Improbable Research

01/02/2025

' “Most criminals are terrible shots," said Eren. "They don’t practice. And ricochet marks are present at crime scenes quite often while the casings aren’t.” So he conducted a controlled ballistics experiment with large sample sizes of five different calibers and shot the guns at different angles and distances into cement... to see if one could distinguish between calibers. The answer was clear: You can’t. Or at least Eren couldn’t, and his conclusion ably demonstrated the scientific value of null results.'

Beyond flint-knapping and tossing spears with atlatls, Kent State University’s Metin Eren has a vision for his field’s future.

12/17/2024

"An award-winning murder case involving hired killers" https://botanwang.com/articles/202412/%E8%8E%B7%E5%A5%96%E7%9A%84%E4%B8%80%E8%B5%B7%E9%9B%87%E5%87%B6%E5%A4%96%E5%8C%85%E6%9D%80%E4%BA%BA%E6%A1%88.html

10/29/2024

About the Predicament of Earthworms

Earthworms are getting some loving, concerned attention as to their imminent aqua predicament. The University of Leeds made this announcement: Researchers are to investigate whether the humble eart…

10/24/2024

Angelica Ørregaard Lindholm joins the The Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists™ (LFHCfS)

Angelica Ørregaard Lindholm has joined the The Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists™ (LFHCfS). She says: I am a PhD candidate in forensic toxicology at the University of Copenhagen, where I a…

10/24/2024

Saul Justin Newman's (Ig Nobel Prize-winning) research — showing that most of the celebrated "longest-lived" people lived in places that had lousy birth-and-death record-keeping — continues to draw attention, today in the New York Times. And draws grumbling from academics in Newman's field (demography) whose own research now invites embarrassing questions.

The premise is catchy, but some think it’s based on faulty data.

10/22/2024

Celebrating the vampire bat human blood investigation https://improbable.com/2024/10/22/celebrating-the-vampire-bat-human-blood-investigation/

10/21/2024

Congratulations to the Museum of Bad Art (MOBA) and to the people of Québec (and to all of Canada!) and to MOBA's Louise Reilly Sacco and Michael Frank on the opening of MOBA's Québec gallery.

10/21/2024

Two limericks about this research study — "Python Farming as a Flexible and Efficient Form of Agricultural Food Security" — grace the October 2024 issue of mini-AIR https://improbable.com/2024/10/21/python-limericks-and-so-on-in-mini-air/

10/21/2024

Russian science journalist Dmitry Borisov wrote a comprehensive, good history of the Ig Nobel Prizes, in the publication N+1. It’s written in the Russian language. Here is a machine-translation into English. https://improbable.com/2024/10/21/how-the-ig-nobel-prize-became-a-status-award/

10/18/2024

Sad news about Phil Zimbardo.

Phil Zimbardo died on October 14. His obituary is online. One of his lesser professional accomplishments came in 2003 when that year’s Ig Nobel Prize in psychology was awarded to Gian Vittori…

10/18/2024

A month from now, in Tokyo: Ig Nobel Face-to-Face. Ig Nobel Prize winners will ask each other questions about their work, and answer questions from audience members.

人々を思わず笑わせ、そして考えさせてくれる──そんな研究をした10のグループや個人に毎年、贈られるイグ・ノーベル賞。今年で34回を迎え、18...

10/17/2024

Celebrating the swallow-and-excrete-a-shrew experiment https://improbable.com/2024/10/17/celebrating-the-swallow-and-excrete-a-shrew-experiment/

10/15/2024

Question: Do most treasury buildings, everywhere, have skeletons buried in or below their basements? "Now, archaeologists have answers to their longstanding hunch: An excavation has revealed an untouched tomb in Petra’s famed Treasury structure, containing 12 human skeletons and a wide collection of grave offerings, discovered just opposite of the initial find from 2003."

A recent excavation has unearthed 12 human skeletons and a chamber of grave offerings near Petra’s Treasury building, a UNESCO World Heritage site.

10/12/2024

"The syndrome has the following statement: “A student’s grandmother is much more likely to die suddenly just before the student takes an exam than at any other time of the year.” [El Nacional, Venezuela]

  Se trata de un fenómeno con abundante evidencia empírica, descrito por primera vez en una revista académica, Annals of Improbable Research (AIR), en la edición de Educación Especial de noviembre/diciembre de 1999, en un trabajo titulado “El síndrome del examen y la abuelita fallecida” (...

10/10/2024

How beetles decode nature's signals (profile of Ig Nobel Prize winner Marie Dacke)

Dung beetles are nature’s navigators, skilfully using celestial cues to find their way. Marie Dacke is exploring the sensory and neural mechanisms behind their remarkable natural compass, using artificial intelligence to enrich her findings.

10/10/2024

Nice profile of my new collaborator and friend, artist Becky Moon

Becky Moon told me to imagine a tomato—and in my mind, one appeared: minimal gloss, blush red, fresh and bulbous with a fuzzy green toupee and barcode sticker. I know the taste—even what its insides look like, what a tomato feels like—and yet, there was no tomato before me, my mouth was empty,...

10/10/2024

What an Australian biology study says about what owning a dog compared with owning a cat says about the owner [in my column this week in New Scientist]

Feedback uncovers new research into the difference in personality between pet owners, and discovers an apparent strength of spirit in those who plump for canines