 Welcome. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Jeff Hermes. I work over at the Berkman Center at the Digital Media Law Project. In addition to reminding you of a couple of things, first of all, this event is being webcast and recorded. And second of all, our friends from the Harvard Cooper at the back selling books, more on the books soon. It is my solemn duty today to introduce to you Mark Abrams. Mirror words tend to fail when applied to Mark. This is a person I first met 15 years ago as a first year attorney. If that's true, use some gestures. Mirror words tend to fail when applied to Mark. As I said, this is a person I first met way back. There we go. As a first year attorney out of Harvard Law School, when after being kidnapped by two senior partners at my firm, it was dragged to Sanders Theater where I was forced out in front of a standing room only crowd carrying a sign reading, if you have been injured by cosmic background radiation, you may have legal rights. It is my understanding that this is not an uncommon introduction to Mark and his world. The Washington Post has called Mark the nation's guru of academic grunge. The Journal of the American Medical Association has called him the puck of science. He has been called many other things as well. Mark is the editor and co-founder of the Science Humor Magazine. Analysts of improbable research-free copies of which are also on the back table. And it's associated website and internet TV series. He writes about research that makes people laugh and then makes them think. Many of us know Mark Best as the father and master of ceremonies at the annual Ig Nobel Prizes. At a gala ceremony held each autumn here on the Harvard campus at Harvard Sanders Theater, real Ig Nobel Prize winners hand out the Ig Nobel Prizes to, well, let's call them achievements in various fields of human endeavor that make people laugh and then make them think. Mark himself has written 16 librettos for many operas which have been performed during the Ig Nobel ceremonies. They are also broadcast on national public radio and the internet. However, if you are on the Harvard campus, there really is no excuse for not attending. Kidnapping is not required. Mark is also the author of the books The Man Who Cloned Himself, Why Chickens Prefer Beautiful Humans and the Ig Nobel Prizes. Of Mark's latest book, This Is Improbable, Backtable. Terry Jones of Monty Python fame has said, after reading this hilarious book, you'll never look at scientists in the same way again. There is much more I could say. I urge you all to ask Mark about his secret life as a manga character. But for now, please welcome Mark Avers. It was a wonderfully long introduction. Thank you. You couldn't ask for anything lengthier. This is, I believe, an unusual event for everybody here. This is going to be looking at a bunch of published studies by scientists and other researchers about many different topics. These are things that I've written about. I write a column for the Guardian newspaper in England every week. These are things I wrote about there and also in the new book, which has just come out, the book called This Is Improbable. Most people in the world never get to see the actual studies that they might hear about or see mentioned in a sentence somewhere in a newspaper. These are the actual studies. People spend a lot of time on these. We're going to treat them as dramatic literature. We have, what, 10, 12, 15 different people here from different fields who have each been very generous and kind in allowing us to dragoon them here. Each of them arrived, and we showed them a stack of these studies and said, pick one, pick whichever one is most interesting to you, and then pick two minutes' worth of it. And they are going to read to you their selection of two minutes' worth of a study they have never seen before. I'm going to begin by just naming each of them so they know the order in which they'll be speaking. For the moment, could you just, when I read your name, stand up and just take a bow? So we know you're here for one thing. Gus Rancatori will be our first speaker. Then Richard Bagguley is sort of a stand. Then Naomi Stephen. Jeff Hermes. Mary Carmichael was going to be with us, but she has a newborn, as in about two weeks ago, who is having not the best day, so Mary couldn't make it today. Molly Saunter. Ryan Budisch. Judith Donath. Kendra Albert. Alicia Soloneederman. Matthew Battles. Adam Holland. Jonathan Zittrain. Is there any reader whose name I've left out? If anybody else wants to read, sorry, we're full up for the moment. The readers are going to come up. We're going to help them with the two minutes. We want things to move quickly. It's going to be two minutes and then questions for each. For the two-minute part, so they don't have to think about the time, we have two kind volunteers who will help with the timing. We have a timer and a keeper of the bell. The timer, in fact it will work better if you can switch seats here. It's two minutes for each reading. Each person is going to begin by telling you in a sentence who they are and then reading the title and then they begin. Once they begin, the timekeeper will begin paying attention to the time. After 30 seconds, timekeeper, please indicate by gesture to the keeper of the bell that the first period has passed. When you get that first indication, ring the bell once. After another 30 seconds, please indicate twice. Ring the bell twice. After a third 30 seconds, three times. And after two minutes have gone by, please indicate. And then just keep ringing the bell until the person stops talking. Thank you. Speakers, that's how the time will go. Again, we are going to have two minutes begin by introducing yourself in a sentence, read the title, and then do your dramatic reading. First, please welcome Gus Rancatori. Hello. My name is Gus Rancatori. I own Toscanini's Ice Cream in Central Square, Cambridge, closer to the other school. Did you bring it up for everyone? I would have. I got lucky, I got a piece that I actually think is interesting. May I remind the speakers, don't describe it, don't introduce it, introduce yourself, read the title, and then do the dramatic reading. It's important, Mark. Race differences in selection of cheese color. And it's by Beth Scanlon of Central Connecticut State University, and it appeared