How MEM appeared - "British scientists" January 29th, 2015

Based on common sense, British scientists should not be a meme or a media virus. First, they exist. Secondly, they are quite normal people, no worse and no better than other scientists. There are no special reasons to single them out from the world community of scientists.

On the Internet, "British scientists" are synonymous with researchers working on completely insane, idiotic, and of absolutely no practical value pseudoscience projects.

British scientists have found that: food quickly picked up from the floor is not considered to have fallen; that 9 out of 10 ladybugs in London suffer from fungal venereal diseases; that the majority of drivers who violate traffic rules are latent homosexuals. They also found that the average person eats seven spiders in their sleep; bumblebees can catch maniacs; and cats think that a person is a big cat.

These are not jokes, but headlines from official press releases from various scientific institutions in Britain. The information is often so curious that one wants to know: how did they establish this?

This issue was taken up ... by British scientists themselves.

British scientists have found that sometimes they give out fantasies instead of scientific discoveries. Where do catchy and, at times, ridiculous headlines come from in articles based on the works of British and (not only) scientists, their colleagues from Cardiff University revealed. They proved that most false sensations are born not on the keyboards of journalists who report the news, but in the heads of those who compose scientific press releases: it is PR people who invent sensations.

More specifically, the staff of Cardiff University. It turned out that sometimes the most insignificant research after processing those who make releases for the press, changes beyond recognition. On the other hand, it attracts the attention of journalists, and subsequently readers, as well, says Dmitry Zykov, deputy editor-in-chief of the Science and Life magazine. Hence the exaggerated sensations that sell well.

“Sensation is a good, interesting thing, a lot of attention is paid to it. People tend to greatly exaggerate the significance of what they suddenly learned about unexpectedly. This is a purely psychological effect: oh, how unexpected, how interesting. Often sensations appear, as they say, from the heart. It’s just that people didn’t understand what they were being told,” Zykov explains.

In these cases, the scientists themselves say the classic: the journalists did not understand anything and distorted everything. In fact, failure occurs along the entire chain. At first, scientists did not convey the main idea very intelligibly, the compilers of the press release exaggerated it and made incorrect conclusions, on the basis of which they gave false advice. And then the journalists fell for the sensation and, without checking in other sources, intensified and released the news under a catchy headline. The reader read, believed and even began to follow the advice.

But there is a doubt that everything was originally designed only for a sensation, Evgeny Alexandrov, chairman of the Russian Academy of Sciences Commission on Combating Pseudoscience, draws attention. A certain interest is not ruled out, as this is characteristic of Western scientists. “They crave attention, maybe attract some kind of funds,” Alexandrov says.
In Russian science, this is impossible. Earning a name and money on populism is useless for our scientists. And this, as the expert says, has an almost scientific explanation.

“We have always had science in the warm hands of the state, we had no need to communicate with the press. And after the end of the arms race, they felt bad with money, and they, so to speak, rushed to the panel, selling products. And, maybe, they got spoiled, - Alexandrov believes. - For us it is less typical. We have sensations generated in the media.”

British scientists- a character of Internet folklore, and it is Russian. And a note on the Internet that begins with the words British scientists must be absurd, otherwise it will deceive the reader's expectations. British scientists- a kind of media virus, but only special, strange, based on reality, pretending to be reality, but distorting it.

Here are some real examples:

British scientists have found that ducks love the rain. It took the kingdom's scientific scientists three years and £300,000 to discover what every villager knows.

The study of the addictions of domestic ducks by scientists of the British capital was started in order to find out what role water plays in the life of these birds and what kind of bathing methods ducks like the most. Three years of continuous work, a lot of money was spent, and now, in the study of a burning problem, a bullet is finally put - birds prefer a shower that imitates rain.

Elephants are the only "four-wheel drive" animals in the world

Elephants, unlike other quadrupeds, use all four legs for both acceleration and deceleration. This conclusion was made by a group of scientists led by John Hutchinson (John Hutchinson) from the British Royal Veterinary College. An article by Hutchinson and colleagues on the gait of elephants is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. A summary of the conclusions reached by the researchers is provided by AFP.

As part of the study, six young Indian elephants were driven at varying speeds on a platform with sensors that recorded the force with which the animals kicked off the ground with each foot. It turned out that both the front and hind limbs of elephants receive the same load when moving at different speeds and with different accelerations. This gave scientists a reason to liken elephants to four-wheel drive cars.

In other tetrapods, the functions of acceleration and deceleration are distributed between the fore and hind limbs: during acceleration, as a rule, the hind legs/paws receive a greater load, and during deceleration, the front ones.

British scientists: Drivers spend a year of their lives parking

British scientists have come to the conclusion that, on average, drivers spend 25 minutes a day parking, according to the Daily Mail.

Scientists have suggested that with this amount of time it takes drivers 152 hours a year to park, and if we assume that a driver can drive a car for 50 years, it turns out that at least 11 months of his life he spends just to park the car.

The researchers also note that drivers in the UK spend an average of 120 pounds ($190) per year on gasoline when looking for a parking space.

In a survey of nearly 9,000 British drivers, the researchers found that almost half of those surveyed are so shy that they are ready to give up their parking space if they notice another car behind them, especially women.

Another 44% of respondents admitted that they had lost their car at least once in a parking lot.

Recall that last year the British mathematician Simon Blackburn deduced a formula by which you can calculate the parameters of an ideal parking lot.

sources

http://www.vesti.ru/doc.html?id=2220063

http://lurkmore.to/%D0%91%D1%80%D0%B8%D1%82%D0%B0%D0%BD%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%B5_%D1 %83%D1%87%D1%91%D0%BD%D1%8B%D0%B5

http://elementy.ru/lib/431893

And a little more about popular MEMES: for example, and here and of course The original article is on the website InfoGlaz.rf Link to the article from which this copy is made -

British scientists are a character of Internet folklore, and it is Russian. And a note on the Internet that begins with the words British scientists must be absurd, otherwise it will deceive the reader's expectations. British scientists are like a media virus, but only special, strange, based on reality, pretending to be reality, but distorting it.

