British scientists have proven that lovers. British scientists have studied the musical tastes of parrots

1. It was British scientists who unearthed the oldest joke in the world. It was invented and written down in 1900 BC. It seems that its authors, the ancient Sumerians, were the direct ancestors of Yevgeny Petrosyan: “From time immemorial, there was no such thing as a girl farting while sitting on her husband’s lap.”

2. British scientists have managed to prove that a person can become infected with a computer virus. In order to make this discovery, computer science luminary Mark Gasson had to implant a chip with a program in his hand.

3. British scientists made an incredible discovery in 2003: they found that at least 9 out of 10 ladybugs in London suffer from sexually transmitted diseases. It turns out that, returning from wintering, ladybugs begin to have a promiscuous sex life, as a result of which they acquire a whole bunch of venereal diseases. Whether British scientists are developing a special barrier contraception for lustful insects is not reported.

4. In 2007, the best forces of British science were thrown into the development of chewing gum that does not stick to anything, including asphalt. Scientists have calculated that London's public utilities spend about £100,000 a year scraping gum off the capital's streets. Researchers have been struggling to solve this problem for 5 years.

5. The best people at the University of Leeds did a study to figure out the formula for the perfect bacon sandwich. As many as 50 experimental Englishmen helped scientists in this difficult task, trying various samples of sandwiches. As a result, it turned out that the volume of bacon crunching in the process of biting 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.

6. Scientists from the University of East Anglia have made a useful discovery for many children: it turns out that fish oil is completely unhealthy. It is generally accepted that regular consumption of fish oil can reduce the risk of developing heart disease. But British researchers have not been able to find a link between the omega 3 fats found in fish and the incidence of heart disease.

7. 300 thousand pounds was spent by British scientists to study the interaction of ducks with water. As a result of a long study, they managed to find out that for all other ways to spend time in the water, ducks prefer rain, which replaces their shower.

8. Sex is better than masturbation - this is the shocking conclusion that British researchers came to. It turns out that an orgasm obtained during intercourse with a partner satisfies a person better than an orgasm obtained with one's own hand.

9. From 2001 to 2006, the leading figures of British science conducted a study in which 516 test drivers took part. It turned out that the majority of drivers who violate the rules of the road more often than others are latent homosexuals. The publication of the results of the study caused a wave of protests among English and Scottish drivers, but scientists expressed their willingness to prove to everyone and everyone their irrefutable rightness.

10. Another shocking discovery by researchers from Foggy Albion finally explained to overweight sufferers what their problem is. In the course of a scientific experiment, British scientists were able to establish that thin people tend to eat less than full ones.

11. Scientists from the University of Southampton involved 277 children in one of their studies. Experimenting with their diet, scientists came to the conclusion that eating food with food coloring and preservatives has a bad effect on children's behavior: children become hyperactive, and sometimes completely uncontrollable.

12. A really useful discovery was made by a group of researchers from the Universities of Leicester and Exeter: they found that drinking alcohol does not affect the ability of men to judge the age of girls. To do this, scientists had to walk through the bars and interview about 240 drinking Britons.

13. A scientist from Cambridge Trinity College named Rupert Sheldrake made a willful decision to devote his career to the study of such a phenomenon as telephone telepathy. Rupert suggests that people are endowed with the ability to guess who will call them now, even before the phone rings. In his first study, 63 people took part, and in 45% of cases, the subjects were actually able to predict who exactly would contact them in the near future by phone. In his next work, Rupert intends to prove the existence of SMS telepathy.

I noticed a long time ago that British scientists are distinguished by the fact that they are engaged in research that is so ridiculous, in our opinion, that it looks more like banter than science. Trying to find more information about this on the net, I came across an assumption in the Absurdopedia that " British scientists" is a creative pseudonym, a trade name that has recently been used by a scientific group of conspiring crazy scientists to publish their own crazy and useless discoveries.

It is difficult to disagree with such an assumption. Among the "brilliant" discoveries of British scientists all-seeing cameras, ladybug diseases, start definition male menopause. Judge for yourself. Here is my personal top of the most curious and ridiculous studies recently conducted by British scientists:

10 British scientists have found the perfect way making toast with jam. According to the findings of specialists from the Manchester Center for Food Research, the ideal toast includes a slice of bread strictly 9 mm thick, and the bread should be only white. The amount of butter spread on bread is 7.1 grams, and 11.2 grams of jam.

