Silly Studies: The Pre-Series Teaser

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Hello, Curios.

It's new series time next week.

And as we've been doing for the last, I don't know how many series is now.

More than one, less than 100.

Accurate.

Big error margin.

We do a little preview for the podcast listeners, not to be broadcast on BBC Radio 4.

No,

this is your chance, listeners, to see the kind of absolute nonsense that scientists get up to and get paid for.

Because it is time for our

series, annual...

What do you call it when it's every series?

The

serial.

Whatever.

Anyway, it's time for silly science papers.

And we've got some excellent ones for you.

A few quick wins, should we do, at the beginning, just to kick us off.

I've got one that I particularly like here.

Go for it.

This one is called,

I think a lot of the work is done by the title here.

It's called, Are Cats Good?

An Important Study?

This is fine.

To label it an important study seems like, yeah,

struggling a bit there.

This is by

Patrick Owen and Severine Lamont.

They're Australian scientists, very serious, important scientists.

Here's the abstract.

Cats have four legs.

Full stop.

I mean, correct.

Correct.

Mostly.

Actually, on average, cats have less than four legs.

That's also true.

Almost all cats have above-average numbers of legs.

This isn't the paper, by the way.

This is just

cats can purr, it goes on.

However, science does not know if they are good.

Therefore, we ought to determine if cats are good.

This was a consensus opinion study between the two scientists.

Sensitivity analysis were not considered, but results demonstrated that cats are good.

Limited sample size and use of anecdotal evidence may have been limitations.

In conclusion, it appears that cats are good.

Pur, pur, pur, pur pur.

I wonder if this makes it on to either of the authors

selected publications for resumes.

Yeah, I don't know about that.

I think cats are that's that's just anthropomorphizing.

Cats are quite clearly superior to humans in almost every regard, including being supercilious.

We don't know whether they're good or not.

Hold on, though.

Sorry.

Can I just the evidence

results, right?

100% of opinion suggested that cats were good.

A sample size of two.

All right, well, let's go with that.

Adam Fox, who was the allergist we had on the episode about allergies, he sent us a couple.

I'll do the first one.

I mean, again, this is really held within the title more than anything else.

This is a paper published in the journal, The Archives of Dis Child.

I think Dis stands for something, but I don't know what it is.

So let's just go with Archives of Dischild.

2002.

Do shuffle bottoms, bottom shuffle?

It's in the published literature.

Aims to investigate anecdotal evidence that the name shuffle bottom originates from the dominantly inherited characteristic of bottom shuffle.

Oh, that's so interesting.

Shall I skip to the conclusion?

No, wait, okay, I have thought about this before that,

you know, it just feels like, oh, that's just their surname, that's just their surname.

And yet, at some point in time, every surname had to be made up.

Yeah.

And so that actually makes quite a lot of sense, maybe.

Is shuffle, shuffle-bottoming a genetic trait?

No.

Oh, okay.

Well, then it's nonsense.

My mum had a friend.

I'm not sure she was a friend, but her mum knew someone at school whose name was Shuffle Bottom.

But she pronounced it shoe flate buffer.

It's true.

That's absolutely true.

Shoofle Boffer.

It became a code word at home for when one of us was pretending to be asleep.

Like, you know, when you're pretending to be asleep and you have to really concentrate?

The code word that was guaranteed to make one of us laugh was shuffle-both them.

There is no way that that's true.

It is true.

My dad's boss was called,

I can't remember her first name, but her surname was

death,

but she pronounced, she put an apostrophe in there, so it was Dieuf.

Because you just wouldn't want to be called Dr.

Death, would you?

I don't know.

I don't know.

People take you pretty seriously when you walk in a room.

The conclusion of the shuffle bottom paper was: shuffle bottoms are no more likely to bottom shuffle than other children.

Good.

The origin of the surname as representing this physical characteristic cannot be confirmed.

Now, I've got another one which is related to names as well.

Because nominative determinism is something we've talked about a bit before on the podcast.

This is where

you are named after the thing that you do.

Yeah, or you do a thing which is related to your name.

And this comes from the British Dental Journal, December 16th, 2016, 2016, by Jay Slay.

Is that a real name?

I can't tell.

Are they a serial killer?

Is that their job?

No, James Slay.

James Slay.

Yeah.

Okay.

Apparently.

Maybe they're just really good at stuff.

It's like the modern series.

He's just slaying, yeah.

I mean, there is some in here that I have to.

I have to be a little bit careful with.

A paper cited, published in the British Journal of Urology by A.J.

Splatt and D.

Weedon.

No, no.

I mean, Weedon is how you pronounce it, but I'm going with Weedon.

Do you remember the

cricket match in which the batsman's holding the bowlers Willie?

Yes.

Yes.

I do.

Just to explain, that was the batsman was called holding.

Michael Holding.

Yes, Michael.

He cites other

work in other fields.

The Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales from 2008 to 2013 was Igor Judge.

Oh, nice.

And the eminent interwar neurologist, Russell Brain.

But

these are all soft.

Wait, do the urology one again?

A.J.

Splatton, D.

Weedon.

D.

Weedon.

D.

David.

Whedon.

Unbelievable.

Well, it's going to get much worse.

