Mark Benecke Lachende Wissenschaft: Aus den Geheimarchiven des Spaß-Nobelpreises Science for Laughs Verlagsgruppe Lübbe GmbH & Co. KG, September 2005, 280 pp. ISBN 3-404-60556-X These are deep waters, Watson! Murder is meant to be a serious business and you would expect such a master of mayhem as Mark Benecke, writer on murder methods and adviser to the grisly ‘Bodyworlds’ exhibition, to be a one-track guardian of that grim and humourless gate. How wrong you would be! This new book offers samples of his quarrying in a quite different field – that of the wonderful American magazine The Annals of Improbable Research (AIR) which draws on more than 10,000 scientific, medical and other technical journals to publicise the most bizarre yet authentic research around. Its spin-off is the annual Ig Noble prize, awarded for ‘genuine published research that makes you laugh, then think’. That Benecke is working in exactly the same spirit is shown by the title of his book, Lachende Wissenschaft, literally Laughing Science. Thus among the quirkier insights he offers us are ‘Grizzly Bears Are Scared of Cola’, ‘Panic Attacks and Cheese’, and ‘Shoe Fetishism in Times of Cholera’. Each entry explains the scientific content of the study, why and how it was undertaken and published, and what the author (and sometimes the AIR team) have thought about it. The writing is lighthearted, the basis strictly scientific. One hilarious example is a gem of research by Martina Morris, of the University of Washington, into why old men overestimate the number of women they’ve had sex with. Her conclusion, summarised by Benecke and based on her studies of numerous surveys conducted by other people, is that the men’s alleged conquests suspiciously peak at the figures of 10, 20, 30, 40, etc. This prompts her to suggest that, as age takes its toll, a growing haziness leads oldies to round up their totals upwardly for good measure. And her solution? Only ask men who they’ve slept with in the last five years. Benecke’s scientific explanations are mercifully simple and clear, and his notes at the end of each entry are very useful. Lively and funny, this is a bran tub of a book that you can open wherever you like, and find answers to some of the questions you never thought you’d think about.