This is Improbable Too

by Marc Abrahams

  ‌Prologue

  ‌Between the second and fourth digits

  If you plunge or plod through these pages, expect the unexpected. I went to a lot of trouble to find it for you, and then worked to describe it simply and clearly – more clearly, in many cases, than it may have presented itself.

  I collect and write about improbable research. Here’s what those words mean to me. Improbable: not what you expect. Research: the attempt, intentional or not, to find or understand something that no one has yet managed to find or understand.

  I do improbable research about improbable research.

  Some of what I find goes into my ‘Improbable Research’ column in the Guardian newspaper. Some of it goes into the magazine I edit, the Annals of Improbable Research.

  Some of it ends up earning an Ig Nobel Prize. I founded the Ig Noble Prize ceremony in 1991, and every year we (a shadowy group called the Ig Nobel Board of Governors) award ten new Ig Nobel Prizes for achievements that first make people laugh, then make them think.

  That’s the quality I always look for: that whatever the story is, it – with no twisting or adornment – first makes people laugh, then makes them think.

  This book, This Is Improbable Too, is the second book in the series that began with This Is Improbable. That ‘too’ is meant to imply two things.

  First, that this book is second.

  And second, that the stories I write about do not stand alone – the people who did these things also did other things, some of which are fully as unexpected. It’s easy to assume that the good story you know about a person is the good story about that person. In my experience, poking through studies and books, and chatting and gossiping with thousands of improbable people, if there’s one good story about a person, chances are high that other stories exist too, and that some of those stories are even better than the one you knew about.

  The stories in this book are all, one way or another, about people, arrayed somewhat by body part.

  You might notice that two of those people keep reappearing.

  One of those individuals began, in middle age, to count things that annoyed him. I don’t mean by that that he keeps a long list of the many things that annoy him. No. This fellow, when he’s bored enough, takes note of some particular thing that has repeatedly annoyed him. He then carefully counts how many times that annoying thing occurs during a particular span of time. Then he publishes a report about it, in some scholarly journal.

  The other individual began, also in mid-adulthood, to pointedly find a connection between the relative length of a person’s fingers and important aspects of that person’s life. He also publishes his reports in scholarly journals.

  The first of those individuals leans toward attributing no significance to what he sees. Bean-counting, done his way, is almost a form of poetry. To him, it’s a source of grim, soul-satisfying amusement. Tally ho. Here are representative passages from his body of research:

  ‘A total of 45 1-hr. citings of convenience were taken, during the Summer of 1983, equally divided among Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, 1000 to 1500 hours. Note was made of the north-south movement, which remained approximately consistent during the period at a rate of about 800 private and 1,850 commercial vehicles per hour. The timing of the traffic signal was constant: 45 sec. “go” (green), 4 sec. “caution” (yellow), and 41 sec. “stop” (red). Notice was taken of the number of vehicles passing the stop light, where passing the stop light was defined as entering into and continuing through the intersection after the signal had turned red.’

  ‘The students were asked for a single answer to the following query, in my opinion brussels sprouts are (a) very repulsive, (b) somewhat repulsive, (c) something that I can either take or leave, (d) somewhat delicious, or (e) especially delicious. The findings for the group (collectively) and (stratified) by sex and nationality are shown in Table 1.’

  The other individual leans towards attributing significance where someone else might see only fingers. This is a form of leadership, done so that others might perceive his insights. His jargon phrase ‘2D:4D’ means ‘the relative lengths of the second finger and the fourth finger’:

  ‘We recruited 300 subjects (117 men and 183 women) with a minimum age of 30 years from the Merseyside area. Participants were from social groups of elderly retired people and mature university students. We measured the 2nd and 4th digit length twice… The English sample… showed that married women had higher 2D:4D ratios than unmarried women.’

  ‘We measured the lengths of the 2nd (index) and 4th (ring) finger in a sample of young men and recorded short digital video clips of their dance movements. A panel of 104 female judges rated 12 clips of men with the lowest and highest finger-length ratios (2D:4D) for attractiveness, dominance, and masculinity.’