And so the British scientists themselves found out why “British scientists” are synonymous with researchers working on completely insane, idiotic and pseudoscientific projects of absolutely no practical value.

The famous "British scientists" and their worthless research are the product of a flawed system for allocating funds and evaluating the scientific usefulness of research, mathematicians say in an article published in the journal PLoS Biology.

“This is an important issue, as a huge amount of money is spent on research, the results of which cannot be trusted. Many of the high-profile discoveries that such scientists claim are very often false, but they are often published and discussed. We believe that sponsors should choose those studies that answer important questions and have good methodology, and not those that lead to surprising conclusions and interesting interpretations,” said Andrew Higginson from the University of Exeter (UK).

Higginson and his colleague Marcus Munafo from the University of Bristol (UK) came to this conclusion by analyzing the success of grant applications and their "results" in the form of scientific publications, using the methods of mathematics and statistics.

As the scientists say, they were trying to understand whether there is some defining principle in the evaluation of research projects that scientists offer to sponsors, or whether there are no such criteria. If such a principle exists, then scientists consciously (if they are careerists) or unconsciously for themselves will adjust their scientific interests and research to it in order to improve their capabilities.

To do this, the scientists took the rules used by the UK (UKREF) and Australian (AER) grant agencies and used them to create a computer model in which the typical “careerist” scientist tried to format his research in such a way that he consistently succeeded in submitting applications. to the virtual "grant commission".

As these calculations showed, the most successful virtual "careerists" put forward relatively small projects with high-profile tasks and a modest scope, the purpose of which was research in new areas of science, and not rechecking the conclusions of previous research, their continuation or large-scale research with "uninteresting" results.

The problem is that such experiments and projects, due to their extremely small scale, very often lead to erroneous results or misinterpretations of the findings. On average, only about 10-40% of such studies turn out to be correct, which means that the money spent on such grants very often goes to waste.

Accordingly, it can be said that the famous "British scientists" are a product of the very system of granting, condoning those people who conduct high-profile experiments on a relatively small scale, with an extremely low level of reliability and statistical significance. Therefore, Higginson and Munafo propose to reform the system, shifting the focus from "small" research to medium and large projects.

“The best thing for science would be if we started to combine medium-sized research aimed at finding new knowledge with large-scale studies aimed at confirming these findings. Our calculations show that scientists would start doing this if regulators and committees guided not by sensationalism, but by the quality of the methodology and results,” Higginson concludes.

British scientists once found that British scientists are the smartest. And this is not a newspaper joke at all, such a study was actually conducted. Here is a selection of the most interesting and absurd things that British scientists have been doing.

Bowling is hazardous to health.

This study took about two years and 250 thousand pounds. Scientists have found that when playing bowling, children or teenagers can start running along the lanes and eventually get stuck in the mechanism that sets the pins. The publication notes that such cases have not been previously recorded, however, according to scientists, there is a high probability of such situations. In addition, the report from the Health, Safety and Safety Administration also noted that adults would be at just as high a risk if they chose to walk down the lane and knock down a pin with their hand.

To be successful in men, a woman must expose 40% of her body surface.

Scientists from the University of the English city of Leeds have found the answer to a question that has worried women and men for centuries: where exactly is the line between too modest and too frivolous women's clothing. The study is based on observations made by four female researchers who secretly observed the patrons of the city's largest nightclub from a balcony above the dance floor. The authors of the study observed how many men approached girls with an offer to dance, dividing the girls by the number of clothes they wore. According to research, the ideal proportion of exposed skin to clothing is 40:60. At the same time, women who were naked too much enjoyed less success than women who were dressed too modestly.

Pets pollute the planet more than cars.

British scientists Brenda and Robert Weil published a book under the shocking title "Time to Eat a Dog?". This phrase came to us from those times when people conquered Antarctica. In those cases when the provisions ran out, travelers had to eat sled dogs. The authors have a message for the reader: at a time when natural resources are depleted, pets are becoming a luxury that, for the good of the planet, we cannot afford. According to the Weils, on average each dog needs 164 kg of meat and 95 kg of grain per year. To produce these products, 0.84 hectares of land is required (1.1 hectares for a German Shepherd).

According to scientists, to build and drive an SUV 10 thousand km, energy is needed in the amount of 55.1 gigajoules. And one hectare of land can produce energy equal to 135 gigajoules per year. In other words, the polluting impact of a car on the environment is half that of a dog. Similar equations apply to other pets as well. It turns out that a cat consumes energy (in terms of hectares - 0.15) as much as a large van, a pair of hamsters with 0.28 hectares is comparable to a plasma TV, a red fish (0.00034 hectares) consumes energy like two mobile phones.

British scientists have understood why grandmothers exist.

A large-scale study in the villages of Japan, Ethiopia, the Gambia and Malawi, the cities of Germany, England and Canada was carried out by anthropologist Leslie Knapp, together with colleagues from the University of Cambridge. An article about the study was published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society. After collecting some historical data and studying the features of modern life, Leslie Knapp proposed the X-chromosome "grandmother hypothesis". A meta-analysis during the study found that grandmothers who live close to their grandchildren affect grandchildren's survival rate. According to anthropologists, after the reproductive age, women have the opportunity to better protect their genes, that is, the inherited parts of DNA. Losing the opportunity to care for her own children, a woman switches to caring for her grandchildren. At the same time, she passes on her accumulated experience to her grown children.

