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Wednesday, 19 December, 2001, 23:36 GMT
Science is a bag of laughs
![]() I say, I say, I say...
It may not win Richard Wiseman a Nobel Prize but he must have had a good laugh doing his research.
The internet experiment has reviewed 10,000 jokes with the help of 100,000 surfers from more than 70 countries. One of the findings - perhaps elucidating the obvious - shows major differences in the giggle factor of women versus men. Males preferred jokes that involved aggression, putting women down and sexual innuendo; women preferred jokes that played on words. For example, this type of joke was rated highly by women:
Not so clever The mass particpation experiment is being conducted at www.laughlab.co.uk. People have been able to submit their favourite joke and vote on others using a laughometer. The top joke - 47% of people gave it the highest rating - was this one:
Watson says: "I see millions of stars and even if a few of those have planets, it's quite likely there are some planets like Earth; and if there are a few planets like Earth out there, there might also be life." Holmes replies: "Watson, you idiot, somebody stole our tent!"
"This is an intriguing finding," remarked Dr Wiseman, "and we will be carrying out more research to discover exactly what is going on here."
"While we already have some interesting findings, the data collection period will continue till March 2002 when we move to the second phase of the experiment. "In the meantime we challenge people to submit a funnier joke than the top-rated one so far."
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