  ‌A classic in the body of 2D:4D work

  I hope those quotes appeal to you enough, or perplex you enough, that you will track down the journals in which they‌ appear, and find the bigger stories there. And I hope other parts in the body of this book have a similar effect. I’ve told you only a short version of each story. Still more juicy improbable details, unmentioned by me, await you. The references noted at the end of each story point you to treasures. (For the examples in this introduction, though, I leave you the pleasure of googling them to find the citations.)

  Chunks of what’s here appeared in the newspaper column. Chunks were in the magazine. Much of it came into existence with and for this book, updating or augmenting the newspaper or magazine chunks, or becoming wholly new bits of the universe.

  The seven billion or so humans of planet Earth have been relentlessly kind in doing improbable things that deserve to be written up. I am way behind in that writing, and am relentlessly scrambling to try to catch up.

  But if ever you find an especially good improbable thing that you wish someone would write about, I wish you would write to me about it. You may find me, amidst steepening heaps of improbable research, at www.improbable.com.

  Sincerely and improbably,

  Editor and Co-founder,

  Annals of Improbable Research

  PS. What is the best way to read this book? I suggest that each night you choose a different story, and read it aloud to loved ones, at bedtime.

  ‌

  This Is Improbable Too

  ‌One

  ‌The Brain’s Behind

  In brief

  ‘Would Bohr Be Born If Bohm Were Born Before Born?’

  by Hrvoje Nikolić (published in the American Journal of Physics, 2008)

  Some of what’s in this chapter: Dr Bean, man of international body parts • Einstein, Einstein, Einstein and other Einsteins • Improved scarecrow • The man who has Gorbachev’s number • His basic laws of stupidity, and theirs of incompetence • Speaking of hooked tongue • Criminal mentors • When Washington really counted • The man who really counts: Trinkaus • Strange seats for prominent minds • Kakutani’s bottled-up thoughts • Portfolio of a genius • One theory of everything • A number of genius numbering schemes

  Bean: Counter of body parts

  Dr Robert Bennett Bean took the measure of his fellow men almost fanatically. Women, too. He measured the parts, then published the copious details, and sometimes pictures, for all to see.

  Bean worked at the University of Michigan, then at the Philippine Medical School, then at Tulane University, and finally at the University of Virginia. One of his first published papers, in 1907, was ‘A Preliminary Report on the Measurements of about 1,000 Students at Ann Arbor, Michigan’. After that, he turned more specific, looking at this or that particular organ, limb or bodily region.

  Bean measured lots of innards. In ‘Some Racial Characteristics of t
he Spleen Weight in Man’, he wrote: ‘The white male spleen weighs about 140 grams, the negro male 115 grams, the white female 130 grams and the negro female 80 grams.’ Numbers abound also in his ‘Some Racial Characteristics of the Liver Weight in Man’, and ‘Some Racial Characteristics of the Weight of the Heart and Kidneys’.

  He occasionally looked at the entire person, as in ‘Notes on the Hairy Men of the Philippine Islands and Elsewhere’.

  Most often, though, he did piece work. In ‘Sitting Height and Leg Length in Old Virginians’, he instructed: ‘The sitting height, leg length, and sitting height index of several groups of Old Virginians is of some interest.’

  Bean’s treatise on ears is divided into two parts: ‘Ears of the morgue subjects’ and ‘Ears of the living subjects’.

  ‌‘Characteristics of the External Ear’ collected by Robert Bennett Bean, including ears of a Filipino woman, a Filipino man and a Russian (gender unspecified)

  He published ‘Note on the Head Form of 435 American Soldiers with Special Reference to Flattening in the Occipital Region’, and also ‘Three Forms of the Human Nose’. Sometimes he was very specific: ‘The Nose of the Jew and the Quadratus Labii Superioris’ (facial muscle).

  In ‘Some Useful Morphologic Factors in Racial Anatomy’, Bean introduced the omphalic index, a new metric about the belly button. One obtains it by making two measurements and a calculation: ‘The distance of the umbilicus from the symphysis pubis is divided by the distance of the umbilicus from the suprasternal notch.’

  By the time Bean died in 1944, he had recorded measurements of more partial people than almost anyone else ever had.

