You Spent Money On What? 11 Improbable Scientific Papers [NSFW]

Science is a laff. No, really, it is. Millions of pounds get spent on research into... improbable events. Here are some of my favourites.

An awful lot of this research is about male genitalia - I wonder why. Who amongst us does not want a penis shortening device?

Via dx.doi.org

Painful sexual intercourse caused by a disproportionately long penis: an historical note on a remarkable treatment

http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10508-006-9057-z

"Four hundred years later, Hildanus' forgotten penis shortening device deserves a resurrection in today's medical practice."

Are you finding it hard to remember things? Or are you just finding it hard?

Via dx.doi.org

Pornographic Picture Processing Interferes with Working Memory Performance

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2012.716873

“Participants also rated 100 pornographic pictures with respect to sexual arousal and indicated masturbation urges previous to and following pornographic picture presentation.”

But there's also the righting of social wrongs. Cats have dominated the internet for far too long.

Via dx.doi.org

Classifying Dogs' (Canis familiaris) Facial Expressions from Photographs

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.beproc.2013.02.010

“When identifying ability to perceive emotions from a dog's face, there was little difference between experienced and inexperienced people, indicating that learning may not play a large role in this ability to read a dog's emotion via its facial expression.”

Music fans are often not well served by science. Time to put that right!

Via arxiv.org

Collective Motion of Moshers at Heavy Metal Concerts

http://arxiv.org/abs/1302.1886

“extreme social gatherings generate similarly extreme behaviors: a disordered gas-like state called a mosh pit and an ordered vortex-like state called a circle pit.“

Everyone loves flying, don't they?

Via ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Flatulence on airplanes: just let it go

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23463112

“Holding back flatus on an airplane may cause significant discomfort and physical symptoms, whereas releasing flatus potentially presents social complications. To avoid this problem we humbly propose that active charcoal should be embedded in the seat cushion, since this material is able to neutralise the odour.”

On a slightly more veterinary note (though airline travellers please take note)

Via dx.doi.org

Does water or blowing air stimulate cows to defecate?

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.applanim.2013.01.002

“None of our tests reliably stimulated defecation, which seemed to occur most when cows were exposed to novelty.”

Got wood?

Via ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

A bum deal from wooden toilet seats: reemergence of allergic contact dermatitis

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23010838

Say no more. Please.

Are they all the same? An exploratory, categorical analysis of drinking game types.

Via dx.doi.org

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.addbeh.2012.12.002

"Contemporary research commonly considers drinking games holistically, with little to no consideration to the different drinking game types.... The findings provide a novel drinking game categorization scheme and an exploratory analysis of basic differences between game categories."

And after your drinking game you might want to try this

Via ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

The effect of repeated bouts of backward walking on physiologic efficiency

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12173962

"This finding suggests that backward walking is indeed a novel task and that motor learning occurs as a result of practice, leading to a more efficient recruitment of motor units."

Much of this research is NSFW. But the rest of it is just plain weird

Via ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

The hidden menace of non-equine horses

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21143072

"An emergency department audit of horse-related injury presentations alerted researchers to a hitherto uninvestigated source of childhood harm: non-equine horses.... When legitimate science and research technique failed, poetic licence was prevailed upon."

Well, we can't all discover the Higgs boson, so to finish, here's my all time favourite

Via dx.doi.org

Laughing rats are optimistic

http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0051959

“We trained rats in operant Skinner boxes to press one lever in response to one tone to receive a food reward and to press another lever in response to a different tone to avoid punishment by electric foot shock... Our findings indicate that tickling induced positive emotions which are directly indexed in rats by laughter, can make animals more optimistic.”