9. British scientists confirmed the theory of the writer Vladimir Nabokov about evolution of one of the varieties of butterflies. Nabokov claimed that the butterfly of the species Polyommatus caeruleus over several million years migrated to America from Siberia through the Bering Strait - to the spaces from Alaska to Chile. Scientists have proven that this is possible.

8. British scientists have proven the possibility of teleportation. It has been proven that a person can manipulate space and time so that his actions are invisible to others. This effect can be achieved by speeding up and slowing down the light rays. So, let's teleport!

7. British scientists came to the conclusion that people start lying at 6 months of age when babies start laughing or screaming out of tune. And from the age of 2, children lie openly. Favorite phrase: "It's not me!". Does anyone else claim to never lie? Lying!

6. British scientists invented camera that sees through clothing. Well, it's just no comment - the dream of all perverts.

5. British scientists counted about 100 extraterrestrial civilizations. And they noted that the world community should prepare for an early meeting with them. All in the bunkers! Aliens are coming!

4. British scientists found that nine out of ten London ladybugs suffer from a fungal venereal disease. What a useful discovery! Ladybugs should bow to their waist.

3. British scientists figured out which hair color attracts money. As it turns out, employers pay more to blondes than to brunettes and redheads.

2. British scientists have proven that being a monarch is life-threatening. Monarchs were four times more likely to die violently than soldiers serving in active war zones.

1. British scientists have found that the tendency of men of "a certain age" to spend most of their time in slippers with a newspaper in their hands is not due to universal fatigue and apathy, but male menopause. Hehe, we'll know :)

So the ability of British scientists to find the most stupid topics for research simply has no limits! I wonder what they will please us in the near future? Let's wait, because laughter prolongs life! :)

British scientists are the most “learned” scientists… May 27th, 2016

It has long been noticed that if the media talks about some new discovery, then almost always its authors are British scientists. Who are these people, how do they come up with ideas about the most incredible research and who finances this research? ...

The whole world admires the activities of these people with delight. At the same time, British scientists themselves believe that the smartest people live in England. According to a study, the UK ranks second after the US in terms of the number of scientific discoveries and developments made in a year. Comparing this with the amount of funding for the scientific industry and the number of people working in it, the British concluded that local scientists work much more efficiently than their overseas counterparts.

As a rule, none of us can name a single scientific name and a university where this or that “great mind” works for the benefit of human science, so we doubt: do they really exist? Or maybe this is the “media image” of the last decades? After all, no matter what nonsense we read in the media, it will certainly be backed up by the research of British scientists.

British scientists finally figured out why drunk men “all women are beautiful”

The study involved students who had to ... get drunk. Next, they were asked to rate photographs of girls who had already been “sorted” in terms of attractiveness by a fairly large group of sober respondents.

After looking closely at the photographs and analyzing the ratings, the scientists came to the conclusion that alcohol takes people away from the opportunity to adequately assess the symmetry of the face (after all, as you know, the more symmetrical a face is, the more beautiful it seems, based on current standards). Well, the fuzziness of the lines always gave everything some mystery ...

British scientists have proven that quickly raised is not considered to be fallen

Researchers from the University of Manchester conducted a study to find out how dangerous it is to eat food raised from the floor. As it turned out, the rule of 3 seconds, during which you can pick up and eat food that has fallen on the floor without fear of bacteria, really works.

True, only industrial products with a high content of salt and sugar and a low water content. But pasta, fruits, vegetables, bread should not be lifted from the floor, because even after 3 seconds dangerous bacteria appear on them.

British scientists have calculated the total weight of the world's population - 287 million tons.

The average adult weighs 62 kg, and in the United States this figure is one third higher, that is, Americans are the heaviest. If the world's average adult weight were the same as in the United States, this would be equivalent to an increase in the population of one billion people.

British scientists have found that women for genetic reasons itch 23% more often than men

And although experts only experimented on laboratory mice, the researchers are sure that the situation is exactly the same in females and males of Homo sapiens.

