AsianScientist (Apr. 7, 2017) – As usual, I’m going to make a sweeping generalization and say that while we scientists take our work damn seriously, we as a whole are generally a jolly bunch who love it when scientific research goes a bit left field and sometimes outright silly. Think of it this way; do you know a single scientist who doesn’t love the Ig Nobel Prize? I know I don’t!
By the same token, I know some of the best scientific conversations I’ve ever had with my colleagues centered on ways to apply the scientific method to solve little niggling questions that bother them. Planning how we were going to investigate whether there is a correlation between the stinkiness and tastiness of cheese was definitely intense and surely would have garnered us a grant and paper! But sometimes we take it beyond just discussing it…
It is with this in mind that I love it when people actually manage to publish a study that seems incredibly left field or supports a personal hypothesis. For example, when I think about all the times I’ve shared a bottle of wine with friends while discussing work? We’re just following the results from that study from the UK that found a strong relationship between females with higher educational attainment and daily alcohol consumption.
Also, a pubmed search will reveal that various red wine compounds are beneficial to our health! On the topic of fermented foods, are people complaining when you open your lunch and the smell of stinky tofu comes rushing out or say how they hate kimchi? Just direct them to this review about the enhanced nutritional properties of fermentation on foods!
Wondering whether eating that that extra piece of chocolate that was left over from the box at your family Christmas party would break your new year’s resolution to improve your diet? Check out these recent studies from 2016 that link moderate chocolate consumption with improved cognition and lower arterial stiffness.
We all know it’s a tough world out there for a scientist trying to make a reputation for themselves. In this publish or perish environment. I remember a very intensive conversation during my PhD about whether we should start a journal—The Journal of Negative Results—because after all, publishing negative results is practically impossible, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t important…Luckily for us, there are some journals that allow the publication of slightly out there studies.
While the journal parody, Annals of Improbable Research usually publishes at least one serious article per edition, but everyone now and then a silly publication makes it through a peer-reviewed journal. Case in point – when a neuroscientist friend showed me this paper looking at concussion in the Asterix comic books, I thought it was a very clever photoshop. It was not!
Also, check out the citations list for studies examining medicine in the Tintin books and cardiac arrest in the Star Trek universe. Additionally, did you know that some medical journals such as CMAJ (aka Canadian Medical Association Journal, 2014 Impact Factor 6.7) and the BMJ (aka British Medical Journal, aka one of the oldest journals in the world, 2015 Impact Factor 19.697) publish annual Christmas editions mostly consisting of humorous studies?
But as silly as all of these articles may be, that doesn’t mean that our silly science might not have some important applications to real life. Again from the BMJ, their 2003 Christmas edition published a literature review examining randomized control trials of parachute use, to which they concluded that none had ever, EVER been conducted!
At the same time however, who wants to volunteer for the double-blind, randomized, placebo controlled trial of parachutes? As the authors noted, sometimes it is only appropriate to use observational data when assessing medical interventions.
Likewise, a 1996 paper in the New England Journal of Medicine (2015 Impact Factor 59.558) published a silly paper in which the authors watched examples of cardiopulmonary resuscitation on television, which included one entire season of medical drama ER (admittedly one of my favorite shows in 1995!).
Their conclusion? That the rate of successful outcomes on TV was significantly higher than in real life, and that this might lead people to have a misconception on how successful CPR actually is. Again, if you check out where this paper has cited, it leads to some pretty interesting discussions!
Anyway, if you ever feel like spending some time on doing a silly study to justify your lifestyle or to get published in an extremely high impact medical journal, why not go for it? Many other people have and you can too!
This article is from a monthly column called The Sometimes Serious Scientist. Click here to see the other articles in this series.
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Copyright: Asian Scientist Magazine; Photo: Craig Rodway/Flickr/CC.
Disclaimer: This article does not necessarily reflect the views of AsianScientist or its staff
