Mari Stoddard maintains a list of examples, from the medical world, of nominative determinism. “Nominative determinism” is the intentionally inflated name for a common phenomenon: some people work at professions that harmonize with their family name. Examples from the Stoddard list are these three doctors in the field of Emergency Medicine: Dr Pulse, Dr Borer; […]
Tag: medical
Are masks necessary in operating rooms, in ordinary times?
Questions of masks and spittle, and separately—and startlingly—the question of whether masks are necessary in ordinary, non-pandemic times in hospital operating rooms. Four medical studies covering those topics get a good looking at in the “Wear a Mask?” column in the special Small Animals issue (vol. 26, no 3) of the Annals of Improbable Research.
Podcast Episode #205: “Color Preferences in the Insane”
Color Preference in the Insane, Can Consumers Recognize the Taste of their Favorite Beer?, Effect of Audience Boredom on the Power Hungry, You Never Sleep Alone, Improbable Medical Review, Extracting the Wrong Tooth, and Telephones for Animals. In episode #206, Marc Abrahams shows some unfamiliar research studies to Jean Berko Gleason, Chris Cotsapas, Maggie Lettvin, […]
Ig Nobel talk (and webcast) at NIH on Wednesday
Marc Abrahams will give this week’s NIH Director’s Wednesday Afternoon Lecture talk, at the National Institutes of Health campus in Bethesda, Maryland. The topic will be “Improbable Research and the Ig Nobel Prizes.” The event, at 3 pm (US eastern time), Wednesday, February 19, is open to the public, free. It will also be webcast. The […]