According to Jeffrey Mogil, a pain geneticist at McGill University in Canada, the mechanisms behind this difference between the sexes are not fully understood, but seem to be related to the activity of gonadal hormones - estrogen, progesterone and testosterone.

Another shocking discovery by researchers from Foggy Albion finally explained to overweight people what their problem is. In the course of a scientific experiment, British scientists were able to establish that thin people tend to eat less than full ones.

British scientists have studied the musical tastes of parrots

Scientists from Lincoln University gave Jaco parrots a set of rhythmic songs from the repertoire of U2, Joan Baez and the reggae band UB40 to listen to. The parrots liked the music: the birds tried to move in time with it and even sang along, using, among other things, a stock of human words.

And Bach's cantatas made the parrots relax and start cleaning their feathers. It is curious that parrots are not averse to listening to dance pop, but only if it is not electronic. Electronic pop music without a voice plunged them into stress.

British archaeologists led by Professor Andrew Wallace-Handrill studied the contents of the sewers in the ancient Roman city of Herculaneum

Scientists collected faeces in 770 containers with a total weight of 10 tons, analyzed and found out what people who lived 2 thousand years ago ate. It turned out that the common people from Herculaneum ate quite well: fish, vegetables, eggs, olives, nuts, shellfish, fruits.

British researchers puzzle over how to make cows pollute the air less

UK authorities are concerned about methane emissions from cows and sheep. Scientists have been tasked with finding ways to reduce these emissions from livestock.

The UK government has allocated a budget for research, during which scientists are trying to find a diet for cows that is not so conducive to flatulence - they will be transferred to more easily digestible food: white clover and bird-foot.

British scientists advise those who want to lose weight to have an affair on the side

According to Dr. Craig Jackson, professor of psychology at the University of Birmingham, cheating puts pressure on a person, increases stress levels, as a result, a person begins to panic, lie and hide something. And all this leads to an increase in the level of cortisol and adrenaline, due to which the heart rate accelerates and the body begins to burn calories. As a result of the study, the representatives of the beautiful half of humanity lost up to 5 kg in weight, and the stronger sex - up to 3.

British scientists have found out why men get dumb

The study found that those men who spend time talking with beautiful women are a little dumber than those who hang out with the most terrible of the fair sex.

The likely reason for this is that men use their brains to the fullest, and it is no longer enough for other mental tasks.

British scientists spent £300,000 to study how ducks interact with water

For three years, they figured out what types of bathing ducks prefer. As a result of this long study, they were able to find out: ducks are very fond of swimming in rainy weather. It's funny, but the study was commissioned by the British Department of Agriculture (DEFRA).

British scientists made an incredible discovery in 2003:

they found that at least 9 out of 10 ladybugs in London suffer from a fungal venereal disease. It turns out that, returning from wintering, ladybugs begin to have a promiscuous sex life, as a result of which they acquire a whole bunch of sexually transmitted diseases.

This figure is much higher than in all other cities in the UK. “We think high air pollution is to blame,” says London-based researcher Greg Hurst. He says that ladybugs feed on aphids, and there is no better environment for aphids than dirty air.

For five years, scientists from Britain have been “fighting” over the development of chewing gum that does not stick to anything, including asphalt.

Scientists have calculated that London's public utilities spend about £100,000 a year scraping gum off the capital's streets. They finally found the formula for non-stick gum.

British researchers checked: if you yawn near a dog, then with a high degree of probability it will also yawn.

Therefore, dogs have some basic capacity for empathy, empathy. Thus, scientists from London's Birkbeck College suggest that dogs are able to “read”, understand the emotions of their owners.

Biologist Roger Wotton of University College London came to the sensational conclusion that the angels in the paintings and frescoes of European artists are not able to fly.

The scientist said that the painted angels have too large bodies that are not covered with feathers. In addition, their muscular system is not sufficiently developed for flight. Most of all, he was outraged by the implausibility of Giotto's one-winged angel.

According to British scientists, men prefer to marry brunettes

They believe that brunettes take better care of their appearance, cook better and keep the house perfectly clean.

