Britain was once famous for its great scientific minds - Newton, Maxwell, Darwin, Rutherford and many other British scientists made an invaluable contribution to the development of world science. But in recent decades, the situation has changed - now British scientists glorify Britain with the most useless and curious discoveries, on which, by the way, a lot of money is spent from the state budget. This post is about the funny discoveries of British scientists.
British scientists spent no less than 300 thousand pounds to find out that ducks love rain. In particular, it was found that ducks love to bathe in the shower, since it imitates a natural phenomenon. The research took about three years.
University College London biologist Roger Wotton proved that the angels depicted by European artists are not capable of flight. The scientist compared the divine creatures with birds and came to the conclusion that their wings do not have muscle mass capable of lifting a massive body into the sky.
Another discovery made by British scientists could benefit people who fear aliens are scanning their brains from space. Among supporters of this theory, it is believed that a tin foil hat is capable of reflecting alien rays or suppressing their effect. So, scientists have dispelled this myth, warning the inhabitants of the Earth that the cap not only does not save from alien penetration, but also enhances the effect of the rays.
Another surprising discovery was made by scientists from the University of Leeds. This time they did not do it on their own - they were helped by colleagues from the University of Copenhagen. They concluded that the ant community was prone to corruption and fraud. In particular, ants that are “carriers of the royal gene” can fool their ordinary relatives and even deprive them of the right to offspring. In addition, “royal ants” prefer not to create huge families, since ordinary residents of the anthill will no longer perceive them as leaders.
British scientists have found out what hair color attracts money. As it turns out, employers pay more to blondes than to brunettes and redheads.
British scientists also came to the conclusion that dinosaurs warmed the Earth with their intestinal gases, so on average in their times the temperature was ten degrees Celsius higher. The brontosaurs showed the greatest zeal.
One of the latest mysteries that British scientists managed to solve was the mystery of the rooster's micropenis. Having devoted a lot of time to this topic, biologists came to the conclusion that the birds had to “shorten” due to the fact that females did not choose individuals with a larger size, because they were afraid of rape.
To perform complex actions, cats prefer to use their right front paw, and cats prefer to use their left. This conclusion was made in an article by two British biologists published in the journal Animal Behavior.
A very useful discovery was made by a group of researchers from the universities of Leicester and Exeter: they found that drinking alcohol does not in any way affect the ability of men to estimate the age of girls. To do this, scientists had to go to bars and interview about 240 drinking Britons.
From 2001 to 2006, luminaries of British science conducted a study in which 516 experimental drivers took part. It turned out that the majority of drivers who most often violate traffic rules are latent homosexuals. The publication of the study results caused a wave of protests among English and Scottish drivers, but the scientists expressed their willingness to prove to everyone that they were irrefutably right.
Top people at the University of Leeds have conducted a study to discover the formula for the perfect bacon sandwich. As many as 50 English test subjects helped scientists in this difficult task, trying various samples of sandwiches. As a result, it turned out that the loudness of the bacon crunch while biting into a sandwich should be 0.5 decibels, and the formula for an ideal sandwich looks like this: N=C+(fb(cm) fb(tc))+fb(Ts)+fc ta. In the above formula, N is the force in Newtons, fb is a function of the type of bacon, fc is a function of the effect of seasonings and fillers. Ts – cooking temperature, tc – cooking time, ta – time to place the seasoning or filler inside. Cm is the cooking method and C is the maximum deformation of an uncooked piece of bacon in Newtons.
British scientists have proven that not all research can be trusted. Three young people, in fact, fooled almost the entire scientific community. They wrote articles on the most meaningless topics, but presented them as real works. And they were sent to reputable magazines around the world. The most amazing thing is that many publications published them.
Do miniskirts prolong life? Do ducks like rain? Did the chicken come before the egg? Every time you read such “scientific discoveries”, you just want to ask the author: are you really serious? And now attention, the correct answer: scientists have proven that the results of such studies can be mere fiction.
The revelation of the century looks like this. Three scientists from Britain and the USA have fooled the elite of world science. They presented their crazy ideas as the results of serious research. And prestigious editors published this nonsense. Here is the response from the editor of Gender, Place and Culture. It is dedicated to the problems of feminism.
Laughter through tears. The authors allegedly determined that men should be trained like dogs and white students should be chained during lectures on the history of slavery. The more absurd the idea, the greater the chances of publication. Scientists have come to the conclusion that no one is interested in the truth anymore. They wrote about this in their appeal published on the Internet.
“The current culture dictates that only certain kinds of conclusions are acceptable - for example, whiteness or masculinity must necessarily be a problem. And the fight against manifestations of social injustice is placed above objective truth.”
One example of such social injustice in the West is the attitude towards transgender people. A cutting-edge scientific idea says that a child can decide for himself whether to be a girl or a boy. That's why the most advanced parents buy women's clothing for their sons. In the USA, uncles come to kindergartens dressed like aunts. And, according to the scientists who wrote the fake articles, the main problem of modern science is that there is a demand for research that only confirms such ideological norms. The recipe for successful publication, in their opinion, is simple.
