Improbable Research

Two truths:

1. Professor Snape is a character in Harry Potter novels.
2. Professor Snape conjures conjugate vaccines.

These are not the same Professor Snape. The second is likely sick unto death of hearing about the first. The first likely could not care less about the second.

The second Professor Snape is Matthew Snape, MBBS, FRACP, FRCPCH, a Senior Research Fellow and Honorary consultant paediatrician at Oxford University (or as some call it, the University of Oxford). His photograph is reproduced here.

Professor Snape conjures up combination glyco-conjugate vaccines. Add Salt, and you get this study:

“Serogroup C Meningococcal Glycoconjugate Vaccine in Adolescents: Persistence of Bactericidal Antibodies and Kinetics of the Immune Response to a Booster Vaccine More Than 3 Years after Immunization,” Matthew D. SNAPE, Penny SALT, et al., Clinical Infectious Diseases, (2006) 43 (11): 1387-1394.

(Thanks to investigator Ivan Oransky for bringing this to our attention.)

BONUS: The other Professor Snape #1:

Investigator Virginia Cox sent us this note:

If you, like me, like dinosaurs, you have been following the adventures of paleontologist Jack Horner. He is my hero. Can you or one of your readers tell me, though, if this is a hoax?

A newspaper called the Bozeman Magpie has this report: “Famous Paleontologist Jack Horner Marries 19-year-old MSU Student”

I looked on Jack Horner’s page on Wikipedia. The very first thing it says is: ”John ‘Jack’ R. Horner (born June 15, 1946) is an American paleontologist who discovered and named Maiasaura, providing the first clear evidence that some dinosaurs cared for their young.”

Those words feel a lot different in light of this new romantic news.

Then I looked up the name of the young lady, and found a facebook page. It says she is married to “John Horner“, and shows a wedding photo of her and her husband. It lists the “people who inspire Vanessa”. There are: “Dinosaurs, John Wayne, Barney, and John R. Horner”. Then something really strange. Under the heading “Activities” it lists only one thing: “Don’t dump a girl, and then get mad when she finds someone else”.

Did the master get tired of looking for old things, and instead go hunting for young ones? Or is this a hoax? Or am I crazy? Now I’m wondering if his name really is “Horner” — it seems a little too descriptive.

If anyone can help answer Investigator Cox’s letter, please do.

In 2002, NHK, Japan’s public TV network, made this documentary about the Ig Nobel Prizes. They broadcast it in Japan on Christmas eve, a time when much of the nation stays home, imbibes delicious substances, and watches television. We were told that the broadcast received the largest audience of anything broadcast on NHK during that entire year—a thought we find both delightful and perplexing.

Related info:

• The 2002 Ig Nobel Prize ceremony
• The 2002 winners
• Press clippings from that year

BONUS: A few years later, Young Jump magazine published a two-part manga about the Ig Nobel Prizes. (Here are Part 1 and Part 2.) The year after that, the manga writer gave a talk at the Ig Informal Lectures at MIT. The manga was later published in book form.

One of the world’s outstanding psychiatrists—who is also a professional life coach—candidly reveals his thought process, in an essay for Fox News. Dr. Keith Ablow [pictured here, legs akimbo] applies his brain to a particular question of national (in the USA) and international significance—a question that others have found perplexing. Dr. Ablow also daringly reveals the name of the patient. Dr. Ablow writes, about that patient:

Newt Gingrich’s three marriages mean he might make a strong president — really

… I want to be coldly analytical, not moralize, here. I want to tell you what Mr. Gingrich’s behavior could mean for the country, not for the future of his current marriage. So, here’s what one interested in making America stronger can reasonably conclude—psychologically—from Mr. Gingrich’s behavior during his three marriages:

• 1) Three women have met Mr. Gingrich [pictured here with one of his wives] and been so moved by his emotional energy and intellect that they decided they wanted to spend the rest of their lives with him.
• 2) Two of these women felt this way even though Mr. Gingrich was already married.
• 3 ) One of them felt this way even though Mr. Gingrich was already married for the second time, was not exactly her equal in the looks department and had a wife (Marianne) who wanted to make his life without her as painful as possible….
• 4) Two women—Mr. Gingrich’s first two wives—have sat down with him while he delivered to them incredibly painful truths: that he no longer loved them as he did before, that he had fallen in love with other women and that he needed to follow his heart, despite the great price he would pay financially and the risk he would be taking with his reputation….

[As] far as I can tell, judging from the psychological data, we have only one real risk to America from his marital history if Newt Gingrich were to become president: We would need to worry that another nation, perhaps a little younger than ours, would be so taken by Mr. Gingrich that it would seduce him into marrying it and becoming its president. And I think that is exceedingly unlikely.

Dr. Ablow also presents his credentials: “Dr. Keith Ablow is a psychiatrist and member of the Fox News Medical A-Team. Dr. Ablow [also presides over a] team of Life Coaches.”

(Thanks to Steve Mirsky for bringing Dr. Ablow and his wisdom to our attention.)

The Los Angeles Times on January 8, 1998, bid farewell to psychotherapy’s most visible practitioner:

E. Paul Bindrim; Father of Nude Psychotherapy

E. Paul Bindrim, the controversial self-styled father of nude psychotherapy who won a landmark libel suit over a novel he claimed deprecated his techniques, has died. He was 77.  Bindrim died Dec. 17 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, his wife, Mary, said Tuesday. She plans to scatter his ashes at sea Jan. 17.

In 1967, Bindrim conducted his first nude workshop in Deer Park, Calif., and almost got thrown out of the American Psychological Assn.

But he persevered, and two years later Gwen Davis Mitchell, a novelist best known for “The Pretenders,” asked to attend one of his swimming pool therapy sessions for research.

Bindrim’s practice consisted of placing several people in the warm pool for long sessions of touching and massaging, talking and sometimes shouting or acting out rage….

BONUS: Margarita Tartakovsky’s “The History of Nude Psychotherapy”