flash on putty
An Irish study suggests that hats can protect the scalp from sunlight (see feedback on 13 July), while a German study found that if a putty is struck by lightning, it will protect your head from the rain. It has been suggested that getting wet may perhaps help you survive.
The researchers chose not to experiment with a real wet human head and used a wet artificial head. Their report, titled “Rain May Improve Survival from Direct Lightning Strikes to the Human Head,” states, “During high-energy direct lightning strikes on a realistic three-compartment human head phantom, The purpose was to measure the impact of rain.
René Machts et al. found that “there were fewer perforations and eroded areas near the impact point of a lightning strike in a head phantom during rain compared to when it was not raining.”
Is homeopathy back?
Peter Billard showed his son-in-law a portion of a feedback magazine that compiled what doctors had said about whether sometimes a doctor’s job was to entertain patients while nature healed. My son-in-law works in a pediatric ward in Germany. He replied: “It’s often easier and faster to prescribe something than to explain or argue why something isn’t needed. This is definitely true for antibiotics, but for cough medicine The same is true.”
Billard’s son-in-law mentioned some of the risks associated with taking antibiotics, including eventual antibiotic resistance and the possibility of diarrhea and other side effects, saying: Antibiotics. ”
Villard himself thinks so. When it was invented in the early 19th century, it was clearly a better alternative. At the time, there were no effective treatments that significantly improved upon conventional medicine. Maybe it’s time for a comeback! ”
suspected of fraud
If you’re honestly worried, wear your seatbelt and glasses and read this article.
Just eight days ago, Feedback commented on the difficulty of honestly evaluating research on fraud (Feedback, September 28). Marketing Research Journal (JMR) issued an “expression of concern” regarding the article “The dishonesty of honest people”. JMR Published in 2008.
In this letter, written in concise and not necessarily easy-to-understand language, a large group of researchers examines the “honest man’s fraud” paper and questions its accuracy and sincerity. He explained that there was.
This big fuss is a showdown between award winners. Dan Ariely is the most prominent of several co-authors of the disputed 2008 paper. That same year, he won an Ig Nobel Prize for research that “demonstrated that expensive placebos were more effective than cheaper ones.”
The study criticizing Ariely’s “fraudulent” work was carried out by an international group of researchers, two of whom, Bruno Verchulet and Laurent Beguet, are themselves Ig Nobel laureates. (Verschule won the prize in 2016 for his research in which he asked 1,000 liars how often they lie and then decided whether to believe their answers. He won an award for his research that confirmed through experiments that some people think they are drunk.
The study cited by Feedback on September 28th (“Unreliable evidence in fraudulent research”) was published by František Bartosz, who won the Ig Nobel Prize this year for this research. “Theoretically, and based on 350,757 experiments, when you flip a coin, it tends to land on the same side it started on.”
Bartos’s “unreliable evidence” paper clearly questions the research Ariely did. One of those papers was a 2020 follow-up to “Signing (your name) at the beginning or at the end of[official reports]does not reduce fraud,” and “Signing (your name) at the beginning[of official reports]does not reduce fraud.” This is a follow-up to a 2012 paper titled “Ethics become more salient when you sign a petition.” Reduces self-reporting of dishonesty compared to signing last. ”
Ariely’s 2012 papers signed at the top or bottom were retracted in 2021. Observers are speculating whether papers signed at the bottom or top of 2020 will be retracted in 2029.
This includes four Ig Nobel laureates and three of the most recent questionable studies published by the oldest. The Ig Nobel Prize honors things that make people laugh and think. Those standards say nothing about whether things are right or wrong, good or bad, important or trivial. Feedback has personally known all four Ig Nobel laureates and can honestly report that all four of them are thoughtful, engaging, and warm human beings. This tangle of four threads typifies the situation in the research community. It’s messy, controversial, sometimes funny, sometimes disturbing, very thought-provoking, and very human.
Final item
Mark Abrahams has written a weekly feedback column for the past two years. This is his last feedback column. His other works and activities can be found at improbable.com.
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