This experiment is one of the (so-far) few that explicitly consider the ‘Kicking the Barking Dog Effect‘: “Effects of anger and trigger identity on triggered displaced aggression among college students: based on the ‘kicking the barking dog effect’, ” Shen Liu, Wenxiu Li, Xinwei Hong, Minghua Song, Feng Liu, Zhibin Guo, and Lin Zhang, BMC […]
Please join us at the Improbable Research show on Valentine’s Day night. Here are details: AAAS Annual Meeting, Boston, Massachusetts, USA — Improbable Research Show. Sheraton Boston Hotel (next to the Hines Convention Center), Constitution Ballroom — The annual Improbable Research show will be a featured part of the meeting. All talks will be kept briskly brief, thanks to a […]
Darryl Laiu of the BBC made a nice two-and-a-half-minute video documentary about B.F. Skinner‘s Ig Nobel Peace-Prize-winning pigeon-guided missile project. The BBC describes it: The WWII experiment to make pigeon-guided missiles During WWII, psychologist B F Skinner tried to use pigeons to guide missiles towards enemy ships. His study proved it was possible, and it […]
Tom Lehrer’ song “The Elements” has a unique, gleeful role in the universe. You are invited to a special performance of the song on Friday Night, February 14, 2025, at the Improbable Research show at the AAAS Annual Meeting, in Boston, Massachusetts. Here’s some history and context about the song. And here’s the lineup of everything […]