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The 10 Most Absurd Scientific Papers

Posted by samzenpus on from the burning-potential-of-fire dept.

Lanxon writes "It's true: 'Effects of cocaine on honeybee dance behavior,' 'Fellatio by fruit bats prolongs copulation time,' and 'Are full or empty beer bottles sturdier and does their fracture-threshold suffice to break the human skull?' are all genuine scientific research papers, and all were genuinely published in journals or similar publications. Wired's presentation of a collection of the most bizarrely-named research papers contains seven other gems, including one about naval fluff and another published in The Journal of Sex Research."

5 of 127 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Are full or empty beer bottles sturdier by dekemoose · · Score: 5, Insightful

    For a forensic pathologist this actually seems like a somewhat valuable piece of information to have. I'd say that's the one paper on that list with some amount of value.

  2. Re:Are full or empty beer bottles sturdier by pz · · Score: 5, Informative

    Anyone who's been in a bar fight knows that whether they are sturdier or not, full ones make much better blunt instruments due to their higher mass.

    And yet, if you had taken the time to find the cited article, you would have learned that EMPTY bottles are significantly sturdier. The reasons why are left as an exercise to the reader. Being sturdy has an impact (pun intended) on their utility in blunt-force attacks (again, intended), but mass is arguably more important. Both empty and full bottles were found to have breaking thresholds higher than the human cranium, and so could be used to cause serious injury.

    It's actually not that absurd a scientific question, given that the answer has important legal and forensic implications. And no, Virginia, the bottles you see used in Hollywood movie bar fights are not actually made of glass.

    --

    Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
  3. Wired is 15 years late..... by WyrdOne · · Score: 5, Informative

    The Annals of Improbable Research, a published journal, has been doing this since 1995. http://improbable.com/

    - Current Subscriber
    -- Has been since 1995
    ---Has every issue published since the start
    ---- Homemade zygotes. Just like Mom’s. BOX 48.

  4. Re:Some of these might be interesting... by Bob_Sheep · · Score: 5, Funny

    I'm surprised this paper from Inorganic Chemistry didn't get mentioned

  5. Re:Some of these might be interesting... by sdpuppy · · Score: 5, Funny
    Wow - I wonder if the folks at the ACS will wonder why the paper "{trans-1,4-Bis[(4-pyridyl)ethenyl]benzene}(2,2'-bipyridine)ruthenium(II) Complexes and Their Supramolecular Assemblies with -Cyclodextrin" suddenly became so popular

    and then be disappointed to find out it was the SlashDot effect.

    My question, as a chemist, is what is the equilibrium constant - how fast does it go from product to reactant and back ?

    Also, is the reaction reproducible?

    Are there any degenerate orbitals involved?

    Is it reproducible, even with protecting groups attached?