Let’s take a current problem that is on everyone’s lips – for example, obesity. We add some very advanced idea (freedom of choice), and also add a small pinch of humor. And cook it all until it turns into a single mass. And please, a new theory is ready: “excess weight is not a problem, but a free choice of every person!” It would seem nonsense! But this is a quote from an article in the journal Obesity Research.
In total, seven works by provocateur scientists were published. This theory of the big lie did not arise yesterday, according to the Russian Academy of Sciences. Fake articles, just like plagiarism, are like weeds in the field of fundamental research. Russian scientists are confident that such pseudoscientific works can be recognized, but only if there is a desire.
“The most striking example that I remember is when there was a dissertation on meat, which was copied, simply replacing meat with chocolate by autocorrect. However, everything else remained in place. Red meat has become dark chocolate, poultry meat has become white chocolate,” said Alexander Panchin, a member of the commission to combat pseudoscience and falsification of scientific research at the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
When the scientists admitted that they had deceived everyone, a scandal broke out. Some demanded that they be punished, others praised them for their courage and suggested continuing their research. True, the scientists themselves are not laughing now. For these fake publications they face dismissal from universities. This experiment may be the last in their scientific career.
The world of science does not stand still! “British scientists have proven...” We've been hearing this expression a lot lately, and it has already become a cliche. Today is a selection about what grandmothers are needed for and which scientists are the best.
10th PLACE:About the disadvantages of long sleep
Every student dreams of the day when they can get a good night's sleep. But it was not there! Scientists advise against staying in bed for more than 8 hours, or you risk increasing your risk of developing diseases.
9th PLACE:Mat is good for health
The conversation will not be about sports mats, on which they hone their physical education skills, but about those very mats, without which, as they say, the Russian language is impossible.
Scientists from England say that mat is good for health - it helps cope with pain. Moreover, the efficiency of the mat for people who hardly use it or do not use it at all will be higher. Young people took part in the experiment; they had to hold their hands in ice water. When students became unbearably cold, they were encouraged to use a mat, thereby increasing the ability to keep their hands in the water.
8th PLACE:Stay away from hand dryers in shopping centers
Such a notice should be hung up by British scientists in all the toilets of shopping centers. The thing is that hand dryers in public places are an ideal breeding ground for germs. Better use paper towels, the British advise.
7th PLACE:It is better to store old phones in flowers
And all this is not because we want to perpetuate the memory of what we never part with for a minute. But because telephones in flower pots will begin to decompose under the influence of the environment and create favorable conditions for some plants. The thing that needs your old cell phone the most are sunflowers.
6th PLACE:A miniskirt is the key to a long life
The study included about 5,000 women whose age reached 70 years. The results are simply amazing: the less clothes a woman wears, the more likely she is to cross the line of her seventh decade.
There are several hypotheses about this:
- Clothes after washing one way or another contain residues of chemicals that react with sweat and can negatively affect health, including the development of cancer.
- Also, one of the conclusions of British scientists was that to maximum attract a man, a woman should have 40% of her body exposed. Therefore, she is more likely to get married. And it’s no secret that married couples live much longer than bachelors.
- According to scientists, ladies whose wardrobe has more skirts than pants are more intelligent, independent and take good care of themselves.
5th PLACE:For a student, everything falls on a newspaper
You thought it was a joke, but researchers at the University of Manchester proved it wasn't. The experiment involved sandwiches with jam, cheese, and ham. The result did not cast doubt on the usefulness of the scientists’ actions. If something very sweet or, on the contrary, salty has slipped through your hands, feel free to pick it up and chew it! The fact is that substances high in sugar or salt are not the most favorable environment for the growth of bacteria. Microbes do not have time to multiply in it so quickly
4TH PLACE:The perfect sandwich
If you think that the ideal sandwich is the one that was made for you, then this is only true if it has ideal proportions.
According to British scientists, the ideal sandwich should be one for which you need:
- a slice of white bread 9 mm thick (no more and no less);
- a millimeter layer of butter, weighing 7.1 grams;
- 2 mm of good jam, weighing 11 grams.
3RD PLACE:Why are grandmothers needed?
After going through a lot of literature and studying the features of modern life, British scientists found out why grandmothers exist! The study revealed that grandmothers living next to their grandchildren... influence the survival rate of the latter. After a woman can no longer raise and care for her own children, she switches to her grandchildren.
2ND PLACE:The smartest scientists are British scientists!
We hear the expression “British scientists...” so often that we completely forget about the existence of others. It is known that the UK ranks second in the world in the number of scientific discoveries per year, after the USA.
1 PLACE:What is the cause of excess weight?
The discovery, for which such a large budget was probably allocated in vain, still takes place, since it has already been made. Scientists have found an explanation for the problem of overweight people. The thing is that thin people usually eat less than fat people.
