Vanessa Harry
gynaecology.tt@gmail.com
For the past 40 years, a highly regarded publication, The British Medical Journal, has devoted its Christmas-week issue to the lighter and sometimes brighter side of medicine, publishing unusual articles that vary from simply amusing to bizarre, creative, or potentially important.
These articles are not exactly spoofs—the science in them is real—but they are on topics that an esteemed journal like the BMJ would not normally touch, although they are, in fact, based on methodologically sound science.
As noted on the BMJ website, “While we welcome light-hearted fare and satire, we do not publish spoofs, hoaxes, or fabricated studies.” And as the editors said in 2000, "The essence of the Christmas BMJ is strangeness."
So, in the spirit of the holidays, here are some of my favourite BMJ holiday papers that have been published over the years.
In 2013, the journal published a study showing why Rudolph the reindeer’s nose was red. Dutch and Norwegian scientists travelled to the Arctic and used video-microscope and thermal imaging technology to show that the glow was from tiny blood vessels that tended to be more abundant in the noses of reindeer than in humans, thus solving this mystery. Yes, seriously. This is now published and peer-reviewed medical evidence.
Another report demolished a Danish myth that people could get drunk by absorbing alcohol through their feet. After soaking their feet for three hours in a basin containing three bottles of vodka and measuring their blood alcohol levels, three Danish scientists found no such absorption.
One Christmas issue investigated the safety of sword swallowing as a hobby. A team of eager scientists sent questionnaires out to several swords swallower. Most of the responders reported having swallowed more than 2,000 swords in the three preceding months.
Sore throats (“sword throats”) were common during the learning phase and after frequently repeated performances. Swallowers rarely sought medical advice and of the six who perforated their pharynx or oesophagus, three needed surgery. No deaths were reported.
In 2014 another paper explored differences between the sexes in idiotic risk-taking behaviour, by studying past winners of the Darwin Awards.
The Darwin awards are essentially a tongue-in-cheek honour that recognises individuals who have supposedly contributed to human evolution by selecting themselves out of the gene pool by dying or becoming sterilised via their own actions.
As the BMJ study described, winners of these awards must die in such an idiotic manner that “their action ensures the long-term survival of the species, by selectively allowing one less idiot to survive.”
There was a clear preponderance of men among the Darwin Award recipients, leaving the authors to conclude that men are idiots. Despite being published only eight years ago, the paper has become one of the most-read articles in The BMJ archive. A look through the article’s rapid responses suggests that it is also one of the more controversial.
Several studies have even gone on to win an Ig Nobel Prize, a satiric prize awarded annually by the scientific humour magazine, Annals of Improbable Research, to particularly rare and imaginative studies and therefore celebrate unusual or trivial achievements in scientific research.
Notable winning papers included those on the effect of different foods such as garlic and sour cream on the appetite of leeches as well as a study on abdominal pain in people with appendicitis when they go over speed bumps.
Ultimately, It is never a bad idea to let your hair down now and then, and it is refreshing to see that even one of the foremost leading scientific publications that many health professionals look to for guidance and robust evidence, can find a bit of a holiday spirit and cheer to share with everyone.
Happy Christmas to all my readers!