in Perceptual and Motor Skills. Preferences for specific foods and colors vary greatly in humans. There are many explanations to account for this variation, but no one facet has been pinpointed as major. It has been suggested that family experience, the color of an item, and aesthetics all play a part in accounting for the variation of food and color preference. This study investigated color preference in food as related to the race of individuals. White and yellow cheese was presented to 155 individuals from three ethnic groups. In group one were 30 black individuals. In group two, 197 white persons, and in group three, 28 people from various other ethnic backgrounds, including mostly Hispanics. The participants ranged in age from 11 to 72 years. A controlled group of 20 persons was also tested to ensure equivalence of the taste of the two colors of American cheese. In a supermarket, a display table was set with two plates of American cheese, one yellow, one white. As the individuals selected a piece of cheese, the grouping and the color of the cheese were recorded. The control subjects were blindfolded and asked to sample both types of American cheese. They were to identify which was yellow American cheese and which was white. Their responses were recorded. The frequencies for color preference were as follows. Nine black individuals chose white, and 21 chose yellow cheese. 105 white participants chose white cheese. And while 92 chose yellow, of the subjects from other ethnic groups, nine preferred white and 19 preferred yellow cheese. The association between types of individual and choice of cheese for these groups was statistically significant according to this piece of research. The data indicates that the preferences for one of the two colors of American cheese are dissimilar for different races of respondents. The data from the blindfolded control group established that the variation is not based on differences in flavor. Thank you. Now we're going to take two questions. Because we have so many speakers, we're going to limit it to a maximum of two questions. The rule on questions is ask anything you like. Be very aware. The person you are asking knows nothing more about this than you do. For the person answering the questions, answer however you like. The only rule is no bullshitting. If you don't know something, it's okay to say that. If you want to interpret it or speculate, that's fine. Just explain that's what you're doing. Now we'll take two questions. I'm going to start with the back of the room, which is where I always sat. Yes? Do you know what our little green man from Mars prefer moldy cheese? I don't know. Yes? Is there a similar differences in the color selection of ice cream? Not in color selection, but in many other issues. Gus Rancatori. Thank you. Our next speaker is Richard Bagguley. Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Richard, and I write about technology for a living. This means that I look at some of the best ideas that human beings have. Write about technology means that you look at some of the best ideas that human beings have and some of the worst. This one I'm not quite sure where it fits on that scale. We're talking here about United States pattern 3,811,643. It's by a gentleman called Gustano A. Pizzo of New York, and the title is Anti-Hijacking System for Aircraft. This invention relates to an anti-crime devices, and in particular, to the construction of an aircraft, which is, as its purpose, to foil hijackers by safely removing them from the aircraft in flight. In general, the aircraft is constructed with a fore and aft partition, which can be raised in an area after the pilot's cabin, to isolate the hijacker in the area of the floor on which it is constructed a pair of pivotal sections, which are adapted to be dropped for lowering the hijacker into a releasable capsule, to which a parachute is attached. Bombay doors are provided in the belly of the plane for ejection of the capsule from the aircraft. Various modifications of the invention may be affected by a person's skill in the art without departing from the scope and principle. I think that basically means he hasn't quite figured it out, and you've got to try and do it yourself. In particular, the pilot being notified on the attempted hijacking by a stewardess raises the partition to isolate the perpetrator in one of the port or starboard zones. The stewardess, sorry, the separated person from the others on the airplane, including the stewardess, is then dropped into one of the openings of one of the capsules at which point the bombay doors are opened and the capsule, with its human cargo, is parachuted safely to Earth. I think that's about it. Questions? Did you notice, if you read further, why the writer is so concerned about the safety of ejecting the hijackers, why they can't just be ejected sans-parachute? I would suspect that possibly may be legal issues, but people in this room who are better qualified to answer that one than me. Liability. Do you think that this research perhaps informed the design of the anti-hulk and loki cell on the helicarrier in the Avengers? That's a good question. It's quite possible. Of course, one thing you do have to bear in mind is that with a patent, you don't actually have to make it work to get the patent. So I suspect this person probably never actually tried this. He just kind of got the patent and then figured, we're done. Richard Bagguley. Our next speaker is Naomi Stephen. Hi, I'm Naomi Stephen. I've worked at Harvard as a teacher and administrator for many years, and the piece that I chose is entitled Hot Potato Voice in Peritonsolitis. Colin, a misnomer. It was published in the Journal of Voice in 2006. Voice changes are a well-recognized symptom in patients suffering from peritonsolitis, whether due to abscess, Quincy, or peritonsula cellulites. The voice is said to be thick and muffled and is described as Hot Potato Voice because it is believed to resemble the voice of someone with a hot potato in his or her mouth. There have been very few studies analyzing the profile and characteristics of the voice changes in tonsolitis or peritonsolitis and none that have compared these changes with those that occur with a hot potato in the oral cavity. Voice is modified from the vocal fold generator by the resonating characteristics of the vocal