Lesya Slutskaya
British scientists once found that British scientists are the smartest. And this is not a newspaper joke at all, such a study was actually carried out. Here is a selection of the most interesting and absurd things that British scientists have been doing.
This research took about two years and 250 thousand pounds sterling. Scientists have found that while playing bowling, children or teenagers can start running along the lanes and end up getting stuck in the mechanism that sets the pins. The publication notes that such cases have not been recorded previously, however, according to scientists, there is a high probability of such situations occurring. In addition, the Health, Safety and Health Administration report also noted that adults would be at just as high a risk if they decided to walk down the lane and knock down a pin with their hand.
Scientists at the University of Leeds, England, have found the answer to a question that has troubled women and men for centuries: where exactly is the line between too modest and too frivolous women's clothing. The study is based on observations made by four researchers who secretly observed patrons of the city's largest nightclub from a balcony located above the dance floor. The study's authors observed how many men approached girls asking them to dance, dividing the girls by the amount of clothing they were wearing. According to research, the ideal ratio of bare skin to clothing is 40:60. At the same time, women who were naked were less successful than women who were dressed too modestly.
British scientists Brenda and Robert Weil published a book with the shocking title “Time to Eat Dog?” This phrase came to us from the times when people conquered Antarctica. In cases where food ran out, travelers had to eat sled dogs. The authors have a message to the reader: at a time when natural resources are depleted, pets become a luxury that, for the sake of the planet, we cannot afford. According to the Weils' calculations, on average each dog needs 164 kg of meat and 95 kg of grain per year. To produce these products, 0.84 hectares of area is required (1.1 hectares for a German Shepherd).
According to scientists, to build and drive an SUV for 10 thousand km, energy in the amount of 55.1 gigajoules is required. And one hectare of land can produce energy equal to 135 gigajoules per year. In other words, the polluting impact of a car on the environment is half that of a dog. Similar equations apply to other pets. It turns out that a cat consumes as much energy (in terms of hectares - 0.15) as a large van, a pair of hamsters with 0.28 hectares is comparable to a plasma TV, a red fish (0.00034 hectares) consumes energy as two mobile phones.
A large-scale study in villages in Japan, Ethiopia, Gambia and Malawi, cities in Germany, England and Canada was carried out by anthropologist Leslie Knapp together with colleagues from the University of Cambridge. An article about the research was published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society. After collecting some historical data and studying the features of modern life, Leslie Knapp proposed the X-chromosomal “grandmother hypothesis”. A meta-analysis in the study found that grandmothers who live close to their grandchildren influence the survival rate of their grandchildren. According to anthropologists, after reproductive age, women are able to better protect their genes, that is, the inherited parts of DNA. Losing the opportunity to care for her own children, the woman switches to caring for her grandchildren. At the same time, she passes on the accumulated experience to her grown children.
A woman passes on about 31% of her genes to her own sons' daughters. Sons' sons inherit only 23% of their grandmother's genes. Grandchildren by daughter (of both sexes) are approximately in the middle - 25%. If we talk about the X chromosome, then the son's sons have nothing to do with their grandmother at all (they receive their X chromosome from their mother). The closest to the grandmother are again the son’s daughters.
English scientists believe that the myth of Santa Claus traveling on flying reindeer owes its appearance to hallucinogenic mushrooms that the inhabitants of Lapland loved to indulge in. It is known that the story of Santa Claus was born in Lapland, in the north of modern Finland. Lapps lived there, who, as scientists found, quite often drank the urine of deer that ate fly agarics. In laboratory conditions, scientists obtained a powerful hallucinogenic substance from these mushrooms. It is no wonder, scientists believe, that the Lapps imagined flying deer, which then turned into the legend of the good Santa Claus. Scientists explain the bright red robe of the New Year's character with the color of a hallucinogenic mushroom. The red and white color of the fly agaric turned in the inflamed imagination of people into an old man in a red caftan with a white beard.
The less clothes a woman wears, the longer she lives - British scientists came to this interesting conclusion under the leadership of anthropologist Sir Edwin Burkhart. More than 5,000 women over 70 years old took part in the study. The result of the analysis amazed anthropologists: the less clothing the respondent wore, the more likely she was to live to an old age.
Scientists have several theories to explain this relationship. First, clothing contains residue from chemicals used during cleaning and washing, which, when reacting with sweat, can form compounds that penetrate the skin and negatively affect health, including the development of cancer. Secondly, a woman in revealing clothes attracts men and is more likely to get married. It is known that the health of married people is better and they live longer than single people. Thirdly, women who wear minimal clothing are exposed to natural factors that affect longevity. Fourthly, according to British scientists, such ladies are more open, intelligent, independent and take more care of themselves. Fifthly, lovers of revealing outfits are more likely to have sex, which, from the point of view of researchers, is another beneficial factor affecting longevity.
