That's science, that

Type "improbable research" into Google and you're immediately rewarded with an array of options that could easily help you while away even the most tedious of train journeys. There is of course the Guardian's dedicated "Improbable Research" section, which this week features such intruiging headlines as "The Life-saving qualities of Pizza" (that's the kind of research I like to hear, though interestingly it contradicts this which came out a mere week earlier) and "Why Dead Mice Need Parachutes in the Forest" (I may have to come back to that one). Then of course there are the Ig Noble Awards. And then there are reams and reams of completely genuine research studies carried out by venerable institutions, presumably on the basis that they agreed with Frankie Boyle when he said "Shall we find a cure for cancer? No. Let's see how many fruit pastilles it takes to choke a kestral."

I was particularly proud to see a good friend's alma mater appear on Sky News earlier in the year for its groundbreaking research into... wait for it... which dance moves most attract women. Yep, apparently they filmed 19 "volunteers" (read "egotists"?) dancing, mapped their moves onto featureless avatars (if I'm honest I'm not wholly sure I know what that means) and then got 35 women to "rate" their dance moves. Now I've watched these videos and however hard I try I simply can't seem to get turned on in any way by a "featureless avatar", regardless of what they might be doing with their hips and neck. But apparently I should and, in particular, I should pay attention to "the speed of movement of the right knee".

Now I can honestly say that I've never noticed the speed of someone's right knee or their "wrist movements" (easy, now!) when in search of a mate. OK, perhaps we do, subconsciously, but even so, I'm fairly sure that such characteristics come pretty low down my list, well below more trivial things like, I don't know, whether they make me laugh or will agree to accompany me to a City game once in a while. Call me a hopeless, old-fashioned romantic, but I tend to notice a chap's physical appearance (I'm a sucker for big blue or green eyes - in fact I think my ideal partner is probably the cat in Shrek) and respond better to flattery, humour, a nice cuddle and at a push bribery in the form of alcoholic beverages before I cut to the chase with: "but before I let you take me out for dinner, give me your best Funky Chicken." (Er, no, that wasn't a euphemism.)

And just when I thought it couldn't get any better than that, I found this. I wasn't even on the hunt for it at the time, I was trying to find the version of online Tetris that's somehow deleted itself from my internet favourites. And it turns out that Tetris is not only a welcome distraction on a rainy lunch hour, but a potential cure for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Now I'm not knocking the Oxford University for trying to find a cure for PTSD - good on them, I say - but I am, well, more than a little amused at the whole concept of the study, and how it might have worked in practice. First of all, I'm willing to bet that the whole hypothesis, despite the long words and lofty explanations that no doubt appeared in the introductory paragraphs of the final report, was conceived in a pub one night, possibly just after the quiz machine had eaten the responsible academic's last pound coin because he incorrectly guessed the capital of Mongolia (It's Ulaan Batar, in case you were wondering). I say this because what the "experiment" entailed was as follows: the volunteers were shown distressing footage involving death, destruction and generally depressing stuff. They were then told to either a.) bugger off and see what happens or b.) play Tetris and see what happens or c.) play a pub quiz game, presumably lose your pound coins in the process, and see what happens.

And what happened, apparently, was that the pub quizzers fared worst, whereas the Tetris-players experienced considerably fewer flashbacks than either of the other groups. I feel that this would be of little comfort to the poor people who took part ("You can't get to sleep for all the images of that horrific carsmash, you say? But hey, on the bright side, you've got to level 9!") and I wonder at the ethics assessment of such a study. I feel even sorrier for the group that are not only experiencing sleepless nights as a result of their participation, but have lost any confidence they had in their general knowledge, and I'm hoping they were all properly compensated. On the flip side, I love the idea of psychiatrists across the land prescribing game boys as therapy, amidst cries of "Get in!" from Nintendo as they enter into a lucrative partnership with Glaxosmithkline and badger Harvard to see if there's any mileage in Balloon Kid being used to treat Aviophobia.

Now where were we? Oh yes: now about that cure for cancer...