Mini-AIR

mini-Annals of Improbable Research ("mini-AIR")

February 2026, issue number 2026-002. ISSN 1076-500X.

improbable.com/publications/newsletter-mini-air/

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Research that makes people LAUGH, then THINK.

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01 TABLE OF CONTENTMENT

02 IN THE MAGAZINE ITSELF: Childhood (Also: An Improvement!)

03 The 'Error' Error in Behavioural Paternalism

04 UNRULY, About the Unexpected

05 Upcoming: The 2026 Ig Nobel EuropeTour

06 LIMERICK CHALLENGE: Question Question Relationships

07 This-and-That Winners

08 MORE IMPROBABLE: Bubble Wrap, Duck, Pasta

09 Approach-Approach and Avoidance-Avoidance

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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.

This little newsletter you are reading at the moment (mini-AIR) is overflow detritus from the magazine Annals of Improbable Research (AIR).

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02 IN THE MAGAZINE ITSELF: Childhood (Also: An Improvement!)

The special CHILDHOOD issue (32:1) is now out and about, and frolicking with subscribers. The table of contents and a preview are at payhip.com/b/ELftU

MAGAZINE SUBSCRIBERS PLEASE NOTE:

If you are a subscriber to our magazine (Annals of Improbable Research), you may be chuckling or grimacing (or both) at email messages that appeared earlier this month.

On February 8, 2026, we (at last!) switched from using a subscription-processing service (Gumroad) which had become bizarrely (that word is no exaggeration) unreliable to a different service (Payhip) that seems to be quietly reliable.

Read about the bizarreness and the solution, at improbable.com/2026/02/09/big-adventure-for-our-magazine-subscribers/

* * *

SUBSCRIBE to the MAGAZINE, or get BACK ISSUES

https://improbable.com/magazine-2/

Tables of Contents: improbable.com/magazine-2/

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03 The 'Error' Error in Behavioural Paternalism

This month's quasi-haphazardly selected research report of the month (QHSRROTM) is:

"On Choice Inconsistency: The ‘Error’ Error in Behavioural Paternalism," Adam Oliver, Behavioural Public Policy, 2024, pp. 1-14. doi.org/10.1017/bpp.2024.52

The author explains:

"Behavioural economists have observed that people demonstrate systematic choice inconsistences, but... they tend to attribute these behaviours to individual error. I argue in this article that this, in itself, is an error – an 'error error'. In reality, a planner cannot hope to understand the multifarious desires that drive a person’s choices."

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04 UNRULY, About the Unexpected

Upasana Sarraju’s new book called "UNRULY: The Ig Nobel Prizes and The Science That Refuses to Behave" dives into, swims and surfs through a universe (our universe, in fact) full of unexpected science. Published by India Penguin [ISBN 9780143470403], the book’s official debut date is February 28, 2026.

improbable.com/2026/02/21/unruly-a-new-book-about-the-joy-thrill-of-the-unexpected-and-the-ig-nobel-prizes/

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05 Upcoming: The 2026 Ig Nobel EuropeTour

Coming in April and May, this year's Ig Nobel EuroTour will include events in GERMANY, SWEDEN, SWITZERLAND, GREECE, THE NETHERLANDS, ITALY, and perhaps elsewhere.

Details, some concrete, some incipient, are on our events listing page

improbable.com/upcoming-events

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06 LIMERICK CHALLENGE: Question Question Relationships

This month's RESEARCH LIMERICK challenge — Devise a pleasing limerick that encapsulates this study:

"Categorising Question Question Relationships in the Pósa Method," Dániel Katona, Teaching Mathematics and Computer Science, vol. 18, no. 3, 2020, pp. 91-100.

doi.org/10.5485/TMCS.2020.0495

The author explains:

"The doctoral research of the author – with a reverse didactic engineering (RDE) methodology – aims at reconstructing the theoretical background of the ‘intuitively developed’ Pósa method for inquiry-based learning mathematics (IBME) in Hungarian talent education.... A model is proposed for categorizing question-question relationship with 3 categories: helping question, follow-up question and question of a kernel."