Social activity is as important to maintaining a person's health as exercise, diet or medication. The results of a study by British and Australian scientists are published by the London newspaper Daily Express. Active communication within various social groups and teams helps reduce the risk of myocardial infarction, stroke and even influenza. The publication cites the results of a study by Professor Jolanda Jetten from the Australian University of Queensland, according to which enthusiastic conversations at the table, including in restaurants and cafes, increase brain activity, which has the most positive effect on health.
British scientists are the most productive in the world. According to the study, the UK ranks second after the US in the number of scientific discoveries and developments made per year. Comparing this with the amount of funding for the scientific industry and the number of people working in it, we can conclude that British scientists work much more efficiently than their overseas colleagues.
The study, based on a count of the number of scientific papers, their influence in the world of science and the frequency of citations, found that between 1997 and 2001 the UK produced 9.4 per cent of scientific publications, accounting for 12.8 per cent of the most cited papers. For comparison, the figures for Germany are 8.8 and 10.4 percent, Japan - 9.3 and 6.9. Although the United States has gone far ahead in terms of total volume - 35 and 63 percent, the efficiency of American scientists has decreased significantly compared to previous years.
British scientists have found that daily consumption of blueberries or a blueberry milkshake improves concentration and prevents the development of senile dementia. For the research, scientists invited 40 volunteers aged 18 to 30 years. The subjects drank a glass of blueberry milkshake every morning and followed the diet prescribed by doctors. During the day they did several physical exercises, during which the level of concentration was monitored. After a few weeks, the berries were removed from the volunteers’ diet. As a result, the concentration level of the experiment participants after two hours of exercise decreased by 15-20 percent.
Cell phone radiation has an extremely negative effect on bees, leading to the collapse of the colony and even to their mass extinction. British experts led by Dr. Daniel Favre came to this conclusion. Scientists conducted an experiment by placing a working mobile phone under the hive. It turned out that bees become very anxious if there is an incoming call on the phone. They gather in a swarm, and after the signal is interrupted, they calm down.
In previous experiments, a phone left near a hive led to the collapse of a bee colony and the mass extinction of bee colonies. Radiation from mobile communications kills 43% of bees, while, for example, pesticides kill only 3% of these insects. The fact is that cellular networks under the GSM protocol operate at frequencies from 800 to 1200 MHz. Bees communicate at these same frequencies and, most importantly, navigate. Cellular networks “clog” the channel, and disoriented bees cannot find the place where they live and feed.
British scientists report that sometimes swearing is good for your health. Moreover, swearing helps most of all those people who usually do not use profanity in their speech. In particular, strong words have a pronounced analgesic effect. The researchers conducted an experiment in which 70 students participated. They had to keep their hands in the ice water for as long as possible. When it became completely unbearable, they were asked to use obscene language. At this time, scientists measured the activity of their brain centers and other body reactions. As it turned out, the participants in the experiments who cursed were able to keep their hands in the water longer than those who could not utter these words. At the same time, the greatest effect was achieved by those who usually rarely use obscene expressions.
Sound, healthy sleep can lead to serious illnesses. British scientists came to this conclusion. In particular, sleeping on your back is fraught with asthma and heart problems, since in this position the body is poorly supplied with oxygen. If a person sleeps on their side, this can lead to early formation of wrinkles. And if the sleeper assumes the “fetal position,” he risks migraines and problems with the cervical spine. The neck will also suffer when sleeping on your stomach. In addition, in this position the sleeper’s hands will go numb, and in certain cases the jaw can also become twisted. Those who like to sleep in an embrace will begin to experience pain in their back, neck, legs, and arms. British scientists did not consider other options for sleeping positions.
Women are more attracted to men who are moody than men who look happy. Scientists from the University of British Columbia came to this conclusion. A group of thousands of volunteers took part in the study. They were asked to look at photographs of people of the opposite sex and rate them in terms of sexual attractiveness. All photographed people had different facial expressions associated with manifestations of emotions (from a wide smile to eyes lowered to the floor).
Psychologists assessed the first impression of sexual attractiveness of the images. It turned out that women are more attracted to gloomy, concentrated faces. They don't like smiling, cheerful men. Scientists believe that women associate a man’s gloomy appearance with his status, wealth, reliability, and ability to provide for a partner and children. But a smile indicates weakness and defenselessness. In turn, men pay more attention to smiling, joyful women, since representatives of the stronger sex prefer ladies who are easier to make contact and obey.
A group of British scientists have invented an original way to get rid of old mobile phones. They suggest not throwing them away, but burying them in pots with plants. Elements of a cell phone biochemically decompose over time. Together with the soil, they create favorable conditions for the growth of certain plants. Sunflowers grow best in a pot with a telephone. Scientists have not yet determined whether the phone model affects the growth rate of plants.