A woman passes on about 31% of her genes to her sons' daughters. The sons of sons get only 23% of the grandmother's genes. Grandchildren by daughter (both sexes) are approximately in the middle - 25%. If we talk about the X chromosome, then the sons of the son have nothing to do with their grandmother at all (they get their X chromosome from their mother). Closest to the grandmother, again, is the son's daughter.

The myth of Santa Claus owes its appearance to hallucinogenic mushrooms.

English scientists believe that the myth of Santa Claus traveling on flying reindeer owes its appearance to hallucinogenic mushrooms, which the inhabitants of Lapland loved to indulge in. It is known that the story of Santa Claus was born in Lapland, in the north of modern Finland. Lapps lived there, who, as scientists found out, quite often drank the urine of deer, which ate fly agaric. Under laboratory conditions, scientists have obtained from these mushrooms the strongest hallucinogenic substance. No wonder, scientists believe, that Lapps dreamed of flying deer, which then turned into a legend about the good Santa Claus. Scientists explain the bright red robe of the New Year's character with the color of a hallucinogenic mushroom. The red and white color of the fly agaric turned into an old man in a red caftan with a white beard in the inflamed imagination of people.

Miniskirts prolong life.

The less clothes a woman wears, the longer she lives - British scientists led by anthropologist Sir Edwin Burkhart came to such an interesting conclusion. More than 5,000 women over 70 took part in the study. The result of the analysis amazed anthropologists: the less clothes the respondent wore, the more chances she had to live to an advanced age.

Scientists have several theories explaining this relationship. First, clothes contain residues of chemicals used in cleaning and laundering, which, when reacting with sweat, can form compounds that penetrate the skin and adversely affect health, up to the development of cancer. Secondly, a woman in revealing clothes attracts men and is more likely to get married. It is known that the health of family people is better and they live longer than single people. Thirdly, women who wear a minimum of clothing are exposed to natural factors that affect longevity. Fourthly, according to British scientists, such ladies are more open, smart, independent and take more care of themselves. Fifth, women who wear revealing outfits are more likely to have sex, which researchers say is another beneficial factor influencing longevity.

Socializing reduces the risk of heart attack, stroke, and the flu.

Social activity is as important to maintaining a person's health as exercise, diet, or medication. The results of a study by British and Australian scientists are published by the London newspaper Daily Express. Active communication within various social groups and collectives helps to reduce the risk of myocardial infarction, stroke, and even influenza. The publication cites the results of a study by Professor Jolanda Jetten from the Australian University of Queensland, according to which enthusiastic conversations at the table, including in restaurants and cafes, increase the activity of the brain, which has the most positive effect on health.

The smartest scientists live in the UK.

British scientists are the most productive in the world. According to a study, the UK ranks second after the US in the number of scientific discoveries and developments made in a year. Comparing this with the amount of funding for the scientific industry and the number of people working in it, we can conclude that British scientists work much more efficiently than their overseas counterparts.

The study, based on counting the number of scientific papers, their impact in the world of science and the frequency of citations, showed that between 1997 and 2001, the UK produced 9.4 per cent of scientific publications, which is 12.8 per cent of the most cited papers. For comparison, the indicators of Germany are 8.8 and 10.4 percent, Japan - 9.3 and 6.9. Although the United States is far ahead in terms of total volume - 35 and 63 percent, however, the efficiency of American scientists has decreased significantly compared to previous years.

Blueberries protect against senile dementia.

British scientists have found that daily consumption of blueberries or blueberry milkshake increases concentration and prevents the development of senile dementia. For research, scientists invited 40 volunteers aged 18 to 30 years. The subjects drank a glass of blueberry milkshake every morning and followed a diet prescribed by doctors. During the day, they did several physical exercises, during which the level of concentration was monitored. A few weeks later, the berries were excluded from the diet of volunteers. As a result, the level of concentration of attention of the participants in the experiment after two hours of exercise decreased by 15-20 percent.

Cell phones are killing bees.

Radiation from cell phones has an extremely negative effect on bees, leading to the collapse of the colony and even to their mass extinction. This conclusion was made by British experts led by Dr. Daniel Fevre. Scientists set up an experiment by placing a working mobile phone under the hive. It turned out that the bees become very anxious if the phone receives an incoming call. They gather in a swarm, and after interrupting the signal, they calm down.

In previous experiments, a phone left near a beehive led to the collapse of the bee colony and to the mass extinction of bee colonies. Radiation from mobile communications kills 43% of bees, while only 3% of these insects die from, for example, pesticides. The fact is that cellular networks under the GSM protocol operate at frequencies from 800 to 1200 MHz. At the same frequencies, bees communicate and, most importantly, orient themselves. Cellular networks "clog" the channel, and disoriented bees do not find a place where they live and eat.

It's good to swear from time to time.

British scientists report that sometimes swearing is good for health. Moreover, swearing helps those people who usually do not use profanity in their speech. In particular, strong words have a pronounced analgesic effect. The researchers conducted an experiment in which 70 students participated. They had to keep their hands in the ice water for as long as possible. When it became completely unbearable, they were asked to use foul language. At this time, scientists measured the activity of their brain centers and other reactions of the body. As it turned out, the cursing participants in the experiments were able to keep their hands in the water longer than those who could not pronounce these words. At the same time, those who usually rarely use obscene expressions achieved the greatest effect.

A person can become seriously ill while sleeping.

Sound healthy sleep can lead to serious illnesses. This conclusion was made by British scientists. In particular, sleeping on your back is fraught with asthma and heart problems, since in this position the body is poorly supplied with oxygen. Sleeping on your side can lead to early wrinkle formation. And if the sleeper takes the "fetal position", he risks getting migraines and problems with the cervical spine. The neck will also suffer when sleeping on the stomach. In addition, in this position, the sleeping person's hands will go numb, and in certain cases, you can also curl your jaw. Those who love to sleep in an embrace will begin to experience pain in the back, neck, legs, arms. British scientists did not consider other options for sleeping positions.

