[mini-AIR] mini-AIR: What Rotter Has Written and Wrought

Mon Jun 29 13:31:50 EDT 2020

mini-Annals of Improbable Research ("mini-AIR")
June 2020, issue number 2020-06. ISSN 1076-500X.
	<https://www.improbable.com/airchives/miniair/>
----------
  Research that makes people LAUGH, then THINK.
—————————

01 TABLE OF CONTENTS

02 IN THE MAGAZINE ITSELF: Small Animals Arrived
03 What Rotter Has Written and Wrought (and left blank)
04 Catching Up on Pandemic-Time Changes
05 Limerick Challenge: Trust Rotter?
06 Rooster Priority Winner
07 MORE IMPROBABLE: Coffee Medical Muddle, Masks in Zoo
08 Rotter Dimensions and Dimensionality
09 SOME IMPROBABLE EVENTS
20 — Subscribe to the Actual Magazine! (*)
21 — How to start or stop receiving this little newsletter (*)
22 — Contact Info (*)
23 — Standard Gobbledegook (*)

	Items marked (*) are reprinted in every issue.

—————————
02 IN THE MAGAZINE ITSELF: Small Animals Arrived

	WHAT YOU ARE READING AT THIS MOMENT
	is just our monthly newsletter, (mini-AIR).

	This newsletter is overflow detritus from the actual magazine:
	Annals of Improbable Research (AIR). 

The special SMALL ANIMALS issue of the magazine, tiptoeing in the footsteps of the special BIG ANIMALS issue (which pounced on and in the mental footsteps of the special PSYCHOLOGY issue), has arrived:
<https://www.improbable.com/airchives/paperair/volume26/v26i3/v26i3.php>

The next issue, the special COFFEE, AND TEA issue, is in prep.

Tables of Contents: <http://www.improbable.com/magazine/>

SUBSCRIBE to the MAGAZINE, 
or get BACK ISSUES (there are more than 150 of them!):
	<https://gumroad.com/improbable>

—————————
03 What Rotter Has Written and Wrought (and left blank)

This month's random related research items:

The Rotter Incomplete Sentences Blank, Julian B. Rotter, Oxford, England: Psychological Corp., 1950. <https://tinyurl.com/yajtu4fl>

AND

The Rotter Incomplete Sentences Blank: Manual, Julian B. Rotter, Janet E. Rafferty, and Michael Ivan Lah San Antonio, TX: Psychological Corporation, 1992. <https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2013-40439-020>

—————————
04 Catching Up on Pandemic-Time Changes

Here are some of the changes the Covid-19 pandemic has brought to the Improbable Research activities:

THE 30TH FIRST ANNUAL IG NOBEL PRIZE CEREMONY — will happen a little differently than its 29 predecessors. It will be entirely online, on September 17, 2020. We've been having to happily re-invent almost every aspect of the ceremony (including the way we rehearse and perform the new mini-opera, "Dream, Little Cockroach").
DETAILS: <https://tinyurl.com/yapnz8gs>

THE IG INFORMAL LECTURES — in which the new Ig Nobel Prize winners will give brief public talks, also will happen entirely online, possible over a span of several days. We have not yet scheduled the date(s) for that.

OTHER PUBLIC EVENTS — Most of the public events for the year 2020 (that we organized or were scheduled to take part in) have been postponed or cancelled, because of travel restrictions and/or plain public health prudence. Among those: Most of the spring 2020 Ig Nobel EuroTour events; the opening of a new Ig Nobel museum exhibition in Japan; numerous events in the USA, Europe, Russia and elsewhere.
Future: <https://www.improbable.com/improbable-research-shows/complete-schedule/>
Past: <https://www.improbable.com/improbable-research-shows/some-past-events/>

THE MAGAZINE — We continue to have the fairly ridiculous problem of ever-growing heaps of improbable research material, and only a limited number of places to present it. One small step we've taken: increased the amount of material that goes into new issues of the magazine. <https://www.improbable.com/publications/magazine/>

THE PODCAST — We are now producing delightful pocket-sized episodes, and releasing episodes more frequently than we did in the CBS-Radio days. <https://tinyurl.com/ybogl2or>

ONWARD! — Please keep on keeping on sending us your discoveries of improbable research nuggets — things that make you laugh, then think — so that we can share some of them with the world.
Special thanks to everyone who supports us financially by subscribing to the magazine, and/or by supporting our Patreon.
<https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?u=27430330>

—————————
05 Limerick Challenge: Trust Rotter?

This month's RESEARCH LIMERICK challenge — Devise a pleasing limerick that encapsulates this study:

"Dimensions of the Rotter Trust Scale," Kenneth B. Stein, William F. Soskin, and Sheldon J. Korchin, Psychological Reports, vol. 35, no. 2, 1974, pp. 999-1004. <https://tinyurl.com/y724rveb> The authors explain:

"Rotter collected reliability and validity data mainly from samples of college srudents. Several recent investigations have questioned the validity of the scale in studies utilizing such criterion groups as delinquents and paranoid schizophrenics. The present research atcempts to examine further the meaning of the Rotter Trust Scale."