They polled 1,000 men, and it turned out that 54% would choose a brunette as their spouse, 16% would prefer a blonde, and 30% do not consider hair color to be significant at all when choosing a life partner.

Brilliant thoughts come closer to the night

British scientists have found that inspiration is most likely to come to a person at exactly 22:04. During the study, experts interviewed 1436 people. It turned out that 92% of them do not feel inspiration at all in the afternoon, as a result of which the time of 16:33 was recognized as the most useless time of day. But the most inspiring time was 22:04

A scientist at Trinity College in Cambridge named Rupert Sheldrake devoted his career to studying the phenomenon of telephone telepathy.

Rupert suggests that people are endowed with the ability to guess who will call them now, even before the phone rings. In his first study, 63 people took part, and in 45% of cases, the subjects were actually able to predict who exactly would contact them in the near future by phone. In his next work, Rupert intends to prove the existence of SMS telepathy.

“British scientists have proven that the Earth is not round, but black and crunches on the teeth”

"British scientists have opened another case of whiskey"

“British scientists have found that the most popular message on social networks on Thursday is “Tomorrow is Friday!””

There are an incredible number of such jokes on the net. And they continue to be generated every day, despite the beardedness of the topic. Mainly because the British scientists themselves do not get tired of throwing up new informational occasions suitable for anecdotes.

For example, they recently found out why the bone in the connective tissue of the penis disappeared in humans in the process of evolution, and they also found out why some pigs are optimists, and some are pessimists.

It is not clear what value these works have, what drives scientists when they are taken for stupid research, and why exactly the UK takes the lead in the number of references to such absurd "discoveries". It is worth considering this phenomenon from the point of view of the theory of memes. A meme is a unit of cultural information transmitted from person to person. The concept was introduced by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene. "British scientists" is a full-fledged meme, and there are several reasons for its appearance.

Britain and science

The United Kingdom has always been considered the most developed and progressive place on the map of Europe. It is a country rich in both resources and people. In addition, historically, it was in Great Britain that true science began to develop rapidly. Oxford and Cambridge are the oldest universities in the world, and at the same time the most authoritative in our day.

The English were Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, James Maxwell, Michael Faraday, Ernest Rutherford, James Joule. This list can be continued until you get tired of talking about scientific discoveries.

At the beginning of the 19th century, during the Regency era, London was the intellectual center of the civilized world. Scientists actively enlightened ordinary people about their discoveries, the spirit of the mental revolution was in the air. In 1831, the British Association for the Propagation of Scientific Knowledge convened the first meeting, at which the main postulate of this organization was adopted - to promote the development of science and work to attract national attention to it. In the same year, the first science festival was held, where scientists from various fields gathered and exchanged research results with each other and with the public. Science became public. Lectures by leading researchers were always sold out. This gave rise to informational occasions that the press picked up with pleasure.

More than 70 British scientists have received Nobel Prizes. In 2016, they also received a prize in the field of physics with the wording “for the theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter.” It is natural that in the minds of people, science has been nationally assigned to the British. This is the first step towards understanding the history of the British scientists meme.

Crucial moment

When did British science cease to be associated with quality and lose some credibility? This is due to changes in the English education system. In the 70s-80s of the 20th century, educational institutions were reformed, and various colleges received a new status and names. Along with this, they began to have the right to conduct research. Even later, the government merged these former colleges, and 30 polytechnics appeared in the country. Their programs were similar to university ones, but it was impossible to get a diploma of higher education there. In 1992, they all acquired the status of universities, doubling the number of higher education institutions in England. The number of young scientists and researchers has become immeasurably greater, they began to fight for grants and funding.

With such a mass of works, attention was given to those that were more suitable “for the topic of the day”, had novelty and were beneficial to someone. In the 90s, the media were full of headlines about strange scientific research.

In The Guardian for 1993, you can find this article: "Cot death risk is lower among babies who do not sleep alone" ("The risk of death in the crib is less among children who do not sleep alone"). In The Independent, 1996: "Male fish are being 'feminised' by river pollution". In BBC September 1998: Passionate sex aids pregnancy.

It's all about money

To this day, the UK government, political associations and private organizations fund science very well. From the European Union alone, the amount of material support for British scientists was about $ 1.2 billion per year (however, the UK may lose this pleasant tradition with Brexit).