tract, comprising the pharynx, oral cavity, and nasal tract. The shape of the vocal tract is determined by movement of the articulators, especially the mandible, tongue, lips, and pharyngeal wall. The opening of the velo pharyngeal valve wall will include the nasal tract in the resonator system. Alteration in the shape of the vocal tract modifies its sound, transfer characteristics such that many frequencies will be attenuated and only a few are allowed to pass through relatively unhindered. Those frequencies that do pass through at a high amplitude are termed formant frequencies and characterize the sound that is produced. I'm skipping forward. We undertook to analyze the voice changes in peritonsolitis in terms of alteration in formant frequencies. We also wished to compare these changes with those of a true hot potato voice, where a hot potato is placed in the oral cavity. Based on previous work, the resonance of the vocal tract would be expected to alter in peritonsolitis due to a failure of the velo pharyngeal valve, but we surmised there would be a differing change in the resonance characteristics of the vocal tract with a true hot potato voice. Before we take the questions, I'd like to make a slight alteration. Many people are watching today on the webcast. Of course, there are people here. The people here are eating lunch. I don't know about any of you watching live. We should give some sense of this for people who are watching on the internet. I wonder if I could ask the two gentlemen in the back who are standing eating food. Would you mind coming up? Bring your food. And if you wouldn't mind standing right directly behind the speaker. At a safe distance, although close enough to be seen, right? That's fine. If you want to get more food, that's fine. If anyone would like to join them... Careful of the back, okay? If anyone would like to join them, please do. Now, questions, please. Raise your arm. And wait for the microphone to get there, so the people eating lunch at home can hear you. Will it matter if the hot potato is baked or fried? I really don't know. Having put both in my mouth when they were too hot to speak, I'm guessing no. I think it would be temperature rather than means of cooking, but I couldn't answer that definitively. Next question. I would also wonder if this is impacted by the type of potato based on its size or its composition. Again, I'm not... It's a potato, an entire potato. I imagine if the potato were of a type that's more floury, like a baking potato, that might affect vocal resonance, but again, I'm not entirely sure. Our next speaker is Jeff Herbie's. You've all heard from me before, so I'll skip the introduction. The effects of pre-existing inappropriate highlighting on reading comprehension. Text highlighting is a common study strategy among college students. Brennan Winograd Bridge and Hebert 1986 found that underlining or highlighting was used as the most common study strategy among college students. Students highlight by marking, usually in yellow, parts of the text they think are important. Although much research has been conducted on the benefits of highlighting, no formal research has been conducted on the effects of pre-existing inappropriate highlighting. The topic of textbook highlighting is important because of its popularity among students ranging from grade school to college. If students are going to use highlighting as a study technique, then it is imperative for both the student and the instructor to be aware of the positive and negative effects of using such a technique. The present research examines both pre-existing appropriate highlighting and pre-existing inappropriate highlighting. We predicted that pre-existing inappropriate highlighting would interfere with the encoding and retrieval of relevant material. This would be shown by lower scores on a comprehension test for those in an inappropriate highlighting condition compared to a no highlighting condition. The results suggest that inappropriate highlighting results in lower reading comprehension and that this effect is still found even with a prior warning about the negative effects of inappropriate highlighting. It does not appear that readers can simply choose to ignore poor highlighting. Although the results of the current study were significant, several limitations must be noted. First, the majority of the participants were given extra credit to participate in the experiment. So they may not have been a representative sample of college students. Secondly, the first experiment was conducted during a summer session. College summer classes may be attended by students who differ in motivation, experience, and grades from students in other sessions. The fact that the effect was found in both experiments suggests that it was not due to these individual differences. As a result of our research, we have several suggestions for college students, instructors, and bookstores. First, college students who... No. Questions? Do you think these results would hold up if you were looking at grad students or law students or groups other than college students? All I can say on that point, Ryan, is that when I was in law school, I did my best to supply heavily highlighted books for research material to other law students, and with any luck the future results in these experiments will improve as a result. How are you defining appropriate versus inappropriate highlighting? Well, my own take on this question. I prefer side to side rather than up and down. The people who block off the text and then just fill in, I think, really aren't trying. Thank you. Thank you. For those of you who are going to speak, let me say, if you would like to bring food up here and eat while you're speaking, that's fine. Our next speaker is Molly Saunter. Hi. My name is Molly Saunter. I'm a grad from another school up the road. And this is bees in court history of the celebrated case of peach udder versus beekeeper udder, and it appeared in the Rocky Mountain Bee Journal, February 15th, 1901. Another witness, Mrs. W. H. Utter, the wife of the plaintiff, testified that the bees would alight on the fruit and then with their horns make holes in the peaches. She stated that there were eight holes in one peach she examined, and that three bees were on it, and that after they left, there were three more holes, or 11 in