Marc Abrahams's Blog, page 96

Pocket-Sized #1042: “Hot Rod Magazines – A Harmless Diversion?”

In Pocket-Sized episode #1042, Marc Abrahams shows an unfamiliar research study to Melissa Franklin. Dramatic readings and reactions ensue.

Remember, our Patreon donors, on most levels, get access to each podcast episode before it is made public.

Melissa Franklin encounters:

“Hot Rod Magazines: A Harmless Diversion?” Eleanor M. Robinson, The English Journal 54, no. 1 (1965): 36-38.

Seth Gliksman, Production Assistant

Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Google Podcasts, AntennaPod, BeyondPod and elsewhere!

The 2020 Ig Nobel Prizes (NY Times for Kids, China)

The New York Times for Kids, China produced this animated introduction to the 2020 Ig Nobel Prizes. It’s in Chinese, with English subtitles. Part of it is a takeoff on the 2020 Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony webcast. We enjoyed collaborating on this, and hope you enjoy watching it.

“Frozen Meat Against COVID-19 Misinformation”

Scholars begin to try to make sense of the vexed year 2020, in this study:

“Frozen Meat Against COVID-19 Misinformation: An Analysis of Steak-Umm and Positive Expectancy Violations,” Ekaterina Bogomoletc, Nicole M. Lee, Journal of Business and Technical Communication, epub 2020. (Thanks to Faye Flam for bringing this to our attention.) The authors, at North Carolina State University and Arizona State University, explain:

“COVID-19 has forced many businesses to adjust their communication strategies to fit a new reality. One surprising example of this strategy adjustment came from the company Steak-umm, maker of frozen sliced beef. Instead of finding new ways to promote its products, the company shifted its focus to the public’s urgent needs, breaking down possible approaches to navigating information flow during the pandemic. This resulted in overwhelming praise on social and news media, including almost 60,000 new Twitter followers within a week. Drawing on expectancy violation theory, this case study examines Steak-umm’s strategy, the content of social media responses, and why the approach was successful.”

Richard Feynman talking about trying to figure out things

Richard Feynman:

The Pee Tape: How Mammals Pee So Expeditiously

David Hu, head of the 2015 Ig Nobel Prize-winning urination-duration-research team, has a new animated video explaining that research:

The 2015 Ig Nobel Prize for physics was awarded to Patricia Yang, David Hu, Jonathan Pham, and Jerome Choo, for testing the biological principle that nearly all mammals empty their bladders in about 21 seconds (plus or minus 13 seconds).

They explain that research in detail, in the study “Duration of Urination Does Not Change With Body Size,” Patricia J. Yang, Jonathan Pham, Jerome Choo, and David L. Hu, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 111 no. 33, August 19, 2014, pp. 11932–11937.

Patricia Yang and David Hu, together with additional colleagues, were awarded a second Ig Nobel Prize four years later. The 2019 Ig Nobel Prize for physics was awarded to Patricia Yang, Alexander Lee, Miles Chan, Alynn Martin, Ashley Edwards, Scott Carver, and David Hu, for studying how, and why, wombats make cube-shaped poo.

They explain that research in detail, in the study “How Do Wombats Make Cubed Poo?” Patricia J. Yang, Miles Chan, Scott Carver, and David L. Hu, paper presented at the 71st Annual Meeting of the APS Division of Fluid Dynamics, Abstract: E19.0000, November 18–20, 2018.

Running with bent elbows – the mystery continues [study]

• Most people tend to walk with their elbows slightly bent.

• Most people tend to run with their elbows acutely bent.

• No-one knows why.

There is however, a(n) hypothesis. It’s the ‘Mechanical Tradeoff Hypothesis.’ which was descibed by Andrew K. Yegian, Yanish Tucker, Stephen Gillinov and Daniel E. Lieberman in their 2019 paper for the Journal of Experimental Biology, 222: jeb197228, entitled Straight arm walking, bent arm running: gait-specific elbow angles 

Their hypothesis provides possible answers for the ‘walking’ scenario – but the bent-arms-whist-running phenomenon is still a mystery.

“Optimal energetics appears to be the reason why straight arms are stereotyped during walking, but the reason for stereotyped bent arm running remains unclear.”

The authors suggest, however, that although bent-arm running might not have an energy-saving benefit, it could be related to balance instead – or :

“We must also consider that the stereotyped behavior during running may not provide a benefit at all.”

Research research by Martin Gardiner

Pocket-Sized #1041: “Drunk German Speech”

In Pocket-Sized episode #1041, Marc Abrahams shows an unfamiliar research study to Jean Berko Gleason. Dramatic readings and reactions ensue.

Remember, our Patreon donors, on most levels, get access to each podcast episode before it is made public.

