Dodgy Boffins

Let's not single out the Mancunians, though: Industry-funded science fluff litters the whole of the British Isles. Also in the past few weeks, the U.K. press fawned over a comely chip-shop girl from Kent who was found by a national television network to possess a scientifically validated, perfect face, while the British version of HuffPo reported on a mathematical formula for the "perfect sandwich"?produced by a University of Warwick physicist in collaboration with a major bread manufacturer. Spurious mathematical formulae concocted at the behest of PR firms compose their own journalism beat in England: In recent years, we've seen the perfect boiled egg, the perfect day, the perfect breasts, and many more examples of scientists getting paid to turn life into algebra. As a naive magazine intern, I once took an assignment to write up one of these characteristically English equations?a means of calculating the perfect horror movie, in that case. The team of mathematicians behind the research turned out to be a couple of recent grads from King's College London, who'd watched some movies and gotten drunk on vodka on behalf of Sky Broadcasting. "We only spent a couple of hours doing it," one of them told me, "and didn't put all that much thought into whether it works or how accurate it is."

washington capitals elizabeth warren delmon young amare stoudemire tallest building in the world the pitch brandon inge