all. Mr. Bacon, one of our attorneys in his cross-examination got at the facts and something of this way. You say, Mrs. Utter, that there were three holes after three bees had visited that peach. Yes. You say that the bees made these holes with their horns. Yes, sir. Two horns located on the top of their head. Two prongs like this, he said, putting his fingers on top of his head. Well, yes. And they took these two horns and dug them right down into the peach, did they? Yes. Well now, Mrs. Utter, will you tell the jury how three bees, each with two horns, could make only three holes? Shouldn't there have been six holes? Well, they took two horns and put them together and then poked them and said, Mr. Bacon, with a wise look. And at this, there was a brorious laughter. When the jury and the audience had subsided, Mr. Bacon continued, you are sure these bees made these holes with their horns? Yes. Well, don't you know that those are antennae or feelers? Several had talked about the so-called horns and how bees make holes with the horns. Some of the witnesses told how bees ran their bills down into the peach, meaning, of course, the tongue. But the bill theory was reasonable and the rest of the testimony was then continued to the jaws, which it was referred, were powerful enough to puncture the skin of peaches. It was also claimed that the juice run out of the punctured peaches down onto the limbs, causing the destruction of the trees. Peach Utter claimed these damages upon these grounds, but evidence was given in a rebuttal to say that the two witnesses showing that a previous depredation of the bees would not cause the damage to the trees. Do you have any food to fortify yourself before you take questions? No, I'm good. Questions? Anybody have questions about bees? There's an arm raised there. Jeff? Okay. So, we have bees with two horns making one hole. That's the claim. That's the claim here. Now, isn't it possible that a bee sufficiently motivated might lean to the side and make a hole using one horn? So, I think the argument in the article is that bees do not have horns. So, the bee would have to be further than motivated to acquire horns, come back, and then do the whole side horn peach dance thing. Next question, final question. Yeah, Kendra. Did the paper investigate the effect of the lack of bee horns on other fruit than peaches? It was like, it's a conflict between brothers. There's peach udder, the guy who has peaches, and then there's beekeeper udder, the guy who has bees, and so there's a familial conflict, and if peaches udder had had other fruits beyond peaches, I assume that this would also come to play in the court case. But, he just had peaches. So... Always on this. Our next speaker is Ryan Budisch. Excuse me, do you guys have enough to eat? My name is Ryan Budisch, and I'm a fellow at the Berkman Center, and I apologize in advance for picking this topic in a lunch setting. This is entitled Vomiting in Wild Bonnet McCocks. Researchers have given little consideration to vomiting in non-human primates. We have found only two studies that mention vomiting as a species typical behavior for non-human primates. Scientists generally consider vomiting to serve as a protective function by ejecting toxins from the body. However, in humans, a wide variety of stimuli can induce vomiting, including illness, movement, allergies, headaches, head injuries, surgery, pregnancy, radiation, heat exhaustion, altitude sickness, and space travel. Therefore, it is a theoretically complex behavior that to date lacks a comprehensive explanation. In Wild Bonnet McCocks, we observe the amount of vomit in the amount re-ingested, the color and consistency of the vomit when visible, and identities of any individuals that showed interest in the vomit, and whether the individual has seen the vomit or has seen the vomit or has seen the vomit or has seen the vomit or has seen the vomit or has seen the vomit and whether the individuals ate some of it. We recorded 163 acts of vomiting, 102 events in the temple group, 50 in the forest group, and 11 from individuals in neighboring forest groups. Of the 163 events, 12 occurred when the individual that vomited was the focal individual, two occurred during scan sampling, and the remaining events were ad libidum data collected while focaling other individuals or between scans. We easily recognize vomiting. The... Questions? Raise your arm, please. Oh, okay. So, I don't know if you have ever noticed as a scientist the tendency of dogs to eat their vomit after they actually vomit. So, this seems to contradict the hypothesis that actually vomiting is a device for self-protection of the body. And do you see that kind of tendency in humans, and how can you explain it? I don't know about humans, but this study actually goes on to address that question, and the conclusion that they reach is that vomiting may indeed be an initial response to try to read the body of toxins, but that it may be over-inclusive. And so, in the cases where it's sort of a hair trigger response, and so the monkeys would vomit, and then they'd realize, well, actually there were no toxins and that was okay, and then they would go back and reinjust it. So, yeah. So, I assume that it could be similar with humans. Was that a satisfactory answer to your question? No, it was okay. Final question? Yeah, right here. Is there any evidence that mates are selected on the basis of their ability or proficiency to vomit? So, for example, there's a principle survival of the best vomitor. Well, I'm not sure I totally got that question. It seems like we're coming up with explanations, maybe an evolutionary explanation for this capacity to vomit. Is there any evidence from your study that maybe mates are selected on the basis of their capacity to vomit? Or proficiency? I would have to assume, and this is totally speculation on my part, that like if you were like a small little infant macaque monkey and like you ate like a bunch of really poisonous berries and died, that would probably have an impact on your ability to reproduce. Brian Butish, our next speaker is Judith Donoth. His name, I think I just mangled. I'm sorry. Hello, I am Judith Donoth. I am a fellow here at the Harvard Berkman Center. This is all easier on the lunch. I'm going to read to you about scalp hair length, hair length in Florida theme parks and approximation of hair length in the United States of America. 