this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2023
677 points (97.7% liked)

Science Memes

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[–] [email protected] 57 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Poor experiment. He didn't find out what pollen allergies the plant might have had.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 years ago (1 children)

What do you mean? He already tested the three most common allergens: pepper, being ticked by a feather, and feet.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Me squinting hard trying to see if those are more common as allergens or as fetishes

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago

This is a good candidate for a venn diagram.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago (1 children)

*Funding needed to carry out such effort.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

With this sort of talent, the kid is sure to get a grant.

[–] [email protected] 52 points 2 years ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 years ago

Good enough science to be a YouTube influencer.

[–] bionicjoey 29 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Isn't this a joke from Diary of a Wimpy Kid?

[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 years ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

Huh, that photo even appears on the webpage

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 years ago (2 children)

If I read it, will I understand why "feet" is in the sneeze-causing list?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

I read it as a joke of increasing absurdity. Sniffing pepper makes people sneeze so that one works (besides the trying to make a plant sneeze part). He got a bit distracted by experiment 2 and mixed up the involuntary reactions sneezing and tickling and tries to tickle it with a feather. He then gets further distracted between experiment 2 and 3, and tests feet which are commonly ticklish.

When I break it down like this you can see that it is a very funny joke, as one can always tell from a detailed explanation of the joke.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

I also don't get it. Not everything that smells causes you to sneeze. None of the methods actually make sense. A feather tickles you, not makes you sneeze. And the pepper? The experiment is invalid. Did not disprove the hypothesis, needs more testing.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 2 years ago

Glad the kid didn't p-hack the experiment 👍

[–] [email protected] 22 points 2 years ago

Ground breaking research. Disagree? Show me the study before this where they determined plants don't sneeze

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Kid's *probably going places.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago (1 children)

That would be the hypothesis.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Conclusion: Kid didn’t go places.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Experiment: This shitty poster.

[–] Jesse 11 points 2 years ago

Looks like an N value of 1 though. Hopefully results are replicable. I'll wait for the meta-analysis.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 years ago (2 children)

The tragedy is that studies like this still get funding over actually relevant research.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 years ago

Damn, all those like ... 10$ that could have been used somewhere else

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Something tells me that you don't work in science. The process for getting science funding isn't simple and weeds out useless studies pretty quickly. On average, calls for proposals have about a 15% success rate. So, 15 in every 100 proposals get funded. They are funded after being vetted for usefulness, feasibility, novelty, cost, and other factors.

Since studies are well-vetted before getting funded, studies that sound like they're simple or useless based on headlines normally make a lot of sense when you read the research results.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

Some of the odd studies were simply cheap, and are, in fact useless

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

That's either too pixelated for me or a weird pepper shaker.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Looks like "Martian Shakers". Though they must have a special edition, because the ones I found have blue eyes

Found them for $7.99 here

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

Oh nice for sharing the info.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

I used to have the non-shaker version of that.

It was much more fun to play with and far less messy if you did.