“The first thing you notice when you look at the social structure of ants and bees is how cooperative they are,” says Bill Hughes from the University of Leeds. - However, if you look closely, you will notice that they are also characterized by conflicts and fraud - and in this they are very similar to human society. "We previously thought that ants were an exception, but our genetic analysis showed that their society is rife with corruption, particularly royal corruption." Scientists compared the inequality that is present in anthills with what happens in hives where drones and ordinary bees live. Ants, like bees, have their own carriers of “royal genes”. Dr. Hues and Jacobus Boomsma from the University of Copenhagen found that the daughters of some fathers become “queens” more often than others. In addition, ants carrying special royal genes have the ability to fool their relatives and deprive them of the opportunity to leave offspring.
Scientists from Great Britain have found the oldest joke text in the world. It is noteworthy that this discovery allows us to conclude: humor “below the belt” was no less popular in ancient times than it is today. Researchers from the University of Wolverhampton have determined that the oldest joke was recorded in 1900 BC. It belongs to the Sumerians, who lived in what is now southern Iraq. Rough translation: “This has not happened since time immemorial for a girl to fart while sitting on her husband’s lap.”
As researchers write in the journal Nature, acetaldehyde, a byproduct of ethanol processing in our bodies, can lead to catastrophic DNA damage. And we would die from the very first glass if the cells did not have a two-step defense system: the first includes enzymes that neutralize acetaldehyde itself, the second is a set of proteins that take on the emergency repair of damaged DNA. Scientists experimented with pregnant mice in which both systems were turned off - in such animals, even a small single dose of alcohol led to the death of the fetus; Moreover, the death of blood stem cells was observed in the adult mice themselves.
Scientists were prompted to check the effect of alcohol on DNA by two groups of information. Firstly, people suffering from Fanconi syndrome, a severe hereditary disease, are extremely sensitive to alcohol. In these patients, the proteins responsible for DNA repair do not work, as a result of which acetaldehyde causes irreversible damage to genes, and this leads to blood diseases and cancer. On the other hand, people with congenital alcohol intolerance are highly susceptible to esophageal cancer, and their acetaldehyde neutralization system does not work. In both cases, the consequences of alcohol intake are expressed in diseases affecting the molecular genetic apparatus of the cell.
British scientists sometimes take on the most unexpected topics. This time they wanted to know why drunk men, as popular wisdom says, are less demanding of women’s appearance. The study involved students, the male half of whom had to... get drunk. After such an exciting stage of scientific work, they were asked to evaluate photographs of girls who had already been “sorted” in terms of attractiveness by a fairly large group of sober respondents. It goes without saying that there was no sensation: the assessments of drunken volunteers turned out to be less strict. Having looked closely at the photographs and analyzed the ratings given, scientists came to the conclusion that alcohol takes away people’s ability to adequately assess the symmetry of a face (after all, as you know, the more symmetrical a face is, the more beautiful it seems, based on current standards). Well, the vagueness of the lines always gave everything a certain mystery... That, in fact, is the whole story.
Many mothers, tired of constantly getting up at night and soothing a crying child, begin to hate their husbands, sleeping peacefully next to them and, it seems, completely unable to hear the piercing baby roar. This hatred, as British scientists have proven, is in most cases completely groundless. It turns out that nature has tuned our body to perceive very specific sounds in our sleep, so men really don’t hear the crying of their tiny offspring.
For representatives of the fairer sex, children's sobs are the most annoying sound that can wake up from any, even the deepest sleep. For men, he is not even in the top ten. The most effective “alarm clocks” for the stronger sex are car alarms, the howling of the wind and a fly or mosquito buzzing over the ear.
Enormous sex differences in the perception of sounds during sleep were revealed during an experiment with measurements of the level of brain activity. It was carried out simply: subjects immersed in sleep were “played” various noises, while simultaneously taking an encephalogram. It turned out that any woman reacts sharply to a child’s cry and wakes up, even if she herself is not a mother. At the same time, nature has also provided a compensatory mechanism: representatives of the fair sex fall asleep much faster after sudden night “wake-ups”. But men, awakened by some extraneous sound, then cannot fall asleep for a long time, tossing and turning in bed and suffering.
A study has shown that a person smoking a hookah inhales as much carbon monoxide as if he were breathing through a car exhaust pipe. That is, one “portion” of hookah can be five times higher than one cigarette in terms of carbon monoxide content.
British scientists, in particular sexologists from Queen's University Belfast, managed to prove that morning sex is healthier than morning exercises. During sex, the arm muscles are strengthened, the chest, pelvis and buttocks are strengthened, as well as blood circulation improves and proper breathing is restored. In addition, sex has a clear preventive effect, in particular, the risk of cardiovascular diseases is significantly reduced; morning sex can fight arthritis and migraines, burn more than three hundred calories at a time, which, in turn, reduces the risk of diabetes.