10 hair length studies were conducted between January and May of 2001 at theme parks across Central Florida to obtain data on the percentage of persons in the United States with different lengths of scalp hair we went to four theme parks in Central Florida on different dates to Epcot three times on January 24th, March 14th, March 21st on February 6th and Magic Kingdom three times and MGM Studios on February 20th. Our objective was to observe and count persons with different lengths of hair. So moving on because there's actually quite a lot of data in here. Here we are for the very longest hair only four people all women were observed among the 24,300 persons with hair down to the bottom of the buttocks 0.0165% one woman who's observed at Epcot had here reaching several centimeters past her buttocks she was dressed in a skin tight costume as were two young men walking with her shortly after a Disney parade she had curly blonde hair and appeared to be in her mid to late 20s. This woman was most likely a Disney employee hired for her long hair because we observed her once before a Disney parade playing Rapunzel. We observed another woman on our second study at the Magic Kingdom on February 28th who also had hair down to the bottom of her buttocks we should probably get to the conclusion because you need to really get the summary of this. Variables affecting hair lengths are summarized along with the data on abnormally long hair from several sources by observing the hair of 24,300 adults in central Florida who have long hair length and have long hair length on specified dates from January through May of 2001 and estimating hair length relative to specific anatomical positions we conclude that about 13% of the US adult population currently has hair shoulder length or longer 2.4% of hair reaching to the bottom of their shoulder blades are longer about 0.3% of hair waist length are longer and only about 0.017 That's true. Do you think the researchers tried to pass off those trips on their expense reports? I think that they have actually made quite a career of that because they are a husband and wife who are comprised the Clarence Robbins technical consulting group so I believe they have probably they also returned later to estimate how much hoods and head coverings affected the quality of this research. So they are thorough. Is there any accounting for mullets in this study and does that affect moral decision making? For some reason they were particularly interested in here right around the buttocks which they repeat several times I think all those mullets just kind of passed them right by so but I believe they would probably be quite interested in returning to carry out that study especially if you were paying. Thank you. Our next speaker is Kendra Albert. I'm Kendra Albert I'm a fellow at the Berkman Center and I have been accused at times of being verbose. So I'm reading consequences of erudite, vernacular, utilized, irrespective of necessity problems with using long words needlessly by Daniel M. Oppenheimer. Most texts on writing style encourage authors to avoid overly complex words. However, most of us can likely recall having read papers either by colleagues or students in which the author appears to be deliberately using overly complex words. Experience suggests that the expert's advice contrasts with the prevailing wisdom on how to sound more intelligent as a writer. In fact, when 110 Stanford undergraduates were polled about their writing habits, most of them admitted that they had made their writing more complex in order to appear smarter. For example, when asked if you changed the words in an academic essay to make the essay sound more valid or intelligent by using complicated language, 86.4% of the sample admitted having done so. Nearly two-thirds answered yes to the question, when you write an essay, do you turn to the thesaurus to choose words that are more complex to give the impression that the content is more valid or intelligent? There are many plausible reasons that the use of million-dollar words would lead readers to believe the author is smart. Intelligence and large vocabularies are positively correlated, Spearman 1904. Therefore, by displaying a large vocabulary, one may be providing cues that he or she is intelligent as well. Secondly, writers are assumed to be conforming to the Greek in maximum manner, avoid obscurity of expression, Greece in 1975. If authors are believed to be writing simply as possible, but a text is nonetheless complex, a reader might believe that the ideas expressed in that text are also complex, defying all attempts to simplify the language. Further, individuals forced to struggle through a complex text might experience dissonance if they believe the ideas being conveyed are simple, Festinger 1957. Thus, individuals might be motivated to perceive a difficult text as being more worthwhile, thereby justifying the effect of processing. Questions? Of any length? Is there a correlation between being confused by the essay and the large number of big words being used at all? Did they talk about that? They... They did... Could you answer the phone and see if they have a question? They did attribute some of the the studies found that folks in fact thought the authors were less intelligent when they used bigger words. And they attributed some of this to the decrease in fluency. You don't understand what the author is saying, therefore you don't actually think that they're intelligent. I'm wondering if Mary Poppins was asked about her opinion in this article. I don't believe she was, but they used the thesaurus substitution as the primary means of increasing the complexity of the text, and I'm not sure supercalifragilist thexpialidocious appears in the thesaurus. Kendra Albert. Our next speaker is Alicia Soloneederman. So I'm Alicia Soloneederman. I'm a project coordinator here at Berkman Center. I may have chosen this because I may be wishing that I were more mobile at present, but my study is entitled Skipping and Hopping of Undergraduates Recollections of When and Why. Yeah. It is in the Perpetual and Motor Skills Journal of 1999. Walking is the default locomotor pattern for most humans in most situations, but the function of most other locomotor patterns is clear. A person runs if greater speed