Women like gloomy men.

Women are more attracted to sullen men than those who look happy. This conclusion was made by scientists from the University of British Columbia. The study involved a group of thousands of volunteers. They were asked to look at photographs of people of the opposite sex and rate them in terms of sexual attractiveness. All photographed people had different facial expressions associated with manifestations of emotions (from a wide smile to downcast eyes).

Psychologists evaluated the first impression, which consisted in the sexual attractiveness of the images. It turned out that women are more attracted to gloomy, concentrated faces. Smiling, cheerful men they do not like. Scientists believe that the gloomy look of a man is associated in women with his status, wealth, reliability, and the ability to provide for a partner and children. But a smile indicates weakness and defenselessness. In turn, men pay more attention to smiling, joyful women, as the representatives of the stronger sex prefer ladies who are easier to make contact and obey.

Old mobile phones should be buried in plant pots.

A group of British scientists have invented an original way to get rid of old mobile phones. They suggest not to throw them away, but to bury them in pots with plants. Cell phone elements decompose biochemically over time. Together with the soil, they create favorable conditions for the growth of some plants. Best of all, sunflowers grow in a pot with a telephone. Scientists have not yet determined whether the phone model affects the growth rate of plants.

Among the ants, there are also scammers and corrupt officials.

“The first thing you notice when you study the social structure of ant and bee societies is that they are cooperative,” says Bill Hughes of the University of Leeds. - However, looking closer, you can see that they are also characterized by conflicts and fraud - and in this they are very similar to human society. Previously, we thought that ants were an exception, but our genetic analysis showed that corruption reigns in their society, in particular royal.” The inequality that is present in anthills, scientists compared with what happens in the hives, where drones and ordinary bees live. Ants, like bees, have their own carriers of “royal genes”. Dr. Hues and Jacobus Boomsma of the University of Copenhagen found that the daughters of some fathers become "queens" more often than others. In addition, ants carrying special royal genes have the ability to fool their relatives and deprive them of the opportunity to leave offspring.

The oldest joke of man.

Scientists from the UK have found the world's oldest joke text. It is noteworthy that this discovery allows us to conclude that “below the belt” humor was as popular in antiquity as it is today. Researchers from the University of Wolverhampton have determined that the oldest joke was recorded in 1900 BC. It belongs to the Sumerians, who lived in what is now southern Iraq. Rough translation: “It has not happened since time immemorial that a girl farts while sitting on her husband’s lap.”

Excess alcohol leads to mutations in DNA.

As researchers write in the journal Nature, acetaldehyde, a by-product of ethanol processing in our body, can lead to catastrophic DNA damage. And we would die from the very first glass if the cells did not have a two-stage defense system: the first includes enzymes that neutralize acetaldehyde itself, the second is a set of proteins that take on emergency repairs of damaged DNA. Scientists experimented with pregnant mice in which both systems were turned off - in such animals, even a small single dose of alcohol led to the death of the fetus; moreover, in the adult mice themselves, the death of blood stem cells was observed.

To check the effect of alcohol on DNA, scientists were prompted by two groups of information. Firstly, people suffering from Fanconi syndrome, a severe hereditary disease, are extremely sensitive to alcohol. In these patients, proteins responsible for DNA repair do not work, as a result of which acetaldehyde causes irreversible damage to genes, and this leads to blood diseases and cancer. On the other hand, people with congenital alcohol intolerance are highly susceptible to esophageal cancer, while their acetaldehyde neutralization system does not work. In both cases, the consequences of alcohol intake are expressed in diseases affecting the molecular genetic apparatus of the cell.

Why drunk men are less demanding on beauty.

British scientists sometimes take on the most unexpected topics. This time they wanted to know why drunk men, as folk wisdom says, are less demanding on the appearance of women. The study involved students, the male half of which had to ... get drunk. After such an exciting stage of scientific work, they were asked to evaluate photographs of girls who had already been “sorted” in terms of attractiveness by a rather large group of sober respondents. Needless to say, there was no sensation: the assessments of drunken volunteers turned out to be less strict. After looking closely at the photographs and analyzing the ratings, the scientists came to the conclusion that alcohol takes people away from the opportunity to adequately assess the symmetry of the face (after all, as you know, the more symmetrical a face is, the more beautiful it seems, based on current standards). Well, the fuzziness of the lines always gave everything a certain mystery ... That, in fact, is the whole story.

Men and women are awakened by different sounds.

Many mothers, tired of constantly getting up at night and calming a crying child, begin to hate their husbands, sleeping peacefully nearby and, it seems, completely unaware of the shrill infant roar. This hatred, as proved by British scientists, in most cases is absolutely groundless. It turns out that nature has tuned our body to the perception of very specific sounds in a dream, so men really do not hear the crying of their tiny offspring.

For the representatives of the weaker sex, children's sobs are the most annoying sound of those that can awaken from any, even the most sound sleep. For men, he is not in the top ten. The most effective “alarm clocks” for the stronger sex are car alarms, wind howls and a fly or mosquito buzzing over your ear.

Enormous sex differences in the perception of sounds during sleep were revealed in an experiment measuring the level of brain activity. It was carried out simply: the subjects immersed in sleep were “played” different noises, simultaneously removing the encephalogram. It turned out that any woman reacts sharply to children's crying and wakes up, even if she herself is not a mother. At the same time, nature also provided for a compensatory mechanism: the fair sex falls asleep much faster after sudden nightly “wake-ups”. But the men, awakened by some extraneous sound, then cannot fall asleep for a long time, spin in bed and suffer.

Tea helps in the fight against nightmares.

In the course of research, experts have found that those who drink more than one cup of tea a day have a 50% reduction in the threat of unpleasant dreams compared to those who practically do not use this drink. Exactly why this happens, scientists can not. However, they believe that the active chemicals contained in tea, in particular the amino acid tannin, relieve stress and calm the negative electrical activity of the brain.

