Flash on the pate
Whereas analysis in Eire means that hats can shield scalps from the solar (see Suggestions, 13 July), analysis in Germany means that letting rain soak your head may – simply perhaps – make it easier to survive if and when lightning strikes your pate.
The researchers used a wetted synthetic head, having chosen to not experiment with a wetted real human head. Their report, known as “Rain may improve survival from direct lightning strikes to the human head”, aimed to “measure the influence of rain during high-energy direct lightning strikes on a realistic three-compartment human head phantom”.
René Machts and colleagues say they discovered “a lower number of perforations and eroded areas near the lightning strike impact points on the head phantom when rain was applied compared to no rain”.
Homeopathic comeback?
Peter Billard confirmed his son-in-law a few of Suggestions’s assortment of remarks by docs as as to if their job generally entails entertaining the affected person whereas nature does the therapeutic. The son-in-law works in a paediatric ward in Germany. He responded that “often enough it is easier and faster to prescribe something than to explain and argue why nothing is needed. That is definitively true for antibiotics but also counts for anti-cough agents.”
Billard’s son-in-law mentions some dangers that include taking antibiotics – eventual antibiotic resistance, attainable diarrhoea and different negative effects, et cetera – then says: “However I have some understanding for colleagues… who sometimes follow the parental wish/push for antibiotics.”
Billard himself muses: “Wouldn’t it therefore be possible to just fob off concerned parents and patients by offering homeopathic remedies? It was obviously a good alternative when it was conceived at the turn of the 19th century – no effective treatment was a massive improvement over the conventional medical treatment back in those days. Perhaps it’s time for a comeback!”
Dishonesty questioned
In case you fear about honesty, affix your seat belt and eyeglasses, and skim this merchandise.
Simply eight days earlier than Suggestions commented on the problem of getting an sincere appraisal of analysis about dishonesty (Suggestions, 28 September), the Journal of Advertising Analysis (JMR) revealed an “expression of concern” about an article known as “The dishonesty of honest people”, which JMR revealed in 2008.
The letter defined – although in terse, not-exactly-easy-to-understand language – that a big group of researchers had examined the “dishonesty of honest people” paper, main them to query its accuracy and honesty.
This brouhaha is a conflict of award winners. Dan Ariely is probably the most outstanding of the a number of co-authors of the disputed 2008 paper. In that very same yr, he was awarded an Ig Nobel prize for a research “demonstrating that high-priced fake medicine is more effective than low-priced fake medicine”.
The research criticising Ariely’s “dishonesty” research was finished by a world group of researchers, two of whom – Bruno Verschuere and Laurent Bègue – had themselves been awarded Ig Nobel prizes. (Verschuere received his in 2016 for a research “asking a thousand liars how often they lie, and for deciding whether to believe those answers”. Bègue received his in 2013 for a research “confirming, by experiment, that people who think they are drunk also think they are attractive”.)
The research Suggestions famous on 28 September (“The untrustworthy evidence in dishonesty research”) was revealed by František Bartoš, who was awarded an Ig Nobel prize this yr for a research displaying, “both in theory and by 350,757 experiments, that when you flip a coin, it tends to land on the same side as it started”.
Bartoš’s “untrustworthy evidence” paper explicitly questions analysis finished by Ariely. A kind of papers was a 2020 follow-up, known as “Signing [one’s name] at the beginning [of an official report] versus at the end does not decrease dishonesty”, to a 2012 paper known as “Signing at the beginning makes ethics salient and decreases dishonest self-reports in comparison to signing at the end”.
Ariely’s 2012 signature-at-top-or-bottom paper was retracted in 2021. Observers speculate as as to if his 2020 signature-at-bottom-or-top paper will likely be retracted in 2029.
That’s 4 Ig Nobel prize winners, with the three most up-to-date questioning analysis revealed by the earliest. Ig Nobel prizes honour issues that make folks snicker, then suppose. These standards say nothing as as to if a factor is right or incorrect, good or unhealthy, essential or trivial. Suggestions is personally acquainted with all 4 of those Ig Nobel prize winners and might actually report that every one 4 are – as folks – considerate, charming and heat. This four-threaded tangle epitomises the research-community situation: it’s messy, contentious, generally humorous, generally disturbing, very thought-provoking and really human.
Last merchandise
Marc Abrahams has written the Suggestions column each week for the previous two years. That is his ultimate Suggestions column. You may comply with his different writings and actions at inconceivable.com.
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