Improbable Research

Professional basketball player Stephon Marbury recommends — and demonstrates — his treatment for a sore throat: eat Vaseline.

(Found via Charlie Pierce.)

Scientists have long engaged in a race to catch up with evil-doers who would slip forbidden substances to unsuspecting creatures. This study documents on little chapter in the history of that struggle:

“Detection and Determination of Theobromine and Caffeine in Urine After Administration of Chocolate-Coated Peanuts to Horses,” T.M. Dyke and R.A. Sams, Journal of Analytical Toxicology, vol. 22, no. 2, March–April 1998, pp. 112–6.  [AIR 15:6]

A news report from Fall River, Massachusetts recalls a beloved dental study about a paper clip. The report in the Boston Globe, says: “A former Massachusetts dentist is accused of putting paper clips in patients’ mouths during root canals, then billing Medicaid for the stainless steel posts he should have used.”

The classic study is:

“Foreign body in a deciduous incisor: A radiological revelation,” G. Lehl,

From a portrait of 2005 Ig Nobel chemistry prize winner Bijan Pakzad:

Bijan dresses some of the world’s most powerful men: former President of the United States George W. Bush, Governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger, American actor Tom Cruise, German TV host Thomas Gottschalk, British actor Sir Anthony Hopkins, President of Russia Vladimir Putin,…

[A] fragrance from Bijan, DNA, earned Bijan an Ig Nobel Prize in 1995 for chemistry. The perfume contained no deoxyribonucleic acid and came in a triple helix-shaped bottle (as opposed to the double helix structure of DNA).

Can the basic attributes of a cheese remain stable over half a millennium or so? Fortunately, written details of the visual, olfactory, taste and texture characteristics of Parmigiano-Reggiano™ cheese can be traced back as far as the Middle Ages. Allowing the collection, consolidation and examination of historical data to form the basis of a new study by professor Mario Zannoni, curator of  The Museum of Parmigiano-Reggiano in Soragna, Italy.

“Until XIX century the characteristics of the cheese remained relatively stable. Important sensory changes happened in the XX century in relationship to the accelerated rate of modernization of the environment. The cheese still retained its granular texture being also tasty, a little sweet and rather fatty.”

Angelina Souren came to the Portsmouth show of the Ig Nobel Tour of the UK, and wrote a detailed account of what she saw.

The tour will now move on to Liverpool, London, and Bristol, with a somewhat different lineup in every city.