is required. A person jumps or leaps if going up. Down or across an obstacle or open space. But what is the function of skipping? A step up sequence performed on one leg, then the other in an alternating fashion. Cradies stated that usually by early and middle childhood, youngsters seek to learn and master various gate variations. Some are simply fun to do. Skipping is an example. At times, factors other than maturation and learning influence whether a child will exhibit galloping or skipping. I will fast forward ahead to the purpose of this study. I'll skip the literature review. But the purpose of this study was to compare the reasons why young adults skip and hop to identify its unique characteristics. Skipping was contrasted with hopping. Hopping was chosen as the other locomotor pattern because its relatively low frequency of use for adults was assumed to be about the same in skipping. And this low frequency was assumed to help the participants clearly identify the last time they used the pattern and to consider why they did. I will then fast forward to the conclusions. You can answer this very important question. An important assumption in this study was that skipping, the comparative locomotor skill, was used by young adults about as frequently as skipping. The data supported this assumption, showing no significant differences in the time frames of the participants last remembered about of skipping or hopping. However, significantly more participants did not remember the last time they hopped than the last time they skipped. The key question posed in this study was why do people skip? The top four categories of reasons for each skill and each sex are given. The first question was related to affect with the next most common response set of responses indicating the reason was unknown or they did not remember ever having skipped. The framing of this paper seems odd because the phrase is a hop, skip, and a jump. Why was there some anti-jumping bias in the research framework? You know, I can only speculate. The paper does say that a person jumps or leaps if going up, down or across an obstacle or open space. So perhaps the authors felt that it was sufficiently explained already why a person would jump. It's hopping and skipping that are more mysterious. Final question? You know if the Ministry of Silly Walks was satisfied with the results of this study? You know, I haven't heard any reports. I think it might have been a bit too academic I could say if I were to speculate. I'm not sure they were pleased. Alicia Solo-Niederman. And we have just three speakers left and some food in the back. So if you want some more food, grab it now John Lin, or anybody else. And that also again applies to any of the remaining three speakers. Our next speaker is Matthew Battles. Hot Potato. Anyone watching on the web if you're close enough to get over here before we finish, come on over. Thank you, Mark. Thank you, Jeff. Gentlemen. My name is Matthew Battles. I'm with MetaLab at Harvard and I'm a fellow at the Berkman Center and I'm reading a paper on the psychological response to unknown proper names. The procedure was as follows. The observer sat with eyes closed and was given a warning signal before the name was presented. The stimuli were given auditorily. The observer was informed of the general nature of the experiment and was told not to construct a visual image, but if one came to describe it as fully as possible. It was soon discovered, however, that some observers had no habitual visual imagery and we therefore repeated the series with the instruction to report what the person name must look like. We hoped by the second instruction to stimulate visual imagery in those observers with whom it was not habitual. This attempt was on the whole a failure. If we take the 500 reports as a whole, the results are negative. There is no constant or uniform tendency among these observers either to imagine a similar type of individual for the same name or to furnish a similar type of name for the same picture. Individual differences among observers are great. In the nonsense series, one observer failed completely. He was able only to suggest a nationality to which the name might belong and he did not complete the series. Of those remaining, five depended mainly upon auditory association. Thus the name Dotho suggested Delfos, Dahl, Doddering and Daudi, a friend and the images were a Greek man, a Dahl like girl, an old woman and a memory image of a woman. The two remaining observers tended to furnish images corresponding with the sound although they were not consistent. One of them had as an image for Dotho, a heavily built strong Greek, very jolly and said in his introspective report, it seems as if the sounds all and oh being generous sounds should go with broad shoulders and perhaps good nature. In only five cases was there anything like agreement among all observers as to sex or other characteristics. Rup Zoyat was reported as a young man by all observers. Bopum was said to be tall, fat or large by six observers. Five thought Zetha must be a girl, six reported Gribb is a small man, and five reported Kurt Faumich as a strong or big man. For the remainder, there was disagreement. It seems then that the physiognomy of a proper name is at best but one and that not an important factor out of many which determine what personality shall be attached to the name. We know that Dickens came to Chuzzlewit through Swizzle in, Swizzleback, Swizzlewag, Chuzzletoe, Chuzzleboy, Chubblewig and Chuzzlewig. Could you repeat the question so it gets on? Sure. The best name found in the study, well I would have to go with actually the name of the author of the study which was G. English. How did they determine that the names were unfamiliar to the people taking the study? Yeah, that's a good question. There was mention of a control group which consisted of the names of distinguished psychologists. So, I think there was probably confusion all around. Matthew Bathol is the speaker of the next to the last but today is Adam Holland. Hi, I'm Adam Holland. I'm a project coordinator at the Berkman Center. Today I'll be reading from on the comparative palatability of some dry season tadpoles from Costa Rica. It is suggested that palatability and tadpoles may correlate inversely with vulnerability. Tadpoles are poor swimmers in both