Weird Science

Before I get into the bit about the scientist who cured hiccups with a finger in the rectum, I want to pause to point out my favorite news from the frontiers of scientific observation:

Julia R. Fox, assistant professor of telecommunications at Indiana University isn’t joking when she says [The Daily Show with Jon Stewart], which last week featured Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf as a guest, is just as substantive as network coverage.

While much has been written in the media about The Daily Show‘s impact, Fox’s study is the first scholarly effort to systematically examine how the comedy program compares to traditional television news as sources of political information.

The study, “No Joke: A Comparison of Substance in The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and Broadcast Network Television Coverage of the 2004 Presidential Election Campaign,” will be published next summer by the Journal of Broadcast and Electronic Media, published by the Broadcast Education Association.

“It is clearly a humor show, first and foremost,” Fox said of Stewart’s program. “But there is some substance on there, and in some cases, like John Edwards announcing his candidacy, the news is made on the show. You have real newsmakers coming on, and yes, sometimes the banter and questions get a little silly, but there is also substantive dialogue going on … It’s a legitimate source of news.”

Which bring me to the Ig Nobel awards, given out at Harvard by real Nobel Prize winners to scientists who dared to push the boundaries of science.

One of this year’s recipients is Howard Stapleton, inventor of teenager repellent:

His device, called the Mosquito, emits a high-frequency, siren-like noise that is painful to the ears of teens and those in their early 20s, but inaudible to adults.

The invention grew out of his 15-year-old daughter’s trip to the local store last year to buy milk. She came back empty-handed, having been intimidated by a group of teenage boys loitering outside the store.

Stapleton, who has sold and installed security systems for more than two decades, thought back to when he was 12 years old and he visited his father at work.

“I walked into this room with six people doing ultrasonic welding, and immediately ran right back out again the noise was so painful,” Stapleton said. “I asked an adult, ‘What’s that noise.’ And he said, ‘What noise?’”

Stapleton’s company, Compound Security Systems of Merthyr Tydfil, Wales, has sold hundreds of the units to retailers, local governments, police departments and homeowners all over the United Kingdom. The company is shipping its first Mosquito units for sale in the United States next week.

But that doesn’t compare to the guy who figured out the ultimate cure for hiccups:

Dr. Francis Fesmire said he wasn’t sure whether he was honored or embarrassed when he learned he’d won an Ig Nobel for his paper called — ahem — “Termination of Intractable Hiccups with Digital Rectal Massage.”

“I’m a serious guy, and something I wrote in 1987 is coming back to haunt me,” said Fesmire, an emergency physician and director of the emergency heart center at Erlanger Medical Center in Chattanooga, Tenn.

Fesmire, who stresses he is a real doctor who “someday wishes to be truly be remembered for my cardiac research,” tried the technique for the first and last time nearly 20 years ago.

He knew that the technique could be used to slow a rapid heartbeat by stimulating the vagus nerve. The same nerve, when stimulated, can stop hiccups.

“I saw this patient who couldn’t stop his hiccups, I tried these other maneuvers, and then I stuck my finger in his bottom,” Fesmire said, emphasizing that it was the treatment of last resort. “Will I ever do it again? No!”

One small step for [a] man …

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