Jean Berko Gleason encounters:

“Alcohol Language Corpus. The first public corpus of alcoholized German speech,” Florian Schiel, Christian Heinrich, and Sabine Barfüßer, Language Resources and Evaluation, 2011

Seth Gliksman, Production Assistant

Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Google Podcasts, AntennaPod, BeyondPod and elsewhere!

Ambient creep

Are you bothered by ambient creep? If so, you are not alone. Here’s one of many research studies on the topic:

“The effect of anodic polarization on the ambient creep of brass,” B.GuW.-Y.ChuW.ChuL.-J.QiaoC.-M.Hsiao, Corrosion Science, vol. 36, no. 8, August 1994, pp. 1437-1445. The authors are at the University of Science and Technology, Beijing, China.

Yoga & the Bullshit Prevention Protocol

If you savor the savoring of bullshit, here are two useful essays. Each was published in The Last Word on Nothing:

“Yoga & the Bullshit Prevention Protocol” by Ann Finkbeiner.

and

“The Pocket Guide to Bullshit Prevention” by Michelle Nijhuis. The ‘Pocket Guide’ includes this graphic:

An older guide, harmonious with the Nujhuis “Pocket Guide”, is the “Improbable Research Teachers’ Guide“, which appears in every issue of the magazine Annals of Improbable Research.

Related: Some Ig Nobel Prizes for the savoring of bullshit

Several Ig Nobel Prizes involve the appreciation, analysis, and savoring of bullshit. Ig Nobel Prizes, please remember, are for things that make people laugh, then think. Here are three of those prizes:

The 2016 Ig Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Gordon Pennycook, James Allan Cheyne, Nathaniel Barr, Derek Koehler, and Jonathan Fugelsang for their scholarly study called “On the Reception and Detection of Pseudo-Profound Bullshit”.

REFERENCE: “On the Reception and Detection of Pseudo-Profound Bullshit,” Gordon Pennycook, James Allan Cheyne, Nathaniel Barr, Derek J. Koehler, and Jonathan A. Fugelsang, Judgment and Decision Making, Vol. 10, No. 6, November 2015, pp. 549–563.

The 2016 Ig Nobel Psychology Prize was awarded to Evelyne Debey, Maarten De Schryver, Gordon Logan, Kristina Suchotzki, and Bruno Verschuere, for asking a thousand liars how often they lie, and for deciding whether to believe those answers.

REFERENCE: “From Junior to Senior Pinocchio: A Cross-Sectional Lifespan Investigation of Deception,” Evelyne Debey, Maarten De Schryver, Gordon D. Logan, Kristina Suchotzki, and Bruno Verschuere, Acta Psychologica, vol. 160, 2015, pp. 58-68.

The 2008 Ig Nobel Medicine Prize was awarded to Dan Ariely, Rebecca L. Waber, Baba Shiv, and Ziv Carmon, for demonstrating that high-priced fake medicine is more effective than low-priced fake medicine..

REFERENCE: “Commercial Features of Placebo and Therapeutic Efficacy,” Rebecca L. Waber, Baba Shiv, Ziv Carmon, and Dan Ariely, Journal of the American Medical Association, March 5, 2008; 299: 1016-1017.

The 2020 Ig Nobel Prize for Medical Education, also, is about the savoring of bullshit, many people say. That prize was awarded to Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, Boris Johnson of the United Kingdom, Narendra Modi of India, Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico, Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus, Donald Trump of the USA, Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, Vladimir Putin of Russia, and Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow of Turkmenistan, for using the Covid-19 viral pandemic to teach the world that politicians can have a more immediate effect on life and death than scientists and doctors can.

 

Religio-environmental implications of Planet B [study]

If someone was promised a ‘New Earth’, as a replacement, would they be less inclined to look after the current one?

This was one of the questions posed in a 2010 paper for The Expository Times. The author, Professor Edward Adams of King’s College, London, UK, points out that :

‘In accordance with his promise, we wait for new heavens and a new earth’ (2 Pet 3.13). This promise has given hope, comfort and inspiration to Christians throughout the history of the church. But it seems to offer little encouragement for positive environmental action. If Christians are awaiting a new earth, why would they involve themselves in activities aimed at preserving the old one?

After a detailed analysis of the relevant Biblical texts, the professor argues that :

“[…] the hope for a new cosmic creation in these passages is not wholly lacking in environmental appeal. ‘Waiting for’ the new heaven/s and earth does not mean abdicating moral responsibility and is not incompaible [sic] with pro-environmental action.”

See: Does Awaiting ‘New Heavens and a New Earth’ (2 Pet 3.13) Mean Abandoning the Environment?

Photo credit. The photo above is not featured in the paper – it’s a partially modified version of NASA’s The Blue Marble. 

Research research by  Martin Gardiner