Weird Science - but Do We NEED Proof of Oddball Facts?

Jun 19, 05:28 AM

Current Headlines: By SHN ROSS

WHY do elephants hate walking up hills and why are women rubbish at reading maps? If you think these sound like humorous posers from a Christmas cracker, prepare to stand corrected.

The answers to the questions are just two genuine examples of the bizarre and off-the-wall facts produced by scientists over the past 12 months.

However, even the craziest sounding research has its supporters - not surprisingly among scientists themselves.

Researchers point out that not so long ago people thought the earth was flat and you could fall off it if you weren't careful.

But when we look beyond the crazy headlines the results are often a real attempt to further our understanding of wider social and environmental issues such as animal conservation and equal opportunities.

Last night, scientists defended their work saying assumptions had to be scientifically proven.

Professor Peter Holmes, research awards convener, at the Royal Society of Edinburgh, said: "Some research might seem blindingly obvious but we have to be careful about how some of the things taken to be true have never actually been proved.

"Look at the 'smoking kills' argument versus 'my granny smokes 90- a-day but it's never done her any harm'.

Professor Holmes also stressed the difficulties of getting funding for "dubious" research. "There is no spare cash in British universities to allow scientists to carry out 'unwarranted' research. There is a low hit rate and three quarters of the applications for research grants are flung out.

"The research also has to be prepared for publication in reputable journal and will go through peer review," he said.

But Professor Holmes admitted he supported imaginative headlines which attracted people, especially youngsters, to science.

Jeremy Webb, editor of New Scientist magazine said: "There's an old story in journalism that nobody would look twice at a headline 'Dog bites man', but everyone would read a story topped with 'Man bites dog' because it is so apparently ridiculous. The same rules apply when writing about science.

"Just think about some popular science books. The Quark and the Jaguar, The Flamingo's Smile and even The Selfish Gene are all off- the-wall in one way or another, but they all cover great research, even groundbreaking science."

Tracey Brown, director of Sense About Science, a charitable trust promoting good science and evidence for the public, said: "Yes, there is room to improve science reporting; there's much more room to ask some basic, scientifically sceptical questions about claims in lifestyle, consumer affairs and news reporting."

Silly Questions...And Even Sillier Answers

1ELEPHANTS DON'T LIKE WALKING UP HILLS

To prove it, scientists used global-positioning data to map the animals as they travelled across vast stretches of northern Kenya.

Hills were found to be a key influence on their walks. They didn't like them.

Professor Fritz Vollrath, of Oxford University, discovered that elephants climbing 100 metres "burn" energy that would take an extra half hour of foraging to replace.

The team concluded: "Large animals probably take a different view of sloped surroundings than lightweights, and that this is probably especially true of heavyweight herbivores, such as elephants, for whom energy replenishment can be especially time-consuming. In other words it would be a lot simpler to go round the long way."

But the research, carried out with Save the Elephant, can be used to identify density hot-spots and corridors where elephants are likely to go - vital in locating safe havens for them as man increasingly encroaches into their land.

2 HALF OF ALL WOMEN MAKE THEIR MINDS UP WITHIN 30 SECONDS OF MEETING A MAN WHETHER HE IS WORTH DATING

Researchers, led by Professor Richard Wiseman, of Hertfordshire University, highlighted the importance of chat-up lines with the top- rated "Casanova" line apparently being: "If you were on Stars In Their Eyes, who would you be?" Professor Wiseman said men were often accused of being shallow but that women may make their minds up much more quickly.

3 PINNING A PICTURE OF CUT-OUT EYES TO A WALL MAKES YOU MORE LIKELY TO PAY INTO THE OFFICE KITTY

A cut-out of a staring pair of eyes was put above a kettle to assess its impact on freeloaders who don't contribute to the office tea-fund kitty. The ten-week project by the University of Newcastle upon Tyne's psychology department involved alternating the eye pictures with one of flowers then totting up cash left in the honesty box. When the staring eyes were in operation, takings were three times more. Researchers said the experiment showed how the brain reacts to images of faces and eyes and how people behave differently if they think they are being watched.

4 MEN NEED WAR AND AGGRESSION IN ORDER TO CO-OPERATE EFFECTIVELY

This was the conclusion of a study on the "male warrior effect" by Professor Mark van Vugt, of the University of Kent. Going to war takes a lot of organising and sorting warriors out into hierarchical groups. Rivalry drives men to behave in altruistic ways and make sacrifices for their group. Professor van Vugt also noted that men were more likely to support their country going to war and that similar behaviour could be seen in a "pristine primordial form" in chimpanzees.

5 WOMEN REMEMBER FLOWERS BUT CAN'T READ MAPS

The University of Edinburgh's institute of evolutionary biology used computerised experiments conducted on 50 male and female students. It found women were not as good as men at remembering the location of plain boxes on a grid but were equal to or outperformed their male counterparts when symbols such as flowers or hot air balloons were used.

Researchers concluded women tend to concentrate on "featural" aspects, rather than "spatial" ones when trying to remember information - possibly explaining the different abilities between the sexes in reading maps. An AA spokesman said: "Any problems women might have are overcome by their willingness to stop and ask for directions. Research shows that men would rather get lost."

6 TEENAGERS ARE SULKY AND UNCO-OPERATIVE BECAUSE THEIR BRAINS ARE GOING THROUGH A PHASE OF RAPID CHANGE

Dr Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, a cognitive neuroscientist at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College, London, said society should be slower to hand out ASBOs to teenagers because brain scans show teenagers hardly use the area of their brain responsible for analysing other people's emotions and thoughts when they are deciding what to do. Dr Blakemore concluded that teenagers' brains were still a "work in progress".

7 WOMEN DON'T GO FOR MEN WITH SQUEAKY VOICES WHEN LOOKING FOR A MATE BUT WILL GIVE THEM THE TIME OF DAY AT OTHER TIMES

Dr David Feinberg, of the University of St Andrews, found that during their fertile phase women want an "alpha male" who sounded like soul singer Barry White but the rest of the time homed in on men with "James Blunt" higher pitches whom they perceived as being more caring. Dr David Feinberg concluded: "While we normally think that masculine men are more out for one-night stands than marriage, our research suggests that highly attractive and feminine women can get these masculine men to look for commitment."

8 THE THRILL LABORATORY

A Thrill Laboratory has been set up to measure what goes on in thrill-seekers heads when whizzing around on rollercoasters. Professor Tom Rodden, at Nottingham University, and other "thrill engineers", measured excitement levels on the Booster, a ghost train to measure fear and anticipation and Miami Trip, to measure pleasure. The end result will be incorporated to allow rides and computer games to react in real time at the appropriate level of thrill.

9 THE TEENAGER REPELLANT

Perhaps of most immediate use - the teenager repellent known as the Mosquito.

Winner of the Ig Nobel prize, awarded annually by Annals of Improbable Research for weird, wacky and sometimes worthless science, this is the equivalent of a fly spray for getting rid of hoodies or neds. Invented by Howard Stapleton, of Compound Security Systems of Merthyr Tydfil, Wales, it is an electronic device which emits a high-frequency siren audible only to teenagers and painful to the ears. Hundreds of the units have been sold to homeowners, shops, local government offices and police. The company has also begun exporting the Mosquito to the US.

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