In research, experts have found that those who drink more than one cup of tea a day have a 50% reduction in the risk of unpleasant dreams compared to those who practically never drink this drink. Scientists cannot say exactly why this happens. However, they believe that the active chemicals contained in tea, particularly the amino acid tannin, relieve stress and calm negative electrical activity in the brain.
According to a published report commissioned by the Ministry of Energy and Climate Change, serious temperature changes as a result of global warming will not occur in the distant future, but within the current generations. “An average increase in global temperatures of four degrees would lead to sharper increases in some regions, along with a dramatic change in precipitation. And if greenhouse gas emissions are not reduced soon, our generation will face critical climate change,” said Dr. Richard Betts, head of the Hadley Climate Prediction Center at the British Met Office. At the same time, in the Arctic, as well as in the west and south of the African continent, warming could reach 10 degrees.
Scientists have discovered a new way to improve memory - to do this you need to constantly jog. It turns out that regular jogging has a beneficial effect not only on a person’s psyche and body, but also on his brain. Scientists from the University of Cambridge have shown that jogging stimulates the production of new gray matter cells in the area of the brain responsible for memory, notes Compulenta. Data from experiments by British scientists suggest that just a few days of running lead to the growth of hundreds of thousands of new cells in the area of the brain that is associated with memory.
Scientists have found a way to reduce hangovers after drinking alcohol - to do this, saturate them with oxygen. According to British media, this discovery was made by scientists from Chungnam National University in the South Korean city of Daejeon.
It is known that oxygen is involved in the chemical process in the human body, during which consumed alcohol breaks down into water and carbon dioxide. Scientists took identical portions of the same alcoholic drink, saturated them with oxygen to varying degrees, and gave them to the volunteer participants in the experiment to drink. After some time, the scientists asked the subjects about their feelings and measured the alcohol content in their blood. It turned out that those who had a higher oxygen content in their drink felt better and had less alcohol in their blood.
The leader of the experiment, Professor Kwan Il Kwon, said that after drinking an oxygenated alcoholic drink, the alcohol content in the blood plasma decreases faster than after drinking a drink with a normal oxygen content. The scientists, however, did not specify what kind of drink they used in the experiment and how oxygen affects its taste.
"British scientists have found that miniskirts prolong women's lives." "British researchers have shown that sleeping on the left side helps you fall asleep faster and better." "Scientists have found that when playing bowling, children or adults can start running along the lanes and end up getting stuck in the mechanism that sets the pins." By the way, 10 years and 250 thousand pounds were spent on the latest research.
Such messages appear in news feeds every week. Scientists from Great Britain write so many scientific articles and on such different, and sometimes large-scale, topics that the expression “British scientists” has already become a meme and a synonym for crazy researchers producing unnecessary and even pseudoscientific results. This is evidenced by a common joke: “British scientists have proven that people are not able to take seriously anything that is discovered by British scientists.” How much of this joke is true and how much is fiction?
British scientists are the smartest in the world. This became known in 2004 during a study. It showed that the UK ranks only second after the US in terms of annual scientific discoveries and developments. But when experts compared their number with the number of researchers and the amount of funding for science, they found that the British were still more productive than their colleagues. You can view the statistics. But if you don’t follow the link for the numbers, you’ll miss the newspaper’s interesting message. Financial Times. They believe that the increase in the number of scientific developments occurred due to cuts in the UK's scientific budget and the awakening of enthusiasts ready to work for the idea. Doesn't remind you of anyone?
So, British scientists do write a lot of papers and create a lot of things. But why has their activity always been so noticeable in the world? There are several reasons.
Firstly, this happened historically.
English monks, like any monks of medieval Europe, accumulated knowledge in manuscripts until the universities of Oxford and Cambridge were founded in the 12th-13th centuries - the first universities in the world that are still operating. Later, England contributed to the series of great geographical discoveries, published scientific journals, founded the oldest scientific society (the Royal Society of London) and became the country from which the industrial revolution began, which gave the world factories, urbanization and a rapid increase in the quality of life of people.
And in the middle of the 19th century, the country decided to increase the nation’s attention to science. Scientists began to give open lectures to ordinary citizens, and popular science magazines appeared on newsstands. Over time, journalists began to write a lot about science. They were not afraid of controversial topics and sometimes openly criticized scientists and universities. A century later, their defenders came to science - the press services of universities and institutes. It was the activities of journalists and press secretaries that became the reason for the powerful flow of information that fell upon ordinary people. To attract the reader and focus his attention on complex scientific topics, the texts were simplified as much as possible. They wrote about the unusual and sensational. As a result, the brand “British scientists” is firmly stuck in people’s heads.
No powerful PR of universities and research institutes will create an information background if the media are decidedly not interested in this topic, says Alexandra Borisova, former head of the TASS scientific and educational project “Attic”, visiting researcher of scientific communications at Rhine-Waal University, co-founder of the Association on Communications in Education and Science (AKSON). - So, the British media are interested. First of all, the BBC, which exists on a special tax and is not obliged to think about making money, produces scientific news, films, programs, and even magazines. Most newspapers have a "Science" tab right on the front page. For example, in the tabloids The Daily Mail And The Daily Telegraph. And it’s not about science policy or astrology, it’s about the truth about science. There is objectively a lot of scientific information, so it also includes strange things.