speed and agility but some tadpoles however are remarkably conspicuous. Often conspicuous animals are noxious and it can be hypothesized that conspicuous tadpoles may be so. The mock predator in this experiment was a sample of 11 students and faculty. Each taster was tested separately and asked not to discuss the test until the experiment was over. The tasters were asked to rate the palatability of each tadpoles skin, tail and body on a one to five scale. The standardized testing procedure included several steps. Tadpole was to be rinsed in fresh water. Taster would place the tadpole into his or her mouth and hold it for 10 to 20 seconds without biting into it. Then the taster bit into the tail breaking the skin and chewed lightly for 10 to 20 seconds. For the last 10 to 20 seconds the taster bit firmly and fully into the body of the tadpole. The tasters were directed not to swallow the tadpoles but to spit them out and rinse their mouths at least twice with fresh water before proceeding to the next tadpole. The most distasteful tadpole was clearly Bufo Marinas. This tadpole had distasteful skin a condition that could not be demonstrated in any of the other tadpoles. The most palatable tadpole was Smeleska sordida. The other tadpoles of other four species rest between these extremes, ranging from tasteless on the skin but slightly disagreeable within the body. This distastefulness may result from food in the gut of the tadpole rather than some innate distasteful property. The body cavity of tadpoles is almost entirely occupied by gut in which tadpoles process large volumes of detritus. One taster specifically commented on the grittiness of the gut contents. Questions? Yes. So what's the answer? Are the faster tadpoles less taster? I will briefly quote from the study and assuage occurrence by saying that they did account for the fact that excuse me, the objection that man is not a natural predator. However, the conclusions were that yes, the data support the general rule that the most palatable organisms are those least vulnerable to predator attack. The most distasteful are the most susceptible to such an attack. Final question. I think we can reproduce these findings with other animals like cats. As a matter of fact, the researchers have anticipated your concern and caught, most notably 1951, 1952, 1953, and 1954 found broad agreement among the hedgehog, rat, ferret, cat, and man in terms of assessing relative palatability. We have a little more time than I expected. If anybody has one or two more questions on this important topic. Do you know what the death rate was among the participants? That's an excellent question. While the participants were still being observed by the experimenters, there were no deaths. However, in related research that was perhaps leading to this particular study hang on, a note's in there somewhere. Oh yes. Thysilix in 1922 demonstrated that bufo-bufo eggs were toxic when injected into the skin of a particular frog species. And Licht reported the deaths of two Peruvian natives after the accidental ingestion of bufo eggs. He then initiated two studies into the palatability of those eggs. Do you know if these tadpoles were procured in the wild as in a naturalized hunting situation or were they procured from a lab's supply magazine? I can definitely assure you that they were not procured from a lab's supply magazine. The researchers in abundance of caution have provided the collection sites for their various species which range from shallow standing pools, permanent turbid ponds under the rocks in a shallow but flowing area of a particular river collected in tire tracks and in dense aggregates in quiet open pools where they observed for several hours the predation of a kingfisher on the tadpole population. Did any of the students involved with this study and the five years of subsequent studies finish their PhDs? I have no information on that topic although I can't tell they had to throw out two of the tasters because they were heavy smokers. How were the remains of the tadpoles treated where they granted the proper respect? I don't know although I was impressed with the carefully timed chewing intervals I thought that was pretty respectful, they weren't allowed to just immediately spit it out upon finding its skin distasteful. For another question. Oh my goodness. The tadpoles are on everyone's mind. How were participants in the study recruited? Well, they were all members of they were all people observing the kingfisher. They were a sample of students and faculty in the 1970 dry season course Tropical Biology an ecological approach which was offered by the organization for tropical studies. It does seem to be a bias toward male participants there were two female and nine male. Any other aspects of this question? Adam Holland and please welcome our final speaker Jonathan Zittrain. Hi. It seems like Gaben Max behind me. So I'm Jonathan Zittrain. I'm not crazy. I'm just eccentric. And my study is color preference in the insane problem. The writer has endeavored to determine whether certain colors are generally pleasing to the insane. Whether noticeable similarities exist between color preference in the insane and in children. Review of previous work several years ago 1922 a study was made by the writer of the color preferences of children. He found that blue was the most frequently preferred color at every age and in all grades from kindergarten to college 47% of the pupils choosing this color. Green was a distant second. Red a close third. Violet and yellow followed with orange the least pleasing of the six. Red was more favored and green less favored in children of poor than in those of well-to-do neighborhoods in the earlier years but this difference tended to be overcome as the children advanced in grade and age. Who says there's no social mobility? Method. The colors were numbered haphazardly and the number of each color placed above it. The cardboard was presented to the patient. He was asked to place his finger on the number of the color he liked best. After he made the choice he was asked in a similar manner for the next best color and so on. Some cooperated well and made six choices. Others quickly lost interest and made only one two or three. As soon as there was the slightest indication that the patient was bored by the procedure the test was terminated. Color