Appetizing crunchy pieces of paper in your wallet are in themselves a good incentive for any activity. And if this is also seasoned with the possibility of getting a high score in the citation index of scientific articles, then the scientist can no longer dream of anything else, except, perhaps, saving the world.

This is exactly what was called the reasons for the appearance of low-quality scientific articles in a recent study by British scientists.

The more citations of a scientific article in publications with a high impact factor (a numerical indicator of the importance of the journal), the “newer” the research, the higher the chances that this work will receive grants and material support from interested parties.

The researchers who created a mathematical model for the problem of "bad" articles also suggested ways to improve the situation. First of all, according to them, it is necessary to increase the requirements for statistical samples and procedures for processing the results. Some reputable journals have already begun to act in this direction.

Some studies are even commissioned by commercial companies. Once in the British press there was information about the new work of scientists, which concerned the common myth of the “rule-five-seconds”. This proverb says that a product picked up from the floor after five seconds is not considered contaminated with bacteria. Scientists said that this rule is observed, but not on all products. Later, the Daily Mail, where this article was published, explained that the "study" was sponsored by cleaning products manufacturers. Moreover, the text advised readers to change the “head” of the mop every three months to minimize the risk of infection with dangerous bacteria. When they tried to find the authors of the article, it turned out that behind the whole group is the name of only one person - an employee of the technology laboratory of the City University of Manchester, Cathy Les. Couldn't get in touch with her.

It is especially convenient to speculate in this way in the field of statistics. This science does not care what subject to take for study. Statistical analysis is quite easy to carry out, because it can be entrusted to students and the result is a term paper written according to all the rules of a scientific article.

Illiterate journalists

When scientists are directly asked why their work looks so stupid, they like to answer this way: journalists are to blame for everything. And you can't say they're wrong. This is the third factor in the appearance of the meme.

The Citizen (1950), "Scientists have found magic in color"

In the 19th century, England was the center of development not only of science, but also of journalism. At this time, representatives of various segments of the population showed a significant increase in interest in the press. Publishers and journalists focused on the working class, and by the middle of the century the English press began to become mass. There were even the first hints of "yellow" editions. For example, in the 1960s and 1970s, Vanity Fair weeklies were popular, with comic book-like pictures and a gossip section. And in 1874, the weekly "The World: a magazine for men and women" appeared, offering readers critical materials written by "gentlemen and scientists." Thus, the topic of science, popular due to an unprecedented number of achievements and discoveries, began to be covered in low-quality publications.

The results of many studies and in our time are often misunderstood and interpreted. In addition, journalists do not disdain “yellow” headlines and materials in pursuit of traffic.

On the net you can find such text, for example: “In the far corner of the universe, a planet was found where precious stones literally fall from the sky, according to a study by a group of astrophysicists from the University of Warwick (UK).” In fact, the essence of the news was that astronomers using the Kepler telescope found a planet that may contain clouds of the mineral corundum. Its varieties are ruby ​​and sapphire.

The meme owes its stability to the following reasons: the important role of Great Britain in the development of science; educational reforms of the last century; a large proportion of English scientific publications in the total mass; features of the grant policy in the country, as well as orders from commercial organizations; distortion of research results due to a lack of understanding by journalists.

So far, British scientists can't escape the stereotypical joke. And we just have to wait for the next funny headlines.

The design used a portrait of the British scientist Isaac Newton by Gottfried Kneller.

"British scientists have found that miniskirts prolong women's lives." "British researchers have proven that sleeping on the left side helps you fall asleep faster and better." "Scientists have found out 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 last study.

Such messages are weekly in the news feeds. Scientists from the UK write so many scientific articles on such different, and sometimes large-scale topics, that the expression "British scientists" has already become a meme and a synonym for crazy researchers who produce 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 truth is in this joke, and how much is fiction?

British scientists are the smartest in the world. This became known in 2004 during one study. It showed that the UK is only second only to 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 are still more productive than their colleagues. You can see the statistics. But if you do not follow the link for the numbers, then you will miss the interesting thought of the newspaper 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 who are ready to work for the idea. Reminds no one?