Found a way to reduce a hangover.

Scientists have found a way to reduce a hangover after drinking alcohol - for this you should saturate them with oxygen. According to British media, this discovery was made by scientists from the National University of Chungnam in the South Korean city of Taejon.

It is known that oxygen is involved in the chemical process in the human body, during which the consumed alcohol breaks down into water and carbon dioxide. Scientists took the same portions of the same alcoholic drink, saturated them with oxygen to varying degrees, and gave the volunteers participating in the experiment a drink. After some time, the scientists asked the subjects about their feelings and measured the alcohol content in their blood. It turned out that those who had a higher oxygen content in the drink felt better and had less alcohol in their blood.

The leader of the experiment, Professor Kwang Il Kwon, stated that after taking an oxygenated alcoholic drink, the blood plasma alcohol content decreases faster than after a drink with a normal oxygen content. Scientists, however, did not specify what kind of drink they used in the experiment and how oxygen affects its taste.

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"British scientists have found that miniskirts prolong women's lives." "British researchers have proven that sleeping on the left side helps you fall asleep faster and better." "Scientists have found out that when playing bowling, children or adults can start running along the lanes and end up getting stuck in the mechanism that sets the pins." By the way, 10 years and 250 thousand pounds were spent on the last study.

Such messages are weekly in the news feeds. Scientists from the UK write so many scientific articles on such different, and sometimes large-scale topics, that the expression "British scientists" has already become a meme and a synonym for crazy researchers who produce unnecessary and even pseudoscientific results. This is evidenced by a common joke: "British scientists have proven that people are not able to take seriously anything that is discovered by British scientists." How much truth is in this joke, and how much is fiction?

British scientists are the smartest in the world. This became known in 2004 during one study. It showed that the UK is only second only to the US in terms of annual scientific discoveries and developments. But when experts compared their number with the number of researchers and the amount of funding for science, they found that the British are still more productive than their colleagues. You can see the statistics. But if you do not follow the link for the numbers, then you will miss the interesting thought of the newspaper Financial Times. They believe that the increase in the number of scientific developments occurred due to cuts in the UK's scientific budget and the awakening of enthusiasts who are ready to work for the idea. Reminds no one?

So British scientists do write a lot of papers and create a lot of things. But why has their activity always been so prominent in the world? There are several reasons.

First, it happened historically.

English monks, like any monks of medieval Europe, accumulated knowledge in manuscripts, until Oxford and Cambridge universities were founded in the XII-XIII centuries - the first universities in the world and still operating universities. Later, England contributed to a series of great geographical discoveries, published scientific journals, founded the oldest scientific society (the Royal Society of London) and became the country from which the industrial revolution began, giving the world factories, urbanization and a rapid increase in the quality of life of people.

And in the middle of the 19th century, the country decided to increase the degree of the nation's attention to science. Scientists began to give open lectures for ordinary citizens, and popular science magazines appeared on newsstands. Over time, journalists began to write a lot about science. They were not afraid of sensitive topics and sometimes openly criticized scientists and universities. A century later, their defenders came to science - the press services of universities and institutes. It was the activities of journalists and press secretaries that caused the most powerful flow of information that fell upon ordinary people. In order to attract the reader and focus his attention on complex scientific topics, the texts were simplified as much as possible. They wrote about the unusual and sensational. As a result, the brand "British scientists" is firmly stuck in people's heads.

No powerful PR of universities and research institutes will create an information background if the media are not strongly interested in this topic, - says Alexandra Borisova, ex-head of the TASS scientific and educational project "Attic", visiting researcher of scientific communications at the University of Rhine-Waal, co-founder of the Association on communications in the field of education and science (AKSON). - So, the British media are interested. First of all, the BBC (BBC), which exists on a special tax and is not obliged to think about earnings, produces scientific news, films, programs, and even magazines. Most newspapers have a "Science" tab right on the front page. For example, in tabloids The Daily Mail and The Daily Telegraph. And it's not about science politics or astrology, it's the truth about science. There is objectively a lot of scientific information, so strange things also get into it.

By the way, the statistics on this issue are also on the alert: 71 percent of Britons surveyed think that the media make a sensation out of scientific discoveries. What the Russians think is unknown. On the other hand, it is known that the vast majority of Russian general media read ready-made news (that is, not the original scientific articles themselves). They read them in Russian, select the brightest, the funniest and the absurd, rewrite them and publish them on their own. They do not have the task of creating a general picture of the world, they just need to entertain the people. And so there are hypertrophied strange stories.

The third reason for the existence of the phenomenon of "British scientists" was loudly announced by one of the scientific journals of Great Britain at a special conference four years ago. It turned out that some scientific articles are of poor quality, while others are completely falsified.

To understand why this is so, the British Dr. Andrew Higginson (Andrew D. Higginson) and Professor Marcus Munafo (Marcus R. Munafo) conducted their own scientific investigation. They suggested that scientists, as well as representatives of other professions, are driven by material incentives - salaries and grants. Then the researchers took the requirements of the grant committees and, using a mathematical model, calculated the most profitable path that an aspiring scientist could take. And they found that they were given points for the novelty of the work, thereby encouraging not the depth of research and immersion in one topic, but the discovery of ever new effects and patterns. To be more precise, the grant givers hardly wanted such an outcome, but in the end they got it.

Higginson and Munafo think there is still room for change if grant requirements are tightened up. By the way, the researchers only talked about the biomedical field of science, because in physics and genomics (the science of genes) things are better.

There is a fourth possible reason for the existence of the phenomenon: British scientists do what they want. This does not mean that they go to their own devices for the sake of satisfying their curiosity. This means that they have comfortable working conditions: modern equipment, reagents, students and graduate students who do not suffer from a lack of money. Therefore, they can research faster and take on new topics. Even if at first glance, and trifling.