preferences according to length of residence in the hospital. The patients were divided into three groups. Those had been there less than one year. One to three years and the third those remaining after three years. This is of significance as individuals in the hospital after the third year are for the most part showing marked deterioration. Correlation, causation, I don't know. They would be expected to approximate in preference more nearly the younger children than the older. As psychoses are generally regarded as a regression to a more infantile level. So the marked mental deterioration people like they're liking for their color was more nearly approximated than that of children of the kindergarten than pupils in the highest grade. Orange and yellow best like by manic depressives. Green by dementia precox and violet by all the others. Great. We'll take your questions. I have a question. We are here today inside of room in the newest most carefully designed building at Harvard law school. What if anything does this study tell us about the colors of this room? Well, the study does say that knowledge of color preferences of the insane might be practically applied in vocational therapy and in the selection of colors for the furnishings of living quarters. So the colors here appear to be late American corporate. How that maps exactly we'd have to update the study to put in the kinds of topes that aren't exactly Crayola in this room. Questions. So what's your favorite color? I guess I'm not allowed to read the study to find out. It is in fact tadpole green. Did the study take into account color blindness and what, you know that's a great question. I don't know if color blindness was even anticipated in 1922 and having been in an era filmed entirely in black and white. But the charts are not in color either and they're kind of pre-powerpoint. You can see it's like now I know where XKCD comes from. It's very cool. The charts. Yes, you can fill in your own chart by numbers, but if there's any disinterest it is immediately terminated. So what if your children are in fact insane? They are very poor children, at least according to the study. Now does that mean they go for green or red? The crazy kids? No, I actually sorry. If your kids are crazy, no, they didn't do a study on crazy kids. They did a study on kids. They did a study on the insane. Clearly there should be NSF funding for insane kids in a corporate environment. Based on your, I'll be at Swift reading of the paper, can you propose hypotheses for what we should name new Crayola colors? It's funny because the colors weren't labeled except by number. So maybe for experimental consistency the color should henceforth simply be numbered. And why not bridge it to HTML color codes? So then you can just have hashtags F or something. As people walk around then they're being trained for the jobs of the 21st century. This is a technique pioneered in a different industry by Chanel. Number five. I like that smell. Any further questions? Given that the subjects in this study clearly were seeing the world through a somewhat different perspective, do they take into account the possibility that they actually perceived colors differently? That sort of deep question of our inability to really know what's going on in other minds particularly as they become more other. And that they actually perhaps all like the same experience say of red but it just looked like purple to some and green to others and red to others but they actually like the same thing. SE Katz does not evince in this study any reading of Kant but I agree with you that it would be interesting if optimistic people tended to like pink and rose better given the tint of their glasses. Sorry. Had to link that up for you. Now this would be pure speculation but I'm wondering if the color of tadpoles increases their palatability in your mind that's possible. There does appear to be a nice link between this study and the other study and if you're crazy enough to eat a tadpole you may have just outfoxed the tadpole because it's trying not to be palatable to the non-crazy. So this will be our final question. So the my understanding was that as insane people and people who'd been at the hospital more liked blue less. Is that right? Blue was the first choice for 41% of male kids who stayed there longer less decided liking for blue than the total number of school children as well as less than the total number of patients. So you are correct. And what color could you state for the record the color of the garment you were wearing? I'm wearing blue. I'm wearing blue twice. What color was the hospital? That is not specified. It was gathered at the Hudson River State Hospital after C.O. Cheney's superintendent. It's purple there. And we're supposed to believe you? That's what you see, yes? Thank you. Does anyone have any questions for the two gentlemen who are up here eating? Did you get fed adequately? You break the food acceptable? Great. Are there any questions in general before we or as we finish up? Is there anything I'd like to say about my book? I would like to thank very much Jonathan Zittrain for coming up to me and telling me that he purchased a copy of my new book. I don't think he's read it, but he purchased it and I'm told that's what matters. So thank you very much. The book is called This Is Improbable. You've seen some of the kinds of things that I write about. Things that have this quality that I hope makes people laugh and then think. If you run across anything in any subject from any point in time it's a good Nixonian phrase I would love to hear about it. Just drop me a line. And I want to thank the Berkman Center and Jeff and Amar and Dan especially for organizing all this stuff. And there is a wonderful technician here I've forgotten who's back in one of these rooms and probably is watching on TV. So thank you very much for getting set up. Thank you to our time keepers. Thank you to our eaters. Let me finish by reading once again the names of everybody who spoke here today and asking each person just stand up. If you're already standing then just remain that way and take a bow. Gus Rancatori Richard Bagguli Naomi Steven Jeff Hermes Molly Saunter Ryan Beutich Judith Donath Kendra Albert Alicia Solo Niederman Matthew Battles Adam Holland and Jonathan Zittrain Thank you all very much.