  This was, obviously, not the same Dr Bennett Bean who, in 1980, published the study (described previously in This Is Improbable) entitled ‘Nail Growth: Thirty-Five Years of Observation’. That was Robert Bennett Bean’s son, William Bennett Bean, whose measurements were circumscribed, focusing exclusively on what he found at the ends of his own fingers.

  Bean, Robert Bennett (1907). ‘A Preliminary Report on the Measurements of About 1,000 Students at Ann Arbor, Michigan’. Anatomical Record 1: 67–8.

  —, and Wilmer Baker (1919). ‘Some Racial Characteristics of the Spleen Weight in Man’. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 2 (1): 1–9.

  — (1919). ‘Some Racial Characteristics of the Weight of the Heart and Kidneys’. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 2 (3): 265–74.

  Bean, Robert Bennett (1913). ‘Notes on the Hairy Men of the Philippine Islands and Elsewhere’. American Anthropologist 15 (3): 415–24.

  — (1933). ‘Sitting Height and Leg Length in Old Virginians’. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 17 (4): 445–79.

  — (1915). ‘Some Characteristics of the External Ear of American Whites, American Indians, American Negroes, Alaskan Esquimos, and Filipinos’. American Journal of Anatomy 18 (2): 201–25.

  —, and Carl C. Speidel (1923). ‘Note on the Head Form of 435 American Soldiers with Special Reference to Flattening in the Occipital Region’. Anatomical Record 25 (6): 301–11.

  Bean, Robert Bennett (1913). ‘Three Forms of the Human Nose’. Anatomical Record 7 (2): 43–6.

  — (1913). ‘The Nose of the Jew and the Quadratus Labii Superioris Muscle’. Anatomical Record 7 (2): 47–9.

  — (1912). ‘Some Useful Morphologic Factors in Racial Anatomy’. Anatomical Record 6 (4): 173–9.

  Bean, William B. (1974). ‘Nail Growth: Thirty-Five Years of Observation’. Archives of Internal Medicine 134 (3): 497–502.

  Terry, R.J. (1946). ‘Robert Bennett Bean, 1874–1944’. American Anthropologist 48 (1): 70–4.

  In brief

  ‘The Splenic Snood: An Improved Approach for the Management of the Wandering Spleen’

  by Steven P. Schmidt, H. Gibbs Andrews and John J. White (published in Journal of Pediatric Surgery, 1992)

  Other Einsteins

  People say ‘There is only one Einstein’, but of course that is not so. Albert stands celebrated, but not alone.

  Albert Einstein has a signature equation, e=mc2, which predicts how energy relates to mass. M.E. Einstein of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, has a whole set of equations that predict the composition of a pork carcass.

  M.E. Einstein and several collaborators published a series of studies – seven of them so far – in the Journal of Animal Science. Their ‘Evaluation of Alternative Measures of Pork Carcass Composition’ appeared in 2001. It is a minor classic in the history of pork-production prediction literature. This passage lists several of the parameters that Professor Einstein found ways to manipulate: ‘FFLM is fat-free lean mass (kg), TOFAT is total carcass fat mass (kg), LFSTIS is lipid-free soft-tissue mass (kg), STLIP is soft-tissue lipid mass (kg), DL is dissected lean in the four lean cuts (kg), and NLFAT is the non-lipid components of the fat tissue.’

  M.E. Einstein also co-authored the doubly seminal ‘Utilisation of a Sperm Quality Analyser to Evaluate Sperm Quantity and Quality of Turkey Breeders’. It was published in 2002 in the journal British Poultry Science.

  Outside a small circle of specialists, Einstein’s pork carcass composition equations and Einstein’s turkey sperm quality analyser analysis are not so well known as they perhaps deserve to be.

  Anyone with access to certain libraries can also check out Einstein on cannabis. Albert Einstein never published any research papers about cannabis, at least not formally, but Rosemarie Einstein did. In 1975, she and two colleagues at the University of Leeds investigated the use of cannabis – and alcohol and tobacco, too – by three hundred young persons at a university.