When you skim through the news about the next achievements of British scientists, you don’t understand why it was worth studying? Some look for correlations (statistical connections) in seemingly unrelated subjects: "British scientists have proven that the most objective test for determining temperament is the yellow color of a traffic light" or "Scientists have found out what a smartphone can tell about a person." It occurs to other researchers to check, for example, why we cannot get certain melodies out of our heads. And sometimes scientists manage to come to amazing conclusions that "a man differs from a woman only by sex." The third conditional group of researchers likes to do completely useless work, finding out the reasons for the optimism of pigs or the strength of the psyche of pioneers.

Before we taboo the results of British scientists and scroll the news feed further, let's be respectable researchers and take a closer look at their work.

We open a search engine, enter the phrase "British scientists" and find the text about why some songs are attached to people more than others. This scientific news, like almost any other, is made on the basis of an article. An article on obsessive melodies was written with colleagues by research psychologist Kelly Jakubowski, a blonde with a wide smile from Goldsmiths University London. The girl determined that a catchy song should be upbeat and rhythmic, not too simple or too complex. Such music usually goes well with walking at an average pace or jogging. You ask: what, it was not clear before? Yes and no.

The fact is that we are constantly trying to predict the outcome of an event and betting on one of its outcomes. When the outcome is clear, we say, "I knew it! It was obvious." In fact, this may not be true. This psychological trick is also called the hindsight fallacy. You've probably experienced this when you took a test like "Are you an introvert or an extrovert?", cheered for the football team, or gossiped in the kitchen or chatting about the future president of the United States. With the results of scientific articles, everything is the same: scientists are looking for scientific confirmation of some phenomenon, they find it, and then we say that everything was obvious anyway.

The study was carried out quite qualitatively, - Elena Bakhtina, a graduate of the Faculty of Psychology at St. Petersburg State University, an individual consultant, comments on the work of British scientists. - It has one good idea: the song must evoke a personal association in order to be popular. This has been proven in literature and cinema a long time ago, but if the idea has not been put forward in music before, researchers can become innovators, and research can have value.

Kelly Jakubowski herself, in a conversation with Life, explained that her work can be useful to musicians and producers when creating memorable compositions, as well as computer programs that select songs depending on the preferences of listeners. Suffice it to recall the "Recommendations" button in the "VKontakte" playlist or music from Last.fm.

The headline "British scientists: Scouts and pioneers have a stronger psyche" brings a smile. A further explanation that these people in adulthood have a more stable psyche than peers who did not join public organizations clarifies the situation, but the smile does not leave their faces. Professor Rich Mitchell of the University of Glasgow and colleagues analyzed data on the lives of a thousand people born in 1958 in the UK. These numbers and the details of the study completely change the picture of the job, although, of course, the totals are not that great: the difference in disease risk between scouts and non-scouts is only 18 percent.

What gives us such a seemingly useless study? Probably, the knowledge that in public organizations children acquire stress tolerance skills, curiosity, perseverance, conscientiousness and other qualities that help them in adulthood. Therefore, it makes sense to enroll your children in such organizations, and this sense has been scientifically proven.

Any scientific journal, like any hotel, has an indicator of its coolness - the impact factor. This is a number, and it is obtained by dividing the number of citations of articles in this journal in other places by the number of articles in this journal. British scientists who found optimists and pessimists among pigs published their work in the journal Biology Letters. Its impact factor does not exceed 4 (for comparison: the most status journal Nature- almost 40). If a person is accommodated in a two-star hotel or even in a hostel, he most likely cannot pay for expensive apartments. If a scientist does not publish an article in a high-ranking journal, he lacks depth, novelty, research scope, or something else.

Professor Lisa Collins of Lincoln University and colleagues eventually concluded that the decisions made by pessimistic pigs were more dependent on environmental conditions (for example, the hardness of the litter), while optimistic pigs remain cheerful under any circumstances. . The study included only 36 test subjects, and its results still need to be refined and combined with other experimental criteria. In addition, only pigs took part in it. Thus, sometimes the impact factor of a journal tells even people who are far from science how valuable research can be.

If we return to the study of the psyche of scouts and look at the impact factor of the journal with Professor Mitchell's article, then it also does not exceed four. It's all about the topics of the journals: the best journals in psychology live with an impact factor of six, and in biology - forty.

By the way, British scientists recently promised to rid society of unpleasant splashes in the toilet: experts have come up with ways to eliminate the problem of unplanned water from the toilet getting on the body. Robert Style (Robert W. Style) from the University of Oxford with other researchers proposed to change the shape of the toilet and use coatings that will not allow the creation of splashes. For example, a thin layer of ethanol and silicone paste. The problem was not solved, but the amount of spray was noticeably reduced. The toilet theme is funny and drastically reduces the public's trust in scientists, but the study itself was carried out correctly, and if you think about it, there are a lot of things that are being improved every year, it's just that sometimes we don't notice it.

If far from all research is stupid and useless, then why do "British scientists" exist? Researchers and communications experts interviewed by Life agree that our attitude to news largely depends on how the media presents it. They can make a loud headline and weighted text, or they can pull out the main thing from the news and get the news from a completely different angle. But it would be foolish to say that a funny headline about pig temperament ruined the study. Not only the media, but also the researchers themselves, donors and working conditions leave their mark on scientific work. But the most important thing is that not only British scientists do strange at first glance research, but journalists write about it with their tongues on their shoulders.

Is it only in the UK that scientists do strange things? No, believe me, they do it everywhere, and it's even relatively normal, - Alexandra Borisova is convinced. - In any business there are leaders and outsiders, it is important to keep the proportion. In Russian institutes, sometimes they also do things of little use, and the fact that they do not sound funny (“20 people masturbated in a tomograph”), but smart (“Coordination polyhedron of a metal in trifluoroacetates”) only says that this is a difficult to interpret field of research.

