Improbable Research

The campaign to make chemistry an elite profession — open only to well-bred persons who are officially vetted and licensed — is surging ahead in the United States. An early moment of triumph occurred in 1994, when Texas State Senator Bob Glasgow was awarded the Ig Nobel Chemistry Prize

for sponsoring the 1989 drug control law which make it illegal to purchase beakers, flasks, test tubes, or other laboratory glassware without a permit.

A report in the June 2006 issue of Wired magazine explores some of the campaign’s recent achievements:

more than 30 states have passed laws to restrict sales of chemicals and lab equipment associated with meth production, which has resulted in a decline in domestic meth labs, but makes things daunting for an amateur chemist shopping for supplies. It is illegal in Texas, for example, to buy such basic labware as Erlenmeyer flasks or three-necked beakers without first registering with the state?s Department of Public Safety to declare that they will not be used to make drugs. Among the chemicals the Portland, Oregon, police department lists online as ?commonly associated with meth labs? are such scientifically useful compounds as liquid iodine, isopropyl alcohol, sulfuric acid, and hydrogen peroxide, along with chemistry glassware and pH strips. Similar lists appear on hundreds of Web sites.

?To criminalize the necessary materials of discovery is one of the worst things you can do in a free society,? says Shawn Carlson, a 1999 MacArthur fellow and founder of the Society for Amateur Scientists. ?The Mr. Coffee machine that every Texas legislator has near his desk has three violations of the law built into it: a filter funnel, a Pyrex beaker, and a heating element. The laws against meth should be the deterrent to making it ? not criminalizing activities that train young people to appreciate science.?

(Thanks to investigator Cory Doctorow for bringing this to our attention.)

“This is the first reported case of an urticarial rash apparently caused by the frustration of watching England play football.”

With these words, written in 1987, a London GP trainee named P Merry alerted readers of the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine to a little-suspected risk of rooting for a World Cup team. Rooting can cause emotional upset, which can cause urticaria. Urticaria is also known as “hives”.

Here’s what happened…

So begins this week’s Improbable Research column in The Guardian.

NOTE: Due to production gremlins, the final paragraph of the column didn’t make it into print. Here is the missing, concluding passage:

Fandom carries danger, yes, but there’s a special payoff for those whose team does capture the ultimate glory. Or so implies a study that appeared in 2003 in the journal Heart. Written by two French doctors, the title proclaims: “Lower Myocardial Infarction Mortality in French Men the Day France Won the 1998 World Cup of Football.”

Matthew E. Falagas, of the Alfa Institute of Biomedical Sciences (AIBS) in Athens, Greece, is frequently confused. Therefore, he wants you to have a number. His article called “Unique Author Identification Number in Scientific Databases: A Suggestion” (published in the May 2006 issue of PLOS Medicine) explains:

it is widely known that a considerable proportion of authors share the same last name and first initial. This seems to be the case for people of most ethnic heritages. In addition, authors of scientific publications do not frequently use their middle initial, which contributes to the confusion….

In order to decrease the problems arising from authors with identical names, I suggest the introduction of a unique author identification number (UAIN) in modern electronic databases of scientific information. I further suggest that such an identification number may be hidden in the electronic databases.

(Thanks to investigator Lissa Donner for bringing this to our attention.)

Investigator Robin Abrahams adds to investigator Earle Spamer’s dig into student science requirements:

I like Earle’s take on archaeology. The popular class at KU [The University of Kansas] was “Gemstones.” It was particularly popular among the sorority girls because you could go shopping for an engagement ring as a class project.

Investigator-provocateur Earle Spamer, upon hearing the lament of a hard-core non-science student faced with the prospect of having to fulfill “The Science Requirement,” suggests:

Alas, what better science course to take than Archaeology? Other than having to use a meter stick, there is no math required. What other science requires that one study a subject about which relatively very little is understood, work surrounded by dirt and dust, do research with spoons and toothbrushes, keep secret the exact location of your study area, leave most of the area unstudied, and place that which you do uncover (mostly bits of pots and everyday trinkets) in drawers inaccessible except to authorized scholars, usually in another country?

Sign me up!