The Notes

This page is read only. You can view the source, but not change it. Ask your administrator if you think this is wrong.
====== List of Funny Research Papers ======
Do you want to get better at pretending to be doing work? Here is your chance. 

===== The BMJ =====
The BMJ is a journal with impact factor of 23.562 in 2017. They do a pretty decent Christmas specials which contain funny journal articles. Here are some of the selections of their interesting research: 
  * [[https://www.bmj.com/content/319/7225/1596| Christmas 1999: Magnetic resonance imaging of male and female genitals during coitus and female sexual arousal]] 
  * [[https://www.bmj.com/content/327/7429/1459| Christmas 2003: Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma related to gravitational challenge: systematic review of randomised controlled trials]]
  * [[https://www.bmj.com/content/331/7531/1498| Christmas 2005: The case of the disappearing teaspoons: longitudinal cohort study of the displacement of teaspoons in an Australian research institute]]
  * [[https://www.bmj.com/content/331/7531/1505| Christmas 2005: Harry Potter casts a spell on accident prone children]]
  * [[https://www.bmj.com/content/335/7633/1299| Christmas 2007: Origins of magic: review of genetic and epigenetic effects]]
  * [[https://www.bmj.com/content/347/bmj.f7255| Christmas 2013: Were James Bond’s drinks shaken because of alcohol induced tremor?]]
  * [[https://www.bmj.com/content/347/bmj.f7198| Christmas 2013: The survival time of chocolates on hospital wards: covert observational study]]
  * [[https://www.bmj.com/content/349/bmj.g7262| Christmas 2014: An exploration of the basis for patient complaints about the oldness of magazines in practice waiting rooms: cohort study]]
  * [[https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k5033| Christmas 2018: Is it time to start using the emoji in biomedical literature?]]

Non-Christmas entries: 
  * [[https://casereports.bmj.com/content/11/1/bcr-2018-227468 | December 2018: Prescribing lessons from an ocular chemical injury: Vitaros inadvertently dispensed instead of VitA-POS]]


===== Serious research that some people find funny =====
These researches are from random places, they are serious research. Unfortunately some people find them funny, I decided to include them in the list anyway. 
  * [[https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jpc.14309|Everything is awesome: Don't forget the Lego]] 
    * **Summary:** "Six paediatric health‐care professionals were recruited to swallow a Lego head. Previous gastrointestinal surgery, inability to ingest foreign objects and aversion to searching through faecal matter were all exclusion criteria. Pre‐ingestion bowel habit was standardised by the Stool Hardness and Transit (SHAT) score. Participants ingested a Lego head, and the time taken for the object to be found in the participants stool was recorded. The primary outcome was the Found and Retrieved Time (FART) score."
  * [[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165037899000625|Correlation between oral sex and a low incidence of preeclampsia: a role for soluble HLA in seminal fluid?
]] 
    * **Summary:** The present study shows that oral sex and swallowing sperm is correlated with a diminished occurrence of preeclampsia which fits in the existing idea that a paternal factor is involved in the occurrence of preeclampsia. Because pregnancy has many similarities with transplantation, we hypothesize that induction of allogeneic tolerance to the paternal HLA molecules of the fetus may be crucial. 
  * [[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1752928X17301634|Corrigendum to “Similar mechanisms of traumatic rectal injuries in patients who had anal sex with animals to those who were butt-fisted by human sexual partner”]]
    * **Summary:** "Dr. Sendler reports no conflict of interest with MUL, owns intellectual property rights to all of his data featuring paraphilias, and understands that his work examining unusual sexualities is admittedly controversial for some of his peers. The author is extremely grateful to the Editor-in-Chief, Dr. Payne-James, and the Editorial Board — for support and for allowing him to disseminate his scientific work through the Journal; He hopes to continue contributing in the future as Felnett's investigator, without any outstanding challenges to the character of his research."

===== SIGBOVIK =====
<blockquote>
SIGBOVIK is a yearly conference celebrating the inestimable research work of Harry Quasi-bovik Bovik. Since his research has been so variegated, the conference is traditionally a forum for discussion on many subjects, including: Inept Expert Systems, Deep Space Navigation, Science, Perplexity Theory, Thaughmaturgic Circle, Self-Adjusting Computation, Denotational Semantics of Pidgin and Creole, History Independence, Spatio-Temporal Clusters, High-Content Screening, Integer-Based Vulnerabilities, Natural Intelligence, Artificial Stupidity, Elbow Macaroni, Rasterized Love Triangles, Synergistic Hyperparadigmatism, Computational Archaeolinguistics, AJAX and Modal Type Theory, Operational Semantics of Chevy Tahoes, Hyper Driven Devices, and any other topic approved by the conference organizers. The Program Committee seeks submissions on the entire range of topics.
<cite>
http://sigbovik.org/
</cite>
</blockquote>

Sigbovik is a joke conference run by  School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University. They produce really funny and amazing research, for example:
  * [[http://tom7.org/mario/mario.pdf|The First Level of Super Mario Bros. is Easy with Lexicographic Orderings and Time Travel . . . after that it gets a little tricky.]]
    * {{youtube>xOCurBYI_gY}}
  * [[http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/twildenh/PowerPointTM/Paper.pdf|On The Turing Completeness of PowerPoint]]
    * {{youtube>uNjxe8ShM-8}}
  * [[http://tom7.org/abc/|Compiling C to printable x86, to make an executable research paper]]
    * {{youtube>LA_DrBwkiJA}}

===== A Sociological Study of the Fart =====
This is not really a research paper, but I didn't want to create a new page just for this. This is a Master's thesis written by someone from Central China Normal University. You can download the PDF from [[http://new.oversea.cnki.net/KCMS/detail/detail.aspx?dbcode=CMFD&dbname=CMFD2007&filename=2007112933.nh|China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI)]] or {{ :public:a_sociological_study_of_the_fart_高建伟.pdf |here}}. I am not a massive fan of the thesis, I think he could have explored the topic a bit further. He hasn't collected any data, it is more like a literature review / analysis for me. It is definitely not a MRes level work, in my opinion. I suppose there is this toilet etiquette thing. I find those people who tend to be more polite talk less about pooping and farting. I think it would have been great if he collected some data on how close you have to be before discussing bodily function, and perhaps look into if there is any age variation and regional variation. 



==== Abstract ====
In our daily life experience, fart is natural expression of the human body, belonging to the category of physiological phenomena. But at the same time, fart is supposed to be an uncivilized behavior and phenomena and fallen under the social taboo things. This thesis starts with the author’s related opinion that fart is not only a pure physiological phenomena but also a social phenomena, which gets some corresponding relationship with the social structure an social context that people are located. In other words, fart behavior and phenomena obviously embodies a kind of social existence, and then it gets its sociological meaning. Then, this thesis analyzes the social genetic process that how fart behavior and phenomena transfers from a kind of physiological phenomena to that of social taboo, and opens out the complicated mechanism among it, namely, from indistinctive human behavior to behavior more frequently happened among parts of the social members, then to the negative behavior in the moral judgment, and finally evolves a kind of social taboo. This thesis considers this genetic process comes from the erratic characteristics of the power exercise, i.e., duality, reliance and publicity. Then, it probes into the non- taboo fart behavior and phenomena, and considers that this phenomenon reflects the existence of the taboo, and it is also related with the erratic characteristics of the power exercise. The thesis finally analyzes the fart taboo’s future and fate, and points out that the fart taboo will probably returns to natural along with the new changes of the social structure and food no longer as the important character of the social difference.