Professor Munafo, who has scanned career scientists, is of the same opinion. He believes that the problem is global. In America, there is even the so-called United States effect, where scientists exaggerate the conclusions of their work if their careers depend on publishing only the most exciting results.

Then, in the 19th century, not only Great Britain called on scientists and journalists to tell the public about science. America did the same by creating the powerful Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Now, not only the UK receives the Ig Nobel Prize for achievements that make you first laugh, and then think. Finally, not only the UK has its own press services in universities and institutes that provide journalists with information to create news. Russia is currently experiencing a period of rapid growth in the field of scientific communications.

With the start of the "5-100" program, communication departments were opened at universities, after the reform of the Russian Academy of Sciences, press secretaries appeared at the institutes, granting organizations also took a more active position, - says Alexandra Borisova. - For example, the Ministry of Education and Science finances a number of popular science projects. We already have a MOOC course in science communication (online education) and the first specialized master's program at ITMO University, the Open Science press release aggregator. The difficulty is that we have to face all the challenges at once, while the same British communicators went through them gradually.

The UK has 64.7 million people and 1.2 million scientists. The population of Russia is 143.5 million people, and scientists - about 750 thousand. The difference is many times, but not orders of magnitude. Moreover, the media in Russia write about space and genes less often than about banks and officials.

So Russian science is underrepresented in the media, and the growth in the number of scientific news is normal. And if, in the course of such a presentation, we find out that the quality of science in Russia is very low, it is sad, but people have the right to know this, - sums up Alexandra Borisova.

Now that we know how much of that joke about British scientists is true and how much is false, attitudes are starting to change. We all want to do what we love, get enough money, sometimes we face failures. But we are trying to make the world a better place, as the British and any other scientists do. And the study of frog levitation or the psyche of pioneers may suddenly become necessary for humanity. And no one knows when and at what moment.

“British scientists have proven that the Earth is not round, but black and crunches on the teeth”

"British scientists have opened another case of whiskey"

“British scientists have found that the most popular message on social networks on Thursday is “Tomorrow is Friday!””

There are an incredible number of such jokes on the net. And they continue to be generated every day, despite the beardedness of the topic. Mainly because the British scientists themselves do not get tired of throwing up new informational occasions suitable for anecdotes.

For example, they recently found out why the bone in the connective tissue of the penis disappeared in humans in the process of evolution, and they also found out why some pigs are optimists, and some are pessimists.

It is not clear what value these works have, what drives scientists when they are taken for stupid research, and why exactly the UK takes the lead in the number of references to such absurd "discoveries". It is worth considering this phenomenon from the point of view of the theory of memes. A meme is a unit of cultural information transmitted from person to person. The concept was introduced by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene. "British scientists" is a full-fledged meme, and there are several reasons for its appearance.

Britain and science

The United Kingdom has always been considered the most developed and progressive place on the map of Europe. It is a country rich in both resources and people. In addition, historically, it was in Great Britain that true science began to develop rapidly. Oxford and Cambridge are the oldest universities in the world, and at the same time the most authoritative in our day.

The English were Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, James Maxwell, Michael Faraday, Ernest Rutherford, James Joule. This list can be continued until you get tired of talking about scientific discoveries.

At the beginning of the 19th century, during the Regency era, London was the intellectual center of the civilized world. Scientists actively enlightened ordinary people about their discoveries, the spirit of the mental revolution was in the air. In 1831, the British Association for the Propagation of Scientific Knowledge convened the first meeting, at which the main postulate of this organization was adopted - to promote the development of science and work to attract national attention to it. In the same year, the first science festival was held, where scientists from various fields gathered and exchanged research results with each other and with the public. Science became public. Lectures by leading researchers were always sold out. This gave rise to informational occasions that the press picked up with pleasure.

More than 70 British scientists have received Nobel Prizes. In 2016, they also received a prize in the field of physics with the wording “for the theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter.” It is natural that in the minds of people, science has been nationally assigned to the British. This is the first step towards understanding the history of the British scientists meme.

Crucial moment

When did British science cease to be associated with quality and lose some credibility? This is due to changes in the English education system. In the 70s-80s of the 20th century, educational institutions were reformed, and various colleges received a new status and names. Along with this, they began to have the right to conduct research. Even later, the government merged these former colleges, and 30 polytechnics appeared in the country. Their programs were similar to university ones, but it was impossible to get a diploma of higher education there. In 1992, they all acquired the status of universities, doubling the number of higher education institutions in England. The number of young scientists and researchers has become immeasurably greater, they began to fight for grants and funding.

With such a mass of works, attention was given to those that were more suitable "for the topic of the day", had novelty and were beneficial to someone. In the 90s, the media were full of headlines about strange scientific research.

In The Guardian for 1993, you can find this article: "Cot death risk is lower among babies who do not sleep alone" ("The risk of death in the crib is less among children who do not sleep alone"). In The Independent, 1996: "Male fish are being 'feminised' by river pollution". In BBC September 1998: Passionate sex aids pregnancy.

It's all about money

To this day, the UK Government, political associations and private organizations fund science very well. From the European Union alone, the amount of material support for British scientists amounted to about $1.2 billion per year (however, the UK may lose this pleasant tradition with Brexit).

Appetizing crunchy pieces of paper in your wallet are in themselves a good incentive for any activity. And if this is also seasoned with the possibility of getting a high score in the citation index of scientific articles, then the scientist can no longer dream of anything else, except, perhaps, saving the world.

This is exactly what was called the reasons for the appearance of low-quality scientific articles in a recent study by British scientists.

The more citations of a scientific article in publications with a high impact factor (a numerical indicator of the importance of the journal), the “newer” the research, the higher the chances that this work will receive grants and material support from interested parties.

