Discoblog over on the science channel Discover has reported today a list of 10 absurd scientific papers of 2009 as highlighted in Wired UK magazine. I list them here for your delectation:
- Optimising the sensory characteristics and acceptance of canned cat food: use of a human taste panel
- Effects of cocaine on honeybee dance behaviour
- Swearing as a response to pain
- Pigeons can discriminate “good” and “bad” paintings by children
- The “booty call”: a compromise between men’s and women’s ideal mating strategies
- Intermittent access to beer promotes binge-like drinking in adolescent but not adult Wistar rats
- Fellatio by fruit bats prolongs copulation time
- More information than you ever wanted: does Facebook bring out the green-eyed monster of jealousy?
- Are full or empty beer bottles sturdier and does their fracture-threshold suffice to break the human skull?
- The nature of navel fluff
Can anyone actually explain to me how any one of these papers usefully expands the sum total of human knowledge? No, I thought not.