Improbable Research

Today’s Headline of the Day is from CNN:

Kids’ brains may hold clues to future criminals

The story then begins by saying:

Who is going to grow up to become a criminal or psychopath? Current research in genetics and neuroscience may point towards answers to this question, opening up a whole host of ethical questions about culpability, justice and treatment. “Is there truly freedom of will, as the law assumes? Freedom of will may not be as free as many of us may think,” said Adrian Raine [pictured here at right] of the University of Pennsylvania. Experiments by Raine have found that by looking at the brains of 3-year-old children, scientists could already see signs of potential trouble in the future.

The story, like the research it describes, apparently has few facts and leaps to majestic conclusions. Thus it is a pleasure to read.

(Thanks to investigator Cris Russell for bringing this to our attention.)

BONUS: Track down the research described in the news report. Then track down analogous research done about corporate CEOs. Discuss the similarities and, if you can find them, the differences between those two piles of research.

At last comes an animated video about krill sex that’s understated and tasteful, and informative:

(Thanks to investigator Barbara Keough for bringing it to our attention.)

A TV commercial for Dorothy Gray Salon Cold Cream uses a geiger counter to measure the slightly radioactive dirt that they had smeared on a fashion model’s face. It’s a 1950′s triumph for the use of measurement in the fashion industry.

Does the phase of the moon affect the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of a country? One of the few to have formally pursued this question is Dr. Stephen Keef, Teaching Fellow at the School of Economics and Finance of Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. His latest paper Are investors moonstruck? Further international evidence on lunar phases and stock returns (published in the Journal of Empirical Finance Volume 18, Issue 1, January 2011, Pages 56-63) investigates the influences of the new moon and the full moon on the daily returns of 62 international stock indices for the period 1988 to 2008. After accounting for the so-called Monday Effect, the Turn-of-the-Month Effect  and the Prior Day Effect it was determined that :

“The overall enhanced new moon effect is independent of GDP. An overall full moon effect is absent.”

Dr. Keef has also performed : A meta-analysis of the international evidence of cloud cover on stock returns

Complimentary small plastic rulers, being imprecise, innacurate, flimsy and defaced with advertising, draw only a measured amount of respect from metrologists. In 1994, two metrologists took measures to see just how much respect the rulers deserve.

Metrologists are the people who come up with more accurate, more precise ways to measure things.

The metrology community incessantly tussles about new standard definitions for the intimidatingly important, never-quite-as-good-as-they-ideally-could-be standards – most famously, the kilogram, the metre and the second.

The father-and-son team of TD Doiron and DT Doiron looked, briefly, at a neglected standard. Their report, called Length Metrology of Complimentary Small Plastic Rulers, drew some measure of interest at the Measurement Science Conference in Pasadena, California….

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

BONUS [Feb. 25]: The study’s senior author speaks.