Archive: Useless research

A paediatric renal specialist from Ghent University, Johan Vandewalle, has sent shockwaves through the scientific world with a plea for children to be allowed to go to the bathroom when they have to, er, pee. According to Dr. Vandewalle, holding it in is not good for children's bladders, and they can't always be expected to go when the school reckons it's a good time. He also revealed that children's bladders are smaller than those of grown-ups, and perhaps haven't had the practice of keeping control.

Elsewhere in Dr. Vandewalle's research was an earth-shattering claim that has never occurred to anyone in the whole of human history since apes first came down out of the trees: standing up to pee is an unnatural posture, and should be discouraged among boys at least. This will come as a surprise to pub-patrons, football fans and building-site workers the world over, not to mention toilet designers – though cleaning ladies will probably heave a sigh of relief. Dr. Vandewalle justifies his claim by pointing out that doing it standing it tends to cause the, er, subject to splash himself and others.

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Staying in Belgium, and researchers at the Free University VUB in Brussels have issued advice on how to blow your nose. Ear nose and throat expert, Professor Peter Clement, led the team who discovered that if you close one nostril off while blowing the other – blowing only one half of your nose at a time, if you will – you'll be more successful at expelling the troublesome particles from your nose than if you leave both open and blow them both at the same time, in which case the irritants whirl around inside your skullal cavity but don't get expelled. You should also, the Professor concludes, blow your nose as little as possible, especially at the opera. And if it's blocked up, don't bother even trying.

Well, thanks, Prof. But my grandmother explained it to me years ago, and I tell my children at every opportunity: your nose makes snot not to annoy you, but to soothe your troubled hooter. If you blast it all out into your hankie (we won't even mention those Mediterranean gentlemen who have learned to shoot it out in the street, into the path of trams) you'll only force your poor snout to make more, thus necessitating another hankie. It makes perfect sense, and you don't actually have to spend years at university to figure it out.

The team also found, though I'm not certain this was one of their prime objectives, that nose-blowing is a uniquely human activity. You don't see cats or dogs or hamsters blowing their noses, far less tapirs or elephants, more's the pity. Quite what those other creatures do is a matter for the zoologists, I suppose, though the curiosity of Sour Grapes is piqued.

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Abroad, and more ground-breaking research, this time from scientists in the University of Münster in Germany, which has shown that women lose their sense when they go out shopping. By implanting electrical probe thingies in the brains of shoppers, the Münster researchers found that the centres of the cerebral apparatus responsible for rational thought shut down, while those which deal with pleasurable feelings of self-satisfaction fizzed and sparked like the Green Room at the Eurovision for Kiddies after a round of free cola-drinks.

And the more expensive the goods on display in the shops, the team found, the more pronounced is the effect. Men also experience the same shutdown in their thinkal areas, the research revealed, but only when they're shopping for fast cars, electronic gadgets and computer games.

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You couldn't cover useless research without citing The Lancet, and the latest edition includes the gem that clean air in the workplace contributes to healthier conditions for employees. Scientists at McGill University in Montreal found that if building superintendents clean the air filters on their AC, people are less likely to come down with "the bug that's going around". Such precautions don't take account of employees snogging in the stationery cupboard, obviously. Neither do they protect against absenteeism on Friday afternoons, Mondays or days when Kim or Justine are playing live on Canvas.

Published in The Bulletin, Brussels, January 2004