By the way, statistics on this matter are also not asleep: 71 percent of Britons surveyed think that the media sensationalize scientific discoveries. What the Russians think is unknown. But it is known that the vast majority of Russian general media read ready-made news (that is, not the original scientific articles themselves). They read them in Russian, select the brightest, funniest and most absurd ones, rewrite them and publish them. They do not have the task of creating a general picture of the world, they just need to entertain people. This is how exaggeratedly strange stories appear.
The third reason for the existence of the phenomenon of “British scientists” was loudly announced by one of the UK scientific journals at a special conference four years ago. It turned out that some scientific articles are of low quality, while others are completely falsified.
To understand why this is so, the British Dr. Andrew D. Higginson and Professor Marcus R. Munafo conducted their own scientific investigation. They suggested that scientists, like representatives of other professions, are driven by material incentives - salaries and grants. Then the researchers took the requirements of grant committees and, using a mathematical model, calculated the most profitable path that a motivated scientist could take. And they discovered that they were given points for the novelty of their work, thereby encouraging not the depth of research and immersion in one topic, but the discovery of ever new effects and patterns. More precisely, the grantors hardly wanted this outcome, but in the end they got it.
Higginson and Munafo believe that this could still change if the requirements for grants were tightened. By the way, the researchers only talked about the biomedical field of science, because things are better in physics and genomics (the science of genes).
There is a fourth possible reason for the existence of the phenomenon: British scientists do what they want. This does not mean that they are arbitrary in order to satisfy their curiosity. This means they have comfortable working conditions: modern equipment, reagents, students and graduate students who do not suffer from a lack of money. Therefore, they can conduct research faster and take on new topics. Even if at first glance they are trivial.
When you quickly scan the news about the latest achievements of British scientists, you don’t understand why this was worth studying? Some are looking for correlations (statistical connections), seemingly in unrelated subjects: “British scientists have proven that the most objective test for determining temperament is the yellow color of a traffic light” or “Scientists have found out what a smartphone can tell about a person.” It occurs to other researchers to check, for example, why we cannot get some melodies out of our heads. And sometimes scientists manage to come to astonishing conclusions that “a man differs from a woman only by gender.” The third conventional group of scientists likes to do completely useless work, finding out the reasons for the optimism of pigs or the mental strength of pioneers.
Before tabooing the results of British scientists and scrolling further down the news feed, let's be respectable researchers and take a closer look at their work.
We open a search engine, enter the phrase “British scientists” and find text about why some songs connect with people more than others. This scientific news, like almost any other, is based on an article. The article on intrusive melodies was written together with colleagues by psychologist-researcher Kelly Jakubowski, a blonde with a wide smile from Goldsmiths University in London. The girl determined that a catchy song should be upbeat and rhythmic, not too simple or too complex. This type of music usually goes well with moderate walking or jogging. You may ask: why wasn’t this clear before? Yes and no.
The fact is that we constantly try to predict the outcome of an event and place bets on one of its outcomes. When the outcome is clear, we say: “I knew it! Everything was obvious.” In fact, this may not be true. This psychological trick is also called the hindsight fallacy. This has probably happened to you when you took a test like “Are you an introvert or an extrovert?”, cheered for a football team, or gossiped in the kitchen or in a chat about the future President of the United States. With the results of scientific articles, everything is the same: scientists are looking for scientific confirmation of some phenomenon, they find it, and then we say that everything was obvious anyway.
The research was carried out quite qualitatively,” comments Elena Bakhtina, a graduate of the Faculty of Psychology of St. Petersburg State University and an individual consultant, commenting on the work of British scientists. - It has one good idea: a song must have a personal association in order to be popular. This has been proven in literature and film for a long time, but if this idea has not been put forward in music before, researchers can become innovators and research can be valuable.
Kelly Jakubowski herself, in a conversation with Life, explained that her work can be useful to musicians and producers when creating memorable compositions, as well as computer programs that select songs depending on the preferences of listeners. Just remember the “Recommendations” button in the VKontakte playlist or music from Last.fm.
The headline “British scientists: Scouts and pioneers have a stronger psyche” makes me smile. A further explanation that these people in adulthood have a more stable psyche than their peers who did not join public organizations clarifies the situation, but the smile does not leave their faces. Professor Rich Mitchell from the University of Glasgow and colleagues analyzed data on the lives of thousands of people born in 1958 in the UK. These figures and the details of the study completely change the picture of the work, although, of course, the final figures are not so great: the difference in disease risks between Scouts and non-Scouts is only 18 percent.
