ON THE WEB: THE CASE OF THE DISAPPEARING TEASPOONS Who says scientists have no sense of humor? A paper published in the British Medical Journal recently describes a study into the age old question, "Where have all the bloody teaspoons gone?" using the methods usually applied to tracking wildlife - release-and-capture. The study was carried out by several people at the Institute for Medical research and Public Health, Melbourne, Australia. The results show that 80% of the teaspoons that took part in the study vanished during the five month observation period. This leads to the conclusion that "an estimated 18 million teaspoons are going missing in Melbourne each year," a quite startling number. You can read the whole study at http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/reprint/331/7531/1498 - it's only four pages long. |