What a Headache (Bullshit Research, Part 5)

Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

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A constant knock echoes through the lab. Like someone hitting something against a piece of wood with great force.

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Dr. Lemoine rolls her eyes. What now?

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She gets up and leaves her office. At the other side of the lab, at his desk, sits her assistant.

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”Wiersbitzki, what the hell are you doing? You’ll give yourself a concussion.”

The assistant stops hitting is head against the desk’s surface and looks up. His forehead looks red. He might soon develop a bruise, maybe even some swelling. His face expresses great pain but it doesn’t seem to come from his self-harm that had ended just a few moments ago. No, the look in his eyes is a great emotional pain.

*”What is wrong?”, Lemoine asks. ”Relationship issues?”

”What? No, everything is going fine with Jason. Great even. No, I’m just fed up with humanity’s stupidity.”

”That is no reason to harm yourself”, Lemoine remarks. ”Killing your brain cells will only rob the world of a chance to become better.”

The assistant looks at her, a little bit confused by her strangely encouraging words.

”Well, if you say it like that …”

”What was it anyway? That made you lose faith in humanity?”

”This paper”, he turns the display of his computer so his boss can see it. It’s a paper about aluminum in vaccines.

”Oh, that one”, Dr. Lemoine says with a chuckle. ”They faked their results. Photoshopped some pictures. A young German scientist wrote a very good article about it. Don’t you worry, there are still people trying to fight for the truth.”

Relieved, the assistant now starts to feel the pain and starts rubbing his forehead.

”Ugh”, he groans. ”I hope I didn’t give myself a concussion. I wish I was a woodpecker.”

Dr. Lemoine’s eyes light up.

”A woodpecker you say? You’re right, they should suffer from great headaches and frequent concussions. Why don’t they?”

Wiersbitzki grabs his jacket and something to write.

”We’re leaving, I guess?”

”Oh yes, we’re leaving.”

A few hours later the two find themselves in the woods. A rhythmic drumming can be heard. After some looking around, they manage to find a woodpecker, more specifically Dryocopus pileatus.

”Look at it”, Dr. Lemoine said. ”What a beautiful bird.”

”I hope he doesn’t shoot poop at us”, the assistant whispers under his breath while he starts putting up a camera to record the bird’s movements.

”We’ll need a specimen to take home with us”, the Doctor notes.

”A live one?”

”Not necessarily. You stay here and record, I’ll go hunting.”

Twigs crunch under Dr. Lemoine’s feet as she walks away. It doesn’t take long for her to return. In her hand, she holds a woodpecker. A dead one. Its neck looks broken. The assistant doesn’t ask how the hell she managed to catch that bird. He doesn’t want to know. After spending so much time with this woman, he’s a bit scared to ask certain questions.

”Do you have some good recordings?” She asks him. He confirms and they head back to the lab.

”You see”, the Doctor says while carefully cutting into the bird with a sharp scalpel, ”These birds are very, very light. Their brain is tiny compared to their body. Humans are so much more vulnerable to head injuries than an animal of this size with a brain like this. There is much less force that impacts the brain.”

”Aha.”

”And if you look here”, she pulls some feathers and skin off the bird’s head, ”you see very strong muscles that connect the lower jaw to the skull. If they contract that muscle, the force of the impact gets distributed to areas that are not the brain. Truly a great evolutionary progress.”

”Do we really need to dissect the whole bird?” The assistant asks. He turned a bit greenish. ”Aren’t there records we can look at? Did nobody before us ever do this?”

”Of course there are records. I wanted you to learn something! Did you think I just knew all this stuff by looking at this specimen for a few seconds?” She scoffs. ”But if you’re feeling that uncomfortable, fine. Let’s look at the recordings you made.”

The video is a lot easier on the assistant’s stomach, which is good as he’s tasked with reviewing the material over and over again to take certain measurements.

”The woodpecker hits the tree about 20 times a second”, he finally concludes. ”The force on impact, which I actually managed to determine when we were still in the woods can reach 1200 g.”

Dr. Lemoine whistles.

”Not bad. That’s like hitting a wall at almost 26 km/h.”

”… yes. I also noticed that the bird closes his third eyelid moments before impact which likely protects the eye from flying out of the skull and prevents splinters from entering.”

”Fascinating, isn’t it.”

”What are we doing with this research now?”, the assistant asks. ”Another paper?”

”Huh? Of course not, there is already a paper published about this. I just wanted you to realize that it is pretty dumb to hit your head against your desk, no matter how frustrated you are. You’re not a woodpecker, your body is not even slightly adapted to this kind of injury. So don’t do it again.”

With that, she leaves her bewildered assistant behind and goes back to her office.

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Disclaimer: The “Bullshit Research” series is based on actual scientific papers. While the results are accurate, the way of testing and the people involved are fictional.

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Source:

Cure for a headache

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Picture taken from pixabay.com

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