So British scientists do write a lot of papers and create a lot of things. But why has their activity always been so prominent in the world? There are several reasons.

First, it happened historically.

English monks, like any monks of medieval Europe, accumulated knowledge in manuscripts, until Oxford and Cambridge universities were founded in the 12th-13th centuries - the first universities in the world and still operating universities. Later, England contributed to a 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, giving 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 degree of the nation's attention to science. Scientists began to give open lectures for ordinary citizens, and popular science magazines appeared on newsstands. Over time, journalists began to write a lot about science. They were not afraid of sensitive 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 caused the most powerful flow of information that fell upon ordinary people. In order 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 not strongly interested in this topic, - says Alexandra Borisova, ex-head of the TASS scientific and educational project "Attic", visiting researcher of scientific communications at the University of Rhine-Waal, co-founder of the Association on communications in the field of education and science (AKSON). - So, the British media are interested. First of all, the BBC (BBC), which exists on a special tax and is not obliged to think about earnings, produces scientific news, films, programs, and even magazines. Most newspapers have a "Science" tab right on the front page. For example, in tabloids The Daily Mail and The Daily Telegraph. And it's not about science politics or astrology, it's the truth about science. There is objectively a lot of scientific information, so strange things also get into it.

By the way, the statistics on this issue are also on the alert: 71 percent of Britons surveyed think that the media make a sensation out of scientific discoveries. What the Russians think is unknown. On the other hand, 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, the funniest and the absurd, rewrite them and publish them on their own. They do not have the task of creating a general picture of the world, they just need to entertain the people. And so there are hypertrophied strange stories.

The third reason for the existence of the phenomenon of "British scientists" was loudly announced by one of the scientific journals of Great Britain at a special conference four years ago. It turned out that some scientific articles are of poor quality, while others are completely falsified.

To understand why this is so, the British Dr. Andrew Higginson (Andrew D. Higginson) and Professor Marcus Munafo (Marcus R. Munafo) conducted their own scientific investigation. They suggested that scientists, as well as representatives of other professions, are driven by material incentives - salaries and grants. Then the researchers took the requirements of the grant committees and, using a mathematical model, calculated the most profitable path that an aspiring scientist could take. And they found that they were given points for the novelty of the work, thereby encouraging not the depth of research and immersion in one topic, but the discovery of ever new effects and patterns. To be more precise, the grant givers hardly wanted such an outcome, but in the end they got it.

Higginson and Munafo think there is still room for change if grant requirements are tightened up. By the way, the researchers only talked about the biomedical field of science, because in physics and genomics (the science of genes) things are better.

There is a fourth possible reason for the existence of the phenomenon: British scientists do what they want. This does not mean that they go to their own devices for the sake of satisfying their curiosity. This means that they have comfortable working conditions: modern equipment, reagents, students and graduate students who do not suffer from a lack of money. Therefore, they can research faster and take on new topics. Even if at first glance, and trifling.

When you skim through the news about the next achievements of British scientists, you don’t understand why it was worth studying? Some look for correlations (statistical connections) in seemingly 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 certain melodies out of our heads. And sometimes scientists manage to come to amazing conclusions that "a man differs from a woman only by sex." The third conditional group of researchers likes to do completely useless work, finding out the reasons for the optimism of pigs or the strength of the psyche of pioneers.

Before tabooing the results of British scientists and scrolling the news feed further, 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 the text about why some songs are attached to people more than others. This scientific news, like almost any other, is made on the basis of an article. An article on obsessive melodies was written with colleagues by research psychologist Kelly Jakubowski, a blonde with a wide smile from Goldsmiths University London. The girl determined that a catchy song should be upbeat and rhythmic, not too simple or too complex. Such music usually goes well with walking at an average pace or jogging. You ask: what, it was not clear before? Yes and no.