The researchers who created a mathematical model for the problem of “bad” articles also suggested ways to correct the situation. First of all, according to them, it is necessary to increase the requirements for statistical samples and procedures for processing the results. Some reputable journals have already begun to act in this direction.

Some studies are even commissioned by commercial companies. Once in the British press there was information about the new work of scientists, which concerned the common myth of the “rule-five-seconds”. This proverb says that a product picked up from the floor after five seconds is not considered contaminated with bacteria. Scientists said that this rule is observed, but not on all products. Later, the Daily Mail, where this article was published, explained that the "study" was sponsored by cleaning products manufacturers. Moreover, the text advised readers to change the “head” of the mop every three months to minimize the risk of infection with dangerous bacteria. When they tried to find the authors of the article, it turned out that behind the whole group is the name of only one person - an employee of the technology laboratory of the City University of Manchester, Cathy Les. Couldn't get in touch with her.

It is especially convenient to speculate in this way in the field of statistics. This science does not care what subject to take for study. Statistical analysis is quite easy to carry out, because it can be entrusted to students and the result is a term paper written according to all the rules of a scientific article.

Illiterate journalists

When scientists are directly asked why their work looks so stupid, they like to answer this way: journalists are to blame for everything. And you can't say they're wrong. This is the third factor in the appearance of the meme.

The Citizen (1950), "Scientists have found magic in color"

In the 19th century, England was the center of development not only of science, but also of journalism. At this time, representatives of various segments of the population showed a significant increase in interest in the press. Publishers and journalists focused on the working class, and by the middle of the century the English press began to become mass. There were even the first hints of "yellow" editions. For example, in the 1960s and 1970s, Vanity Fair weeklies were popular, with comic book-like pictures and a gossip section. And in 1874, the weekly "The World: a magazine for men and women" appeared, offering readers critical materials written by "gentlemen and scientists." Thus, the topic of science, popular due to an unprecedented number of achievements and discoveries, began to be covered in low-quality publications.

The results of many studies and in our time are often misunderstood and interpreted. In addition, journalists do not disdain “yellow” headlines and materials in pursuit of traffic.

On the net you can find such text, for example: “In the far corner of the universe, a planet was found where precious stones literally fall from the sky, according to a study by a group of astrophysicists from the University of Warwick (UK).” In fact, the gist of the news was that astronomers using the Kepler telescope had found a planet that could contain clouds of the mineral corundum. Its varieties are ruby ​​and sapphire.

The meme owes its stability to the following reasons: the important role of Great Britain in the development of science; educational reforms of the last century; a large proportion of English scientific publications in the total mass; features of the grant policy in the country, as well as orders from commercial organizations; distortion of research results due to a lack of understanding by journalists.

So far, British scientists can't escape the stereotypical joke. And we just have to wait for the next funny headlines.

The design used a portrait of the British scientist Isaac Newton by Gottfried Kneller.

British scientists- these are not just scientists, they are masters of their craft! The stunning discoveries made by British scientists are simply phenomenal; such "garbage" as study or research, they are not engaged. Still would! After all, there are so many interesting things in the world, and most importantly, “very necessary”.

In the preface, you probably caught a rather plump note of sarcasm, but if you still don’t understand what it is for, then let me tell you who these “British scientists” are - these are no longer just two words standing together, this is already a whole brand!

If you are reading about some research and it starts with the phrase: “British scientists have proven/discovered/discovered/installed”, then be sure that a very cool and “useful” discovery awaits you, and at the same time you will laugh. When I read about many of the discoveries of British scientists, I wondered if they were actually researching this or if there was a worldwide campaign to discredit scientists, and specifically British scientists (national humor?), or maybe British scientists are the most unemployed people in the world. well-funded world?

Okay, jokes aside! Let's move on to the best discoveries made by British scientists:

1. Have you ever wondered how ducks feel about water? But British scientists did not sit still and conducted research, during which they found that ducks really like the rain! True, any villager knows this, but the scientists are still great, because they spent 3 years and 300 thousand pounds sterling on this study.

2. No less important can be considered the discovery of British scientists that dogs yawn after their owners. This is due to the cognitive-behavioral instincts of the dog.

3. British scientists have developed the perfect bacon sandwich! I don’t think it’s worth talking in detail about how they did it, the very fact of such a study is important)) However, I note that the formula used in the course of this development is quite impressive and has many variables.

4. British scientists have found that thin people eat, on average, less than fat people. So if you want to eat less - you know what to do, but remember.

5. One of the recent statements by British scientists is that a person can die from ... boredom. By the end of the study, about 40% of people suffering from this disease had died.

6. Being a straight A student is dangerous for the psyche and health. British scientists believe that students with only excellent grades are much more likely to suffer from manic-depressive psychosis than other students. So do not study only “excellently”, and you should not listen to a lot of music, otherwise.

7. Another fact established by British scientists from the University of Kiel: . By the way, I wrote about this in more detail earlier.

8. Another strange conclusion of British scientists was the fact that no one gets better from smiling. It is strange that the experiments were carried out on laboratory snails and snakes.

It becomes a shame for everyone’s favorite song, which contains the words: “from a smile it will become brighter for everyone, and the elephant and even the little snail”

9. Also, another useless discovery can be considered that cats prefer to use their right front paw to perform complex actions, and cats prefer their left. However, on average, all cats are ambidexters, that is, they are equally good at both the right and left front paws.

10. British scientists have found that alcohol does not affect the ability of men to assess the age of women.

British scientists, such British scientists! They make such stunning discoveries that simply excite the imagination! True, there is not much benefit from them, both for people far from science and for the scientific community.

On account of fact 10: ordering or buying alcohol at night in Moscow is quite simple. It is enough just to place an order and it is almost in front of your eyes! And remember - this will not prevent you from evaluating women