Several people ask me the Q whether scientists can enjoy humour and can say things light-heartedly.

This is my reply to them: Well, yes, some of them  do enjoy humour.  And conduct experiemnts light-heartedly too. Heard about Ig Nobel Prize? The Ig Nobel Prizes are parodies of the Nobel prizes given out each autumn for 10 unusual or trivial achievements in scientific research. They have been awarded since 1991, with the stated aim to "honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think". The awards can be veiled criticism or satire, but are also used to point out that even absurd-sounding avenues of research can yield useful knowledge.

Here is my proof of humour in science in the form of research papers, no less!

***Watch a video first...Doug Zongker's "Chicken chicken chicken". Presented at the AAAS humor session, February 16, 2007.

The paper "Chicken Chicken Chicken: Chicken Chicken" was written by Doug Zongker in 2002 while he was a Ph.D. student at University of Washington. The paper just repeats the word "Chicken" multiple times and includes some ingenious plots and figures to explain it. The "Chicken" paper is a parody of the architectural writing style followed by most of the Systems research papers in  Computer Science. The paper was so popular with its subtle sarcasm that it was later published in Annals of Improbable Research (AIR) in 2006. The presentation, just like the paper, makes the parody of "every conference research presentation EVER" using just the word (you guessed it right) CHICKEN. 

So?!

And want to know about a paper that is more funny? Here it is...

In 2003 the journal Polar Biology published a gem of a funny paper entitled ‘Pressures produced when penguins pooh–calculations on avian defecation.’ (pdf) by Benno et al. Apparently, a few types of penguins are naturally endowed with the special ability of not dirtying their nests. That is, they have sufficient gastrointestinal pressures topropel their poop away from them because they cannot put on diapers! Obviously, the distance and trajectory of this unique penguin pooping should be measured and documented, then published for the good of all mankind!

The authors mentioned in the paper...

The pressures involved [in the projectile pooping] can be approximated if the following parameters are known: (1) distance the fecal material travels before it hits the ground, (2) density and viscosity of the material, and (3) shape, aperture, and height above the ground of the orificium venti.

So, the goal was to estimate what the force of the “pressure” was by observing the physics of the pooping process and the characteristics of the poop itself and of the [shudder] orifice involved.

During the brooding season, when penguins are sitting on their nests, they don’t want to leave their nests and thereby leaving their eggs open to predation. This would make for an uncomfortable situation when nature called, so they evolved the ability to poop without ever leaving the nest. The bird moves to the edge of the nest, lifts their tail, and “shoots.”

The authors observed these penguins “in the act,” and are meticulous in their pooply descriptions:

The expelled material hits the ground maximally 40±12 cm away from the bird and then leaves behind a whitish or pinkish streak that can end a few centimetres from the nest s periphery and may be up to 1 cm wide. The colour of the streak depends on whether the penguin had enjoyed a meal of fish (mostly white) or krill (pinkish). According to Jackson (1992), the time required to excrete 50% of the total faecal mass is 9.1 h and 14.5 h for fish and prawn food, respectively.

They estimated that the orifice had a maximum diameter of 8 mm “at the moment of firing,” (ew) and that the penguin’s rear was around 20 +/- 6 cm above the ground. They used this data to infer the pressure required to achieve the distance that the poop had traveled from the nest. For clarification, please refer to the helpful figure below.

Made you laugh? Here is another one...

****Do you think only human beings can become Devadasses? Then think again! Even Drosophilas (fruit flies) can become some! We have proof...in the form of a research paper...

Sexual Deprivation Increases Ethanol Intake in Drosophila 

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/335/6074/1351

Abstract

The brain’s reward systems reinforce behaviors required for species survival, including sex, food consumption, and social interaction. Drugs of abuse co-opt these neural pathways, which can lead to addiction. Here, we used Drosophila melanogaster to investigate the relationship between natural and drug rewards. In males, mating increased, whereas sexual deprivation reduced, neuropeptide F (NPF) levels. Activation or inhibition of the NPF system in turn reduced or enhanced ethanol preference. These results thus link sexual experience, NPF system activity, and ethanol consumption. Artificial activation of NPF neurons was in itself rewarding and precluded the ability of ethanol to act as a reward. We propose that activity of the NPF–NPF receptor axis represents the state of the fly reward system and modifies behavior accordingly.

***Another gem...

https://gi.cebitec.uni-bielefeld... (Toilet Paper Problem).

The paper describes that in the toilet of Stanford there are two rolls of paper, some people are stick to choose the bigger one, some people will stick to smaller one, and some people will do randomly. After the paper run out, some staff will replace with a new one, and when two rolls are all empty, everybody is in trouble before the staff replace it. 

