Improbable Research

More typical, however, was the farmer who told Professor Stratton: “In referring to the saying, ‘Like waving a red rag before a bull,’ I have found that to wave anything before a bull is dangerous business.”

(That’s an excerpt from the article “Colorful Research Review,” published in AIR 14:4.)

I have solved the puzzle of what is wrong with the wrecked car: It is wrecked.

Carolina Uribe, Ph.D.
TRBK
Bogotá, Colombia

(That’s an letter from the article “Air Vents,” published in AIR 11:1)

Glenda Brown of Blaxland, Blue Mountains, Australia, who won the 2007 Ig Nobel Literature Prize for her study of the word “the” — and of the many ways it causes problems for anyone who tries to put things into alphabetical order, writes:

You may be interested to hear that The Indexing Companion (my book) won the Highly Commended award in the ANZSI indexing medal for 2008. The judges liked various entries such as:

indexer confusion
ballet in a ski-mobile 144
endothelins and the telephone 74
evacuation vs bowel movements 46
facing vs interfacing 141
and

platypuses
indexed as otters 172
indexers’ similarities to 5–6

More and more, more and more scientists are ganging up to write research studies. It’s no longer unusual to see a paper that lists more than 500 – that’s five hundred – co-authors.

The journal Science Watch tracks statistics about which scientists publish where, when and how often. Every few years, Science Watch makes a brave plunge into the sea of so-called multi-author papers. Its most recent look shows that increasing numbers of papers have 50, 100, 200 and even 500 authors.

The most gaudy, of course, are the papers credited to more than 500 co-authors. During 2003, only (only!) 40 of these big group efforts were published. Then came a growth spurt. 2005 saw the publication of 131 of them, and subsequent years have seen production hold about steady.

If there were a prize for the largest number of co-authors, it would have gone to the 2,512 people credited with writing Precision Electroweak Measurements on the Z Resonance, which appeared in the journal Physics Reports in 2006. That’s a mild elevation from the previous record of 2,458 co-authors, attained just two years earlier…

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

Concerning the association of practicing religion and good things happening, a just-published study has my nomination for the most puzzling assertion in a recent publication. According to the abstract of the study:

“Though church attendance was related to later physical health, this was only through indirect means, as both physical health and church attendance were associated with substance use…”

Think about that sentence. Do they want people to jump to the conclusion (as they typically insist on doing) that good health and church attendance can be improved by alcoholism and shooting up?

It all becomes clear when one checks the details. They found negative correlations with substance use. That’s a relief.

I know that their summary statement is technically correct. An association is an association, whether negative or positive. But in common usage one assumes an association to be positive unless otherwise specified. The eminent George Vaillant should have known better than to leave out that informative word “negative” from the abstract.

“A prospective study of church  attendance and health over the lifespan,” Laura B Koenig and George E. Vaillant,  Health Psychology. Vol 28(1), Jan 2009, pp. 117-124.

So says investigator Stephen Black, Professor of Psychology, Emeritus, at Bishop’s University