What does such a seemingly useless study give us? Probably, the knowledge that in public organizations children acquire stress tolerance skills, curiosity, perseverance, conscientiousness and other qualities that help them in adulthood. Therefore, it makes sense to enroll your children in such organizations, and this sense has been scientifically proven.
Any scientific journal, like any hotel, has an indicator of its coolness - an impact factor. This is a number and is obtained by dividing the number of citations to articles in that journal elsewhere by the number of articles in that journal. British scientists who found optimists and pessimists among pigs published their work in the journal Biology Letters. Its impact factor does not exceed 4 (for comparison: the most prestigious journal Nature- almost 40). If a person is staying in a two-star hotel or even a hostel, he most likely cannot pay for expensive apartments. If a scientist does not publish an article in a highly ranked journal, he lacks depth, novelty, breadth of research, or something else.
Professor Lisa Collins from the University of Lincoln and her colleagues eventually concluded that the decisions made by pessimistic pigs were more dependent on environmental conditions (for example, the hardness of the litter), while optimistic pigs remained cheerful under any circumstances. . The study included only 36 experimental subjects, and its results still need to be clarified and combined with other experimental criteria. In addition, only pigs took part in it. Thus, sometimes the impact factor of a journal tells even non-scientists how valuable the research can be.
If we return to the study of the psyche of scouts and look at the impact factor of the journal with Professor Mitchell’s article, it also does not exceed four. It's all about the subject matter of the journals: the best journals in psychology live with an impact factor of six, and in biology - forty.
By the way, British scientists recently promised to rid society of unpleasant splashes in the toilet: experts have come up with ways to eliminate the problem of unplanned water from the toilet getting onto the body. Robert W. Style of the University of Oxford and other researchers proposed changing the shape of the toilet and using coatings that would prevent splashing. For example, a thin layer of ethanol and silicone paste. The problem was not solved, but the amount of splashing was noticeably reduced. The toilet topic makes people laugh and sharply reduces the public’s trust in scientists, but the research itself was done correctly, and if you think about it, there are a lot of things that are being improved every year, we just sometimes don’t notice it.
If not all research is stupid and useless, then why do “British scientists” exist? Researchers and communication specialists interviewed by Life agree: our attitude to the news largely depends on how the media presents it. They can make a loud headline and balanced text, or they can take the main thing out of the news and get the news from a completely different angle. But it would be foolish to say that a funny headline about pig temperament ruined the study. Not only the media, but also the researchers themselves, grant providers and working conditions leave their mark on scientific work. But the most important thing is that it is not only British scientists who do research that seems strange at first glance, but journalists who write about it with their tongues on their shoulders.
Is it only in the UK that scientists do strange things? No, believe me, they do this everywhere, and it’s even relatively normal,” Alexandra Borisova is convinced. - In any business there are leaders and outsiders, it is important to maintain proportions. In Russian institutes, sometimes they also do things that are of little use, and the fact that they do not sound funny (“20 people masturbated in a tomograph”), but clever (“Metal coordination polyhedron in trifluoroacetates”) only says that this is a difficult to interpret area of research.
Professor Munafo, who scanned career scientists, is of the same opinion. He believes the problem is global. In America there is even the so-called United States effect, where scientists exaggerate the conclusions of their work if their career depends on publishing only the most exciting results.
Then, in the 19th century, it was not only Great Britain that encouraged scientists and journalists to tell the public about science. America did this too, creating the powerful Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Now it is not only Great Britain that receives the Ig Nobel Prize for achievements that first make you laugh and then think. Finally, not only the UK has its own press services in universities and institutes, which provide journalists with information to create news. Russia is currently experiencing a period of rapid growth in the field of scientific communications.
With the start of the “5–100” program, communications departments were opened at universities, after the reform of the Russian Academy of Sciences, press secretaries appeared at institutes, and granting organizations also took a more active position, says Alexandra Borisova. - For example, the Ministry of Education and Science finances a number of popular science projects. We already have a MOOC course on scientific communication (online learning) and the first specialized master's program at ITMO University, an aggregator of press releases "Open Science". The difficulty is that we have to face all the challenges at once, while the same British communicators went through them gradually.
The UK is home to 64.7 million people and employs 1.2 million scientists. The population of Russia is 143.5 million people, and there are about 750 thousand scientists. The difference is several times, but not orders of magnitude. Moreover, the media in Russia write about space and genes less often than about banks and officials.
So Russian science is underrepresented in the media, and the increase in the number of scientific news is normal. And if in the process of such a presentation we find out that the quality of science in Russia is very low, this is sad, but people have the right to know this,” he concludes Alexandra Borisova.
Now that we know how much of that joke about British scientists is true and how much is lies, attitudes are beginning to change. We all want to do what we love, get enough money, and sometimes we face failures. But we are trying to make the world a better place, just like British and any other scientists do. And studying the levitation of a frog or the psyche of pioneers may suddenly become necessary for humanity. And no one knows when and at what moment.