It's indeed quite hard mathematics paper, but what is the most funny thing is not the paper itself, but the story behind the procedure of the acceptance of this work.

When a formula turns out to be so simple, it must have a simple explanation. But the author hasn’t been able to think of any direct proof.

I wish to thank the architect of the computer science building at Stanford University for implicitly suggesting the problem

-- Donald E. Knuth "The Toilet Paper Problem"

It is said, Knuth first submitted the draft to "America mathematics monthly", at first, the paper contains a lot of incident words like " scatology", and the editor replied with a message said something like "Knuth, joke is dangerous here, please think twice".  Then Knuth removed such like words, but he didn't want to change the title, so he replied to the editor with a message said "I have already give two talks about this paper, This topic has been widely used and discussed etc". Finally the editor replied "OK, OK,  Your toilet paper is accepted!"

More of them:

***A mathematical model for the dynamics and synchronization of cows

We formulate a mathematical model for the daily activities of a cow (eating, lying down, and standing) in terms of a piecewise linear dynamical system. We analyze the properties of this bovine dynamical system representing the single animal and develop an exact integrative form as a discrete-time mapping. We then couple multiple cow ‘‘oscillators’’ together to study synchrony and cooperation in cattle herds. We comment on the relevant biology and discuss extensions of our model. With this abstract approach, we not only investigate equations with interesting dynamics but also develop biological predictions. In particular, our model illustrates that it is possible for cows to synchronize less when the coupling is increased.

http://people.maths.ox.ac.uk/porterm/papers/cow_final.pdf

*** A Few Goodmen: Surname-Sharing Economist Coauthors

Authors: 
Allen C. Goodman, Wayne State University 
Joshua Goodman, Harvard University
Lucas Goodman, University of Maryland
Sarena Goodman, Federal Reserve Board

Abstract:

We explore the phenomenon of coauthorship by economists who share a surname. Prior research has included at most three economist coauthors who share a surname. Ours is the first paper to have four economist coauthors who share a surname, as well as the first where such coauthors are unrelated by marriage, blood or current campus.

The paper is a few pages long and talks about the various impacts of sharing the same name and further research. 

***On the Einstein-Murphy Interaction...

http://leifwalsh.com/jokes/einstein-murphy.pdf

Abstract This paper is a first attempt to reconcile the two great concepts of twentieth century physics: Einstein's theory of general relativity, and Murphy's law.

The paper attempts a reconciliation of Einstein's relativity theories with Murphy's law. They approach the problem by testing a folk lemma associated with Murphy's law, namely

Bread always falls butter side down.

and studying,

a slice of buttered bread with zero support in an Einstein field.

***The unsuccessful self-treatment of a case of “writer's block”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1311997/

***And more...

"PHYSICS PRIZE : Kiyoshi Mabuchi, Kensei Tanaka, Daichi Uchijima and Rina Sakai, for measuring the amount of friction between a shoe and a banana skin, and between a banana skin and the floor, when a person steps on a banana skin that's on the floor.
REFERENCE: "Frictional Coefficient under Banana Skin," Kiyoshi Mabuchi, Kensei Tanaka, Daichi Uchijima and Rina Sakai, Tribology Online 7, no. 3, 2012, pp. 147-151."

"NEUROSCIENCE PRIZE [CHINA, CANADA]: Jiangang Liu, Jun Li, Lu Feng, Ling Li, Jie Tian, andKang Lee, for trying to understand what happens in the brains of people who see the face of Jesus in a piece of toast.
REFERENCE: "Seeing Jesus in Toast: Neural and Behavioral Correlates of Face Par...," Jiangang Liu, Jun Li, Lu Feng, Ling Li, Jie Tian, Kang Lee, Cortex, vol. 53, April 2014, Pages 60–77. The authors are at School of Computer and Information Technology, Beijing Jiaotong University, Xidian University, the Institute of Automation Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China, and the University of Toronto, Canada."

"PSYCHOLOGY PRIZE [AUSTRALIA, UK, USA]: Peter K. Jonason, Amy Jones, and Minna Lyons, for amassing evidence that people who habitually stay up late are, on average, more self-admiring, more manipulative, and more psychopathic than people who habitually arise early in the morning.
REFERENCE: "Creatures of the Night: Chronotypes and the Dark Triad Traits," Peter K. Jonason, Amy Jones, and Minna Lyons, Personality and Individual Differences, vol. 55, no. 5, 2013, pp. 538-541."


