://www.improbable.com/improbable-research-shows/complete-schedule/>
30 — Subscribe to the Actual Magazine! (*)
The Annals of Improbable Research is a 6-issues-per-year magazine,
in PDF form. It’s packed with research that makes people laugh, then think.
<http://www.improbable.com/magazine/>
SUBSCRIPTIONS – ($25, for six issues)
BACK ISSUES – ($5 each)
(mini-AIR, the thing you are reading at this moment, is but a tiny, free-floating appendix to the actual magazine.)
31 — How to start or stop receiving this newsletter (*)
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32 — CONTACT INFO (*)
Annals of Improbable Research (AIR)
<http://www.improbable.com>
EDITORIAL: Marc att improbable dottt com
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33 — Standard Gobbledegook (*)
EDITOR: Marc Abrahams
CO-CONSPIRATORS: Kees Moeliker, Alice Shirrell Kaswell, Gary Dryfoos, Nan Swift, Stephen Drew
PROOFREADER: Ambient Happenstance
AUTHORITY FIGURES: Nobel Laureates Dudley Herschbach, Sheldon Glashow, Richard Roberts
Key words: improbable research, science humor, Ig Nobel, AIR, the