The other title of this post is “what happens when you leave a guy alone on a desert island for a few weeks”, and the other OTHER title of this post is “people who are obsessive enough to measure their body hair”.
But what, you may ask, is the real title of the PAPER?
Anonymous. “Effects of sexual activity on beard growth in man.” Nature, 1970.
Historical science is often so awesome and so crazy, in so many ways. This paper comes to me courtesy of Monica at Purdue, and to her courtesy of Dr. John Anderson’s Endocrinology class (Bio 559) at Purdue. The more I see of the syllabus, the more I REALLY wish I had a) gone to Purdue, and b) taken this class. Because I think I might have been studying endocrinology today.
Aside from being some wacky science, this paper earns additional wackiness from being self-performed, as well as being a self-performed measurement of facial hair. And, considering it was a case study, he did some good controls, and kept some very good data. I’m pretty impressed.
Also, this is an example of a good quote I heard from the Nature podcast a while back. “The best discoveries happen not when you say ‘eureka’, but when you’re staring into a microscope and say ‘hey, that’s funny…’” And when you spend a lot of time alone on a desert island, you have a lot of time to notice things that are funny.
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