Improbable Research

1968 was a good year for the readers of Old Bottle Magazine.

Investigator Earle E. Spamer writes:

In the "AIR Vents" section of the July-August 2002 issue of AIR , Ronald Perch, D.M.D. of Sebastopol, CA, complained that he suspected his semi-annual patient, "Stefan," of pilfering the latest issues of  AIR from the doctor’s waiting room. Dr. Perch stood his ground, reporting, "I am going to try an experiment and tack the price of a year’s subscription to AIR to his next bill. I will  report the results to you."  I am awaiting those results.

Bryan B Fuller is the world’s top expert on skin colour in human foreskins. Professor Fuller’s foreskin research is based at the University of Oklahoma, where he is an associate professor of biochemistry and molecular biology. A research paper he co-authored with four colleagues in 1990 is the most-cited study on the topic. …

So begins this week’s Improbable Research column in The Guardian

Investigator Robert E. Dale, who alerted us to the seminar on Manufacturing meaning in the chicken commodity chain" (see item from two days ago), sent us an update:

Well, I did make it to the seminar, and actually it was quite serious and informative. I did chat with Peter Jackson afterwards, and he told me that this esoteric title was as nothing compared with many in the social science area (as I’m sure you are peculiarly aware).

Some of the preliminary statistics he gave were quite extraordinary, I thought: growing cycle (to 4lbs) reduced from 12 weeks in the 60′s to 6 weeks now; 885M chickens slaughtered in the UK in 2004; UK retail sales in 2002 amounted to ?2.75B. The study was via some 30-40 or so recorded interviews ("life-history" interviews) with workers in the supply chain, from hatcheries to upper management. The final general take home message seemed to be: "Food is probably safer today than 30 years ago, but the biggest issue and change in marketing is that (the striving by the super-markets for) food safety is now being replaced by (striving for) customer trust."

When a lottery goes pffffffffffhhhht it goes goes pffffffffffhhhht.

(Thanks to Jean Tenso and Ilkka Poutanen for bringing this to our attention.)