There are many ways to distract yourself at work. Some people browse the internet while others play solitaire. I collect statistics on the number of times I have sneezed during the day.
Lots of people carry out research into very important things, like a cure for cancer, but it strikes me that history tells us you don’t get cures for cancer by looking for it. Many of the great scientific discoveries were accidental. Penicillin for instance was discovered when Fleming was researching food poisoning, x-rays through investigating cathodic ray tubes and of course viagra came about as an interesting side effect from angina studies. So, laugh you might, but my sneezing statistics may one day lead to a cure for cancer!
I’m starting small, with a sample of just one – me! But there is only so much you can do as a hobby. It’s not like I’m making a career out of this, not yet anyway. Who knows though, maybe this blog will create a ripple effect and I will suddenly be bombarded with sneezing statistics from all kinds of different people? I will have to give up my job, otherwise I will be buried under a mountain of ‘nasal gazing’ data. I could start charging people to give me their daily counts.
What really gets up my nose is when people dismiss this stuff as dull. Stuffy maybe, but dull it is not. Think of the variety of sneezes out there. We have the shotgun routine (one after the other), the paired-sneeze (coming in twos) and my personal favourite the ‘Williams sisters’ bombshell – getting it over and done with swiftly, whilst making as much noise as possible.
I consider this research cutting edge. Sneezing studies have been done before, but I am starting from scratch, not to be biased by any precursor. One study out there seems to indicate that sneezing can be a sign of arousal, which makes me wonder what on earth I am doing at work. It also makes me wonder whether rather than discover my cure for cancer, I may end up just re-inventing viagra?
Results to be published in full when I have sufficient data / get bored.