The fact is that we are constantly trying to predict the outcome of an event and betting on one of its outcomes. When the outcome is clear, we say, "I knew it! It was obvious." In fact, this may not be true. This psychological trick is also called the hindsight fallacy. You've probably experienced this when you took a test like "Are you an introvert or an extrovert?", cheered for the football team, or gossiped in the kitchen or chatting 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 study was carried out quite qualitatively, - Elena Bakhtina, a graduate of the Faculty of Psychology at St. Petersburg State University, an individual consultant, comments on the work of British scientists. - It has one good idea: the song must evoke a personal association in order to be popular. This has been proven in literature and cinema a long time ago, but if the idea has not been put forward before in music, researchers can become innovators, and research can have value.

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. Suffice it to recall the "Recommendations" button in the "VKontakte" playlist or music from Last.fm.

The headline "British scientists: Scouts and pioneers have a stronger psyche" brings a smile. A further explanation that these people in adulthood have a more stable psyche than peers who did not join public organizations clarifies the situation, but the smile does not leave their faces. Professor Rich Mitchell of the University of Glasgow and colleagues analyzed data on the lives of a thousand people born in 1958 in the UK. These numbers and the details of the study completely change the picture of the job, although, of course, the totals are not that great: the difference in disease risk between scouts and non-scouts is only 18 percent.

What gives us such a seemingly useless study? 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 - the impact factor. This is a number, and it is obtained by dividing the number of citations of articles in this journal in other places by the number of articles in this 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 status journal Nature- almost 40). If a person is accommodated in a two-star hotel or even in a hostel, he most likely cannot pay for expensive apartments. If a scientist does not publish an article in a high-ranking journal, he lacks depth, novelty, research scope, or something else.

Professor Lisa Collins of Lincoln University and 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 remain cheerful under any circumstances. . The study included only 36 test subjects, and its results still need to be refined and combined with other experimental criteria. In addition, only pigs took part in it. Thus, sometimes the impact factor of a journal tells even people who are far from science how valuable 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, then it also does not exceed four. It's all about the topics 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 on the body. Robert Style (Robert W. Style) from the University of Oxford with other researchers proposed to change the shape of the toilet and use coatings that will not allow splashes. For example, a thin layer of ethanol and silicone paste. The problem was not solved, but the amount of spray was noticeably reduced. The toilet theme is funny and drastically reduces the public's trust in scientists, but the study itself was carried out correctly, and if you think about it, there are a lot of things that are being improved every year, it's just that sometimes we don't notice it.

If far from all research is stupid and useless, then why do "British scientists" exist? Researchers and communications experts interviewed by Life agree that our attitude to news largely depends on how the media presents it. They can make a loud headline and weighted text, or they can pull out the main thing from 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, donors and working conditions leave their mark on scientific work. But the most important thing is that not only British scientists do strange at first glance research, but journalists 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 it everywhere, and it's even relatively normal, - Alexandra Borisova is convinced. - In any business there are leaders and outsiders, it is important to keep the proportion. In Russian institutes, sometimes they also do things of little use, and the fact that they do not sound funny (“20 people masturbated in a tomograph”), but smart (“Coordination polyhedron of a metal in trifluoroacetates”) only says that this is a difficult to interpret field of research.

Professor Munafo, who has scanned career scientists, is of the same opinion. He believes that 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 careers depend on publishing only the most exciting results.

Then, in the 19th century, not only Great Britain called on scientists and journalists to tell the public about science. America did the same by creating the powerful Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Now, not only the UK receives the Ig Nobel Prize for achievements that make you first laugh, and then think. Finally, not only the UK has its own press services in universities and institutes that 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, communication departments were opened at universities, after the reform of the Russian Academy of Sciences, press secretaries appeared at the institutes, 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 in science communication (online education) and the first specialized master's program at ITMO University, the Open Science press release aggregator. The difficulty is that we have to face all the challenges at once, while the same British communicators went through them gradually.

The UK has 64.7 million people and 1.2 million scientists. The population of Russia is 143.5 million people, and scientists - about 750 thousand. The difference is many 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 growth in the number of scientific news is normal. And if, in the course 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, - sums up Alexandra Borisova.

Now that we know how much of that joke about British scientists is true and how much is false, attitudes are starting to change. We all want to do what we love, get enough money, sometimes we face failures. But we are trying to make the world a better place, as the British and any other scientists do. And the study of frog levitation or the psyche of pioneers may suddenly become necessary for humanity. And no one knows when and at what moment.