" PUBLIC HEALTH PRIZE [CZECH REPUBLIC, JAPAN, USA, INDIA]: Jaroslav Flegr, Jan Havlíček and Jitka Hanušova-Lindova, and to David Hanauer, Naren Ramakrishnan, Lisa Seyfried, for investigating whether it is mentally hazardous for a human being to own a cat.
REFERENCE: "Changes in personality profile of young women with latent toxoplasm...," Jaroslav Flegr and Jan Havlicek, Folia Parasitologica, vol. 46, 1999, pp. 22-28.
REFERENCE: "Decreased level of psychobiological factor novelty seeking and lowe..." Jaroslav Flegr, Marek Preiss, Jiřı́ Klose, Jan Havlı́ček, Martina Vitáková, and Petr Kodym, Biological Psychology, vol. 63, 2003, pp. 253–268.

REFERENCE: "Describing the Relationship between Cat Bites and Human Depression ...," David Hanauer, Naren Ramakrishnan, Lisa Seyfried, PLoS ONE, vol. 8, no. 8, 2013, e70585. " 

Friday Weird Science: The physics of the strapless evening gown.

Not really a paper per se, but still a pretty funny joke: Electron Band Structure In Germanium, My Ass.

Physicist uses math to avoid traffic penalty

The effects of space flights on the lipid composition of blood, adrenal glands and liver in rats
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10530386

Dog farts: Development of a technique for the in vivo assessment of flatulence in dogs
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11453473

Farting as a defence against unspeakable dread
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1465-5922.1996.00165.x/abstract

Breed differences in behavioural response to challenging situations in kittens
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21092741

"The Proper Treatment of Your Ass in English". 
 http://www.cs.ucsc.edu/~btencate...

An easy experiment for dark matter: http://www.sciencepub.net/nature...
Inhibitory spillover: increased urination urgency facilitates impulse control in unrelated domains
https://lirias.kuleuven.be/bitst...
(In other words, the manner in which people's decision making capacity is affected when they really, really need to use the bathroom).

Is there an association between the use of heeled footwear and schizophrenia?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15325026

Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma related to gravitat...

"The Theroy of Interstellar Trade" (http://www.princeton.edu/~pkrugm...)

Walking with coffee: When and how coffee spills http://www.ifuap.buap.mx/worksho...

The Shape of a Ponytail and the Statistical Physics of Hair Fiber Bundles http://arxiv.org/pdf/1204.0371.pdf 

Get me off Your Fucking Mailing List published by David Mazières and Eddie Kohler in June 2005

http://www.scs.stanford.edu/~dm/...

Acute management of the zipper-entrapped penis

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/073646799090011J

Paper Color May Have an Effect on Student Performance

Result: Students with white and yellow colored paper performed significantly better than students with either blue or pink colored paper.

Why Rudolph’s nose is red: observational study | BMJ
Those who enjoyed the Penguin poop paper might like this serious paper with an interesting title:
An In-Depth Analysis of a Piece of Shit: Distribution of Schistosom...

 Traumatic brain injuries in illustrated literature: experience from...

American Academy of Neurology - Placebo effect of medication cost in Parkinson disease.

The case of the disappearing teaspoons: longitudinal cohort study of the displacement of teaspoons in an Australian research institute: http://www.bmj.com/content/331/7531/1498

"Leaning to the Left Makes the Eiffel Tower Seem Smaller: Posture-Modulated Estimation,"(Psychology)

"Neural correlates of inter-species perspective taking in the postmortem Atlantic Salmon: An argument for multiple comparisons correction," (Neuroscience)

"Shape of a Ponytail and the Statistical Physics of Hair Fiber Bundles." (Physics)

"Walking With Coffee: Why Does It Spill?" (Fluid Dynamics)

Directed evolution of a full professor . Curr Biol. 1998 Dec 3;8(24):R864.

PubMed PMID: 9843694.

The Effect of Prayer on God's Attitude Toward Mankind 
By James Heckman

Abstract:      
This paper uses data available from the National Opinion Research Center's (NORC) survey on religious attitudes and powerful statistical methods to evaluate the effect of prayer on the attitude of God toward human beings.

 Cutting a Round Cake on Scientific Principles

"Online Drinking: An Exploratory Study of 
Alcohol Use and Intoxication during Internet Activity" (http://www.psych.armstrong.edu/f...)

You Can Run, You Can Hide: The Epidemiology and Statistical Mechanics of Zombies

‘The Dead Grandmother/Exam Syndrome”

https://www.improbable.com/airch...

"A proposal to replace cryptography's Alice and Bob with Sita and Rama"
http://profpartha.webs.com/publi...

You can see all past winners and nominations still here Improbable Research

Read some more stories here: http://www.improbable.com/

http://www.improbable.com/ig/

So?! After reading all the above research papers if you can't stop laughing, go to a lab and do more research on it!