  Einstein and her team carefully protected the students’ confidentiality. In their study, which appeared in the British Journal of Addiction, no student is named. Even the university is not identified. The report speaks of it only as ‘a provincial university’, leaving readers to speculate, perhaps feverishly.

  The scientists discovered exactly how many of those students used pot, alcohol, tobacco or any combination of the three. Or, to be more specific, they discovered what the students said they used. And how. According to the survey results, some students smoked their cannabis, others ate it, still others drank it. Some said they avoided cannabis altogether. Only a minority claimed to smoke tobacco, but none reported eating or drinking it. Almost everyone claimed to drink alcohol.

  The scientists also discovered something they had expected: that students cannot be relied upon to answer surveys. The team says it sent questionnaires to exactly one thousand students, and that exactly three hundred of those questionnaires were returned. This 300/1,000 is a return rate of 33 percent, Einstein and her colleagues explain, using a brand of mathematics peculiarly their own.

  There are many other Einsteins besides Albert, M.E. and Rosemarie. One analysed magical thinking in obsessive-compulsive persons. One did a comparison study of different kinds of barium enemas. One was a specialist in the history of television programmes. And so on. There is, I expect, an Einstein for everyone.

  Schinckel, A.P., J.R. Wagner, J.C. Forrest and M.E. Einstein (2001). ‘Evaluation of Alternative Measures of Pork Carcass Composition’. Journal of Animal Science 79 (5): 1093–119.

  Schinckel, A.P., C.T. Herr, B.T. Richert, J.C. Forrest and M.E. Einstein (2003). ‘Ractopamine Treatment Biases in the Prediction of Pork Carcass Composition’. Journal of Animal Science 81 (1): 16 Schinckel, A.P., 28.

  Neuman, S.L., C.D. McDaniel, L. Frank, J. Radu, M.E. Einstein and P.Y. Hester (2002). ‘Utilisation of a Sperm Quality Analyser to Evaluate Sperm Quantity and Quality of Turkey Breeders’. British Poultry Science 43 (3): 457–64.

  Einstein, Rosemarie, Ian E. Hughes and Ian Hindmarch (1975). ‘Patterns of Use of Alcohol, Cannabis and Tobacco in a Student Population’. British Journal of Addiction to Alcohol & Other Drugs 70 (2): 145–50.

  Einstein, Danielle A., and Ross G. Menzies (2004). ‘Role of Magical Thinking in Obsessive-Compulsive Symptoms in an Undergraduate Sample’. Depression and Anxiety 1
9 (30): 174–9.

  Davidson, Jon C., David M. Einstein, Brian R. Herts, D.M. Balfe, Robert E. Koehler, Desiree E. Morgan, M. Lieber and Mark E. Baker (1999). ‘Comparison of Two Barium Suspensions for Dedicated Small-Bowel Series’. American Journal of Roentgenology 172 (2): 379–82.

  Einstein, Daniel (1997). Special Edition: A Guide to Network Television Documentary Series and Special News Reports, 1980-1989. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press.

  An improbable innovation

  ‘A New and Useful Improvement in Scarecrows’

  by Hugh Huffman and Ernest J. Peck (US patent no. 1,167,502, granted 1916)

  The patent holders claimed that ‘Prior to our invention, the scare crows ordinarily used were crude affairs… One of the main objects of our invention is to provide a more efficient form of scare crow’.

  ‌Illustrative diagram from ‘A New and Useful Improvement in Scarecrows’ from US Patent no. 1,167,502

  Probability, by God

  In 1988, Robert W. Faid of Greenville, South Carolina, solved one of the oldest and most famous problems in mathematics. Yet almost no one noticed. Cracking the nut that was nearly two millennia old, Faid calculated the identity of the Antichrist.

  In the rarified world of mathematicians, certain problems become the focus of intense pursuit. The Four-Colour Map Problem was finally solved, by Wolfgang Haken and Kenneth Appel, in 1976. Fermat’s Last Theorem tantalized mathematicians until Andrew Wiles solved it in 1993.

  Haken and Appel became instantly famous among mathematicians. Wiles became a worldwide celebrity.

  But little academic or public acclaim came to Robert W. Faid, perhaps because no one had previously realized that the identity of the Antichrist was a mathematical problem.