Submit your perfectly formed, delightfully enlightening limerick to:

	TRUST ROTTER? LIMERICK COMPETITION
	c/o <MARC aaattt IMPROBABLE dddooottt COM>

—————————
06 Rooster Priority Winner

The judges have chosen a-winner in last month's Competition, which asked for a limerick to explain this patent:

"The Highest-Ranking Rooster Has Priority to Announce the Break of Dawn," Tsuyoshi Shimmura, Shosei Ohashi & Takashi Yoshimura, Scientific Reports, vol. 5, 2015, 11683. (Thanks to Hugh Henry for bringing this to our attention.) <https://www.nature.com/articles/srep11683.>

INVESTIGATOR CHRIS HANSEN writes:

If your rooster is top of the heap
He'll crow lustily rather than peep.
  But if he's away
  At the breaking of day.
It's his second who'll rouse you from sleep.

This month's take from our LIMERICK LAUREATE, MARTIN EIGER:

I'm subordinate, humble, and low.
I will know when it's my turn to go.
  Ever patient, I wait,
  Neither early nor late,
Until President Trump starts to crow.

—————————
07 MORE IMPROBABLE: Coffee Medical Muddle, Masks in Zoo

Recent improbable research bits you may have missed...

BLOG: <http://www.improbable.com/>:
* Research about coffee-and-health is often and easily confounded
* Lip-pumping invention avoids "ducky" lips [new patent]
* Respecting the prize-winning dignity of plants, in Barcelona
*…and much more

LUXURIANT FLOWING HAIR CLUB FOR SCIENTISTS (LFHCfS) 
<https://www.improbable.com/category/lfhcfs-hair-club/>

PODCAST: 
<https://www.improbable.com/category/the-weekly-improbable-research-podcast/>:
  Pocket-Sized #1012: "Monkeys and College Students"
  Pocket-Sized #1013: "Death to Improve Basketball"
  Big Episode #212: "Kansas Is Flatter Than a Pancake"
  Pocket-Sized #1014: "Just A Sigh"
  Pocket-Sized #1015: "Scary Masks in a Zoo"
  Pocket-Sized #1016: "Apewoman Siren"
  Big Episode #213: "The 29th 1st Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony"
  Pocket-Sized #1017: "Normally Chasing Their Tails"

FACEBOOK: <http://www.facebook.com/improbableresearch>

TWITTER: @ImprobResearch, @MarcAbrahams, #IgNobel

INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/improbable_research/

PATREON: <www.patreon.com/ImprobableResearch>

—————————
08 Rotter Dimensions and Dimensionality

"Dimensionality of the Rotter Interpersonal Trust Scale," Ki-Taek Chun and John B. Campbell, Psychological Reports, vol. 35, no. 3, 1974, pp. 1059-1070.  <https://tinyurl.com/yboqlxvf> The authors explain:

"Its dimensionality was investigated through cluster analysis and orthogonal and oblique rotations following a principal axis factor solution. Four dimensions, designated "Political Cynicism," "Interpersonal Exploitation," "Societal Hypocrisy," and "Reliable Role-performance" were identifiable across techniques."

—————————

DISCOVER (MUCH, MUCH) MORE IMPROBABLE STUFF.

	SUBCRIBE TO THE ACTUAL (PDF) MAGAZINE!
	<www.improbable.com/magazine/>

—————————
09 SOME IMPROBABLE EVENTS

30th First Annual Ig Nobel ceremony		—Sep 17, 2020
Ig Informal Lectures					—Dates TBA
Gothenburg, Sweden					—Oct 2, 2020
Harvard Club of Cape Cod				—Nov 19, 2020
2021 Ig Nobel EuroTour					—March-April 2021 

For details and additional events, see
<http://www.improbable.com/improbable-research-shows/complete-schedule/>

—————————
—————————
20 — Subscribe to the Actual Magazine! (*)

The Annals of Improbable Research is a 6-issues-per-year magazine, 
in PDF form. 
It's packed with research that makes people laugh, then think.

	<www.improbable.com/magazine/>
	SUBSCRIPTIONS	($25, for six issues) 
	BACK ISSUES 	($5 each)

(mini-AIR, the thing you are reading at this moment, is but a tiny, free-floating appendix to the actual magazine.)

—————————
21 — How to start or stop receiving this newsletter (*)

This newsletter, Mini-AIR, is just a (free!) tiny monthly *supplement* to the big, bold six-times-a-year magazine Annals of Improbable Research.

   To SUBSCRIBE or UNSUBSCRIBE to mini-AIR:
   <http://five.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/mini-air>

   ARCHIVES: <http://improbable.com/airchives/miniair>

—————————
22 — CONTACT INFO (*)

Annals of Improbable Research (AIR)
<www.improbable.com>
EDITORIAL: <MARC aaattt IMPROBABLE dddooottt COM>
SUBSCRIPTION QUESTIONS: <subscriptions AT improbable.com>
Cambridge, MA, USA
Twitter: @ImprobResearch

—————————
23 — Standard Gobbledegook (*)

EDITOR: Marc Abrahams
CO-CONSPIRATORS: Kees Moeliker, Alice Shirrell Kaswell, Gary Dryfoos, Nan Swift, Stephen Drew
PROOFREADER: Ambient Happenstance
AUTHORITY FIGURES: Nobel Laureates Dudley Herschbach, Sheldon Glashow, Richard Roberts

Key words: improbable research, science humor, Ig Nobel, AIR, the
(c) copyright 2020, Annals of Improbable Research

—————————