Brain chemistry and scientific humor

For a few hours today, the sun was out. This was the first time I’ve seen the sun in at least a week. The Finnish fall can be incredibly and incessantly gray. I’m not necessarily complaining about the weather (maybe a little), but I was just struck today by how surprised I was to see the sun. Though I’m not 100% certain, I believe that sunlight (or lack thereof) indirectly affects brain chemistry. That’s likely part of the reason why our moods vary along with the weather. As I was consciously pondering the chemicals in my brain, it started to rain again. Oh well, it was still nice to be teased with a bit of sunlight.

Onto a more interesting topic: Science has a sense of humor! That’s right, science can do more than confuse the general public and provide a livelihood for nerds. It can also make us laugh. To support this claim, I refer you to the Ig Nobel prizes. These awards are given out annually to researchers that have done improbable research that “makes people laugh and then think”. I look forward to these every year because there is always some bit of research that is strange, perhaps pointless, yet nearly always interesting. I think my favorite piece of research among this year’s winners is the peace prize. Someone invented a device that creates a high-pitched, annoying noise which is audible to teenagers, but not adults. Apparently, shop-owners can use it to drive away loitering, bored teens. I also like the work on dung beetle feeding preferences; that research must have been tough on the nose. There have been some classic Ig Nobel prizes in the past too. My all time favorite was a study that found a link between country music and suicide rates, though a study which found a particular fish species that communicates by farting is a close runner-up. Of course, after you finish chuckling about these awards, you have to wonder why people did this research. I would imagine that much of this work was accidental. For example, if recall correctly, the fish-farting study originated when aquarium workers heard strange noises when they turned the lights off. However, much of this work is obviously planned. People set out to answer these improbable questions (e.g. how many pictures you must take to ensure no one in a group is blinking). I think that humans are naturally curious and we want to know how everything works. Even if we aren’t curious about some particular topic (e.g. why spaghetti breaks into more than two pieces) we expect that someone else is. Consequently, when people come to academics with the most absurd questions (e.g. do woodpeckers get headaches?) they still expect some kind of answer...and ‘no one knows’ is never a satisfying answer.