Send your perfictly formed, perfectly pleasing limerick to:

QUESTION QUESTION LIMERICK COMPETITION

c/o MARC aaattt IMPROBABLE dddooottt COM

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07 This-and-That Winners

The judges have chosen co-winners in last month's Competition, which asked for a limerick to explain this study:

"This and That Revisited: A Social and Multimodal Approach to Spatial Demonstratives," David Peeters and Aslı Özyürek, Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 7, no. 2016, p. 222. doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00222

Co-winning limerickicist DIANNE P. O'LEARY writes:

Publish or perish, they say.

I ponder this all through the day.

From "this" and from "that",

an idea I begat,

And no longer feel such dismay.

Co-winning limerickicist DOT BONDELEVITCH writes:

It's this. Or if not, then it's that.

My opinion is that it don’t mat—

—ter. What matters, you see,

's that this is all about me.

A "this"-or-"that" spat's just old hat.

This month's take, from our LIMERICK LAUREATE, MARTIN EIGER:

This paper that I read today, it —

Would "that paper" better convey it?

Where are you? Where am I?

Where's the paper? Oh my!

I can't figure out how to say it.

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08 MORE IMPROBABLE: Bubble Wrap, Duck, Pasta

Recent improbable research bits you may have missed...

BLOG (improbable.com):

• Bursting Bubble Wrap to Detect Foreign Crap in Pipelines

• “How a Necrophilic Duck Led to One of the Strangest Papers Ever Published”

• Tom Lum’s Adventure with Cacio e Pepe

• …and much more

SUBSTACK: (improbablestuff.substack.com)

MASTODON: @MarcAbrahams@mstdn.science

FACEBOOK: facebook.com/improbableresearch

PATREON: patreon.com/ImprobableResearch

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09 Approach-Approach and Avoidance-Avoidance

This month's Other Haphazardly-Selected Research Report (OQHSRROTM) of the month is:

"Resolution of Approach-Approach and Avoidance-Avoidance Conflicts," Abe Arkoff, The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, vol. 55, no. 3, 1957, pp. 402-404. doi.org/10.1037/h0043956

The author explains:

"Approach-approach conflicts required significantly less time to resolve than did avoidance-avoidance conflicts and significantly more approach-approach conflicts were judged easier to resolve than were avoidance-avoidance conflicts."

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TREAT YOURSELF TO (MUCH) MORE IMPROBABLE STUFF.

SUBCRIBE TO THE (PDF) MAGAZINE!

improbable.com/magazine-2/

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20 SOME IMPROBABLE EVENTS

· AAAS Annual Meeting, Phoenix, USA — Feb 13, 2026

Ig Nobel EuroTour — April 2026

· Berlin, Germany — Apr 13, 2026

· U Duesberg-Essen, Germany — Apr 17, 2026

· Lund U, Sweden — Apr 21, 2026

· Malmö, Sweden — Apr 22, 2026

· EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland — Apr 23, 2026

· Athens, Greece, — Apr 28, 2026

· others To Be Announced

· Dead Duck Day, Rotterdam, The Netherlands, June 5, 2026

· 36th FIRST ANNUAL IG NOBEL PRIZE CEREMONY — Sep, 2026

· Falling Walls, Berlin, Germany — November 2026

For details and additional events, see: improbable.com/upcoming-events/

If your institution would like to host an event,

please get in touch with us at:

MARC aaattt IMPROBABLE dddooottt COM

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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.

improbable.com/publications/magazine

SUBSCRIPTIONS ($40 for six issues)

BACK ISSUES ($8 each)

(mini-AIR, the thing you are reading at this moment, is but a tiny, free-floating quasi-appendix to the actual magazine.)

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31 — How to start or stop receiving this newsletter (*)

This newsletter, Mini-AIR, is just a (free!) tiny monthly *supplement* to the big, bold six-times-a-year magazine Annals of Improbable Research.

To SUBSCRIBE or UNSUBSCRIBE to mini-AIR, see the links at the end of this email.

ARCHIVES: improbable.com/publications/newsletter-mini-air/

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32 — CONTACT INFO (*)

Annals of Improbable Research (AIR)

improbable.com

EDITORIAL: MARC aaattt IMPROBABLE dddooottt COM

SUBSCRIPTION QUESTIONS: subscriptions AT improbable.com

Cambridge, MA, USA

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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

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