10 most bizarre Scientific papers

[semillama]

http://www.oddee.com/item_90683.aspx

Enjoy!

[TZ]

1. zOMG!!

That is awesome. I'm afraid I'm going to have to steal that for the Lounge..that's right up their alley.....In fact, I'm sure several have been posted there in the past...:D

[LeftishBrit]

2. Good stuff!

Actually, the Maguire taxi-driver paper is quite a serious and important one: one of the strongest bits of evidence that experience and learning can lead to structural changes in the brain, even in adults.

My personal favourite bizarre title in my field is one which came toward the end of a long battle-of-the-papers by Peter Bryant and Maggie Snowling as to whether rhyme or phonemic awareness is a better predictor of reading (yes, world wars can break out on such issues!) Bryant published a paper entitled: "It Doesn't Matter Whether Onset and Rime Predicts Reading Better Than Phoneme Awareness Does or Vice Versa".

[Random_Australian]

3. Hey, the chicken one was important to.

"Chickens Prefer Beautiful Humans"

Because humans judge higher symmetry (and other stuff) as beautiful.

And if you are trying to work out when in evolution the cognition of bilateral symmetry became important, this tells you it is old.

[TZ]

4. Wait...

So what you are saying is the next time a fundie says they don't "believe" in evolution we can tell them that it does because chickens prefer pretty faces? Heh. So much for the which came first the chicken or the egg..which came first the chicken or the beauty contestant.....:rofl:

[LeftishBrit]

8. So now we know why the chicken crossed the road!

[mr blur]

6. Well, we have seven chickens and they follow my wife everywhere,

but they tend to ignore me most of the time. Good to finally have an explanation for this behaviour!

[semillama]

7. But have they proven that Gonzos prefer beautiful chickens?

[Heddi]

5. Oh this is great stuff

They're bizarre, but I think that they're useful to a degree. I've always been very interested in psychology and behavioural psychology, etc, and many of these studies (like the chickens v. beautiful people) are interesting, and in many cases build upon previously studied material.