Feedback is our weekly column of bizarre stories, implausible advertising claims, confusing instructions and more
A very public break-up
Feedback is on a quest to find the most niche science-themed tourist attractions in the world 鈥� by being told about them, rather than by actually visiting anything, as that would require a budget.
Reader Earle McNeil advises us to explore Zagreb, Croatia. This city 鈥渕ust have the most museums per square kilometre of any town on the planet鈥�, he says. 鈥淭his then has to include the oddest.鈥� Earle evinces two examples: the Museum of Broken Relationships and the Museum of Hangovers. We initially didn鈥檛 believe this, but we looked them up and they are indeed real.
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The was founded by two former lovers: film producer Olinka Vi拧tica and sculptor Dra啪en Grubi拧i膰. After breaking up, they joked that they should set up a museum for all the personal items left over from their relationship, and a few years later, they did exactly that. Two decades on, the museum is by visitzagreb.hr as 鈥渢he most popular museum in Zagreb鈥�, and there is now a second permanent site in Chiang Mai, Thailand.
Feedback isn鈥檛 sure this really counts as science-themed, except in the absolute broadest sense of the word 鈥減sychology鈥�, in which case Heated Rivalry is also scientific and 麻豆传媒 should assign someone to review season two.
However, the surely does count, filled as it is with chemistry and neurophysiology. Visitors can try crossing a tilted floor while wearing goggles that let you experience what it鈥檚 like to walk while drunk, or take the wheel of a drunk-driving simulator to see just how badly alcohol affects your ability to drive (spoiler: a lot).
While researching these two institutions, Feedback fell down a glorious Wikipedia rabbit hole. We first learned about the , a touring exhibition most recently found in Paris, that collects failed and unpopular products like the Apple Newton, Betamax video cassettes and the .
From there, we wandered afield from our science-themed mandate, but we do have to tell you that there is a and that it has, or at least had, a competitor: the Museum of Particularly Bad Art.
To quote or not to quote
In our 19 September instalment, we reported that there are now thousands of scientific papers that reference song titles or lyrics by the Beatles in their headings. This prompted readers to wonder which other artists are being heavily referenced by researchers.
Simon Shuel wonders if anyone has done a similar analysis for the work of musician Frank Zappa. Feedback prowled the internet for a while, to little avail. All we could find were some species named after him. For instance, the spider was so named because it has markings that resemble Zappa鈥檚 moustache.
Meanwhile, reader Jonathan Arch was recently alerted to a reference in its title: 鈥淭hrough beta2 or not through beta2鈥擳hat鈥檚 the question鈥�. He first asked if Feedback might perform a systematic search for lines from Shakespeare in scientific papers. Readers are welcome to hope for this eventuality, but oft expectation fails.
Happily, Jonathan then flagged a 2005 paper from BMJ by Neville Goodman, 鈥�: A Medline search for literary and other allusions in biomedical titles鈥�. Between 1951 and mid-2005, Goodman found more than 1400 Shakespeare allusions in the titles of medical papers. There was a strong clustering effect in the allusions: 鈥渁 third of them to 鈥榃hat鈥檚 in a name鈥� and another third to Hamlet鈥攎ostly to 鈥楾o be or not to be鈥�. 鈥� However, Goodman did find some gems, like 鈥淢uch ado about the null hypothesis鈥� and 鈥淎ll that is excreted does not glister: Or why do we keep on collecting urine to measure creatinine clearance?鈥�.
Goodman was disappointed to find that no obstetrical papers were titled 鈥淥nce more unto the breech鈥�. Feedback is happy to report that this gap has since been filled by a 2015 paper: 鈥�: Planned vaginal delivery compared with planned Cesarean delivery鈥�.
We await with interest reader examples of papers referring to the works of R.E.M., Dolly Parton, Dan Brown and other artists of various calibres.
Gold-standard material
The roots of nominative determinism run deep. Reader Peter Mayer was reading a story in The New York Times entitled 鈥溾��, about marine archaeology in the Bahamas. This mentioned 鈥渢he godfather of Nassau鈥檚 pirates鈥�, active in the early 1700s, one Benjamin Hornigold. Stop sniggering at the back there: the is apparently derived from an English place name.
Meanwhile, author took a break from writing her new Star Trek comic to tell us about a recent episode of 鈥渁n interview with a British professor of pharmacology who studies the history of drugs going back to their earliest botanical roots. His name: Rod Flower鈥�.
Feedback was shocked to learn that Flower was flagged in 麻豆传媒鈥荣 pick of the best popular science books in July. Once again, if only we read our own magazine with proper care, we would probably find writing this column a lot easier.
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