If this is your entry level, I'm afraid.

Hold on tight.

So, studies in genitourinary medicine.

Yes.

By authors called Hardwick, Kinghorn, Woodcock, and Bell.

Urology includes authors Burns, Cox, Dick, Cox, Ballad, Paul, and Waterfall.

This is published literature.

I don't know.

I am citing.

No.

I'm citing a paper itself.

That's all just in the introduction.

Actually, this is about dentistry and ominous determination in dentistry.

Table two is the frequency of surnames, and I won't go through it all in detail, but some of the names include brace, bridge, brush, chew, chew, crown, dent, fill, filler, fillingham, gum, hurt, pain, pain, pain, pain, pain, root, roots, tongue, and tooth.

Imagine being called Steve Tooth

and then becoming a dentist.

Colin Payne.

Susan Tongue.

Anyway, that's paper two.

We've got more.

Actually, you know, Adam Fox sent in another one.

It was

about nursery rhymes.

And specifically is the question: could nursery rhymes cause violent behaviour?

A comparison with television view.

Now, here's the thing about nursery rhymes.

I definitely noticed this as a postpartum mum who was already crying 90% of the day,

singing your child little lullabies about what can only really be described as themes of infant mortality.

I mean, it didn't really work for me.

Rock-a-bye baby on the treetop.

When the wind blows, the cradle will rock.

When the bough breaks, the baby will fall.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, it's not great, is it?

I mean, there's extreme violence.

There's a table, table one lists some of them.

Ring of Ring of Roses, of course.

Everyone drops dead at the end of that one.

Absolutely.

Little Miss Muffet attacked by an arachnid.

Quite right.

Quite right.

There's also, the categories here are between accidental, aggressive, intentional violence and total violent instance.

The Grand Old Duke of York, aggressive violence, one, Humpty Dumpty, of course, Humpty Dumpty smashes and cannot be repaired.

Cranial injuries is a theme.

Jack and Jill, I mean, similar.

Yeah, I mean, they're absolutely horrifying.

Chucking people down the stairs by their left legs.

I mean, there's all sorts of.

I don't understand how we think that this is okay as a society.

The interesting thing about the two papers that Adam Fox has sent in is that he clearly is the author of both of these papers, which I now understand is this is also in Archive of Dischild, which I've now now been informed is the Archive of Disease in Children.

Slightly making light of diseases in children,

these journals.

Well, not making light of the lyrics to Six in a Bed, is it?

What was in Six in a Bed?

The other one said, Roll over, Smash His Head, Guts Came Out.

Oh.

Please remember to ignore the child that's died on the floor and just roll over back to sleep.

Right.

Until you're the only one left.

It's basically squid game for kids.

Conclusions, he says.

Although Although we do not advocate exposure for anyone to violent scenes or stimuli, childhood violence is not a new phenomenon.

Sure.

Yes, I'd rather it was a phenomenon that belonged in the past, frankly, Adam.

Reinterpretation.

You mean Adam Fox, not Adam Rutherford?

You're right.

Reinterpretation of the ancient problem of childhood and youth violence through modernisers is difficult, and laying the blame solely on television is simplistic and may divert attention from vastly more complex societal problems.

Full stop.

I'd like to add a sentence, including extraordinarily violent nursery nursery rhymes.

Quite right.

Quite right.

Have you got one for me?

I do.

It's the last one.

And this comes from the Journal of Plastic Reconstructive Surgery.

This is an old one, 1994.

Sure.

It's one that's been in my files for quite some time.

Since 1994.

Since 1994, when I first discovered this paper.

It's a very serious paper.

By J.

R.

Sanger, H.

S.

Matt Lubband, N.J.

Youssef.

And the title is Temporary Ectopic Implantation of an Amputated Penis.

Oh, okay.

I mean, there's a lot of words in there.

Ectopic.

Ectopic means not in its original place.

Oh, yes.

So implantation.

Implanting a penis not in its original place.

Yes.

Let me read you the first line of the abstract.

Am I going to...

Okay, go on.

I forget, you don't.

You're not super into it.

I'm okay with it.

I'm okay with it now.

I've had two babies in cancer.

You can throw the chop off my leg and I won't barely notice it.

A case of temporary ectopic implantation of an amputated penis to the forearm.

Oh.

Followed by subsequent return to its anatomic position is reported.

I'm sorry.

There's quite a lot of volunteer who agreed to this.

Yes, well, the second sentence explains that it wasn't a volunteer.

The second sentence says, the penis was amputated by a riding lawnmower.

Oh,

hang on.

I'm trying to picture it in my mind.

Yeah, maybe you don't.

Maybe it's best not to.

So what, they stitched it to his arm to save it?

Yes, to keep it alive.

And did it work?

Yeah, apparently it did after four weeks.

The penis was returned to its anatomic position by microsurgical technique.

Arteries, veins, and nerves were repaired.

The penis survived in its entirety.

Wow, that's incredible.

Return of sensation has been excellent.

Oh, that's amazing.

That's actually a really nice story.

A lovely story to end on and to welcome you to our new series, which starts next week in your podcast feeds.

And,

you know, doesn't contain any amputated penises.

Um, mercifully.

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