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Name: MALU

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Product:	laughlab.co.uk
Date:	28/02/02 (282 review reads)
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Advantages: Haha

Disadvantages: Huhu

“Research Study Reveals Germans Find Jokes Funnier Than Brits”

When I saw this headline in a German newspaper, I was dumbfounded. Had I backed the wrong horse all the past years, had I run my own countrypeople down, soiled my own nest as the Germans say? Should I have saved the money I had spent on English books with jokes which I read with my German pupils of English in order to show them what the world famous British humour was like?

As the article didn’t give much more than a short paraphrase of the headline, I had to click on www.laughlab.co.uk to find out what’s what.

It’s not your typical website with decorative bits and pieces to catch the reader’s attention, we’re in the middle of a scientific research and the website is a medium for same. Let me explain:

On a simple light blue background we’re informed that LaughLab is part of Science Year which is ‘a government initiative to improve the profile and perception of science for 10 - 19 year olds and the people who influence them. It will run from September 2001 to August 2002’...’It is the largest scientific study into humour. It’s aim is to find the world’s funniest joke.’

How does Dr Richard Wiseman, an award-winning professional magician turned Professor of Psychology, currently senior lecturer of psychology at the University of Hertfordshire, tackle the task?

The top of the site consists of a black stripe in which we find ‘rate joke’, ‘submit joke’ and ‘links/info/press’.

Let’s click on info first. Here we learn about the issues which are to be researched:

Part I of the experiment:
- Do men and women have the same sense of humour?
- How does out sense of humour change over time?
- Nationality and humour

Part II:
The data collected should reveal whether timing matters, i.e. the timin
g with which the punch line is presented, and, assuming that it does, the best timing for each of the jokes.

Part III:
A brain scan of someone hearing the nation’s funniest joke at the optimum timing will be produced resulting in a brain image.

We are also informed about the collaboration with schools in the UK and about which cross-curricular issues are covered.

I think it’s a GOOD THING to teach young people how to work scientifically and it’s certainly a brill idea to take an attractive subject.

BUT: the methods seem rather dubious to me. I’m not a statistician, but have often read about statistics in newspapers; I’m always fascinated by the fact that 1 000 people, carefully chosen, are enough to reach relevant results for a people of 80 million. Age, gender, education, political inclination, religious denomination, financial situation etc. are considered depending on what the survey is about.

LaughLab asks people to join themselves, the participants are not chosen, it’s not registered if you enter once or several times.

We’re asked to click:

- age range (it goes from ‘10 and under’ to ’over 50’)
- gender
- country / If you live in the UK please select a region.

Dr Wiseman is keen to discover if there’s a North/South divide when it comes to humour. Ken Dodd, the ‘King of Comedy’ (you might know him, I don’t) has compiled a ‘Giggle Map’ of Britain, so that he knows exactly what makes people laugh in different parts of the country. “Did you know that I can tell a joke in Wrexham and get a huge laugh, yet it won’t raise a titter in Wolverhampton?”

This subject interests me very much. I’ve lived in the south west of Germany for over 30 years, but the one reason why I’ve never been able to say that I really feel good here is the fact that my
and the Swabians’ sense of humour isn’t compatible. It has happened v v often that I make a casual remark and they nearly burst laughing telling me how funny I am, but also that I say something extremely witty (IMHO) or crack a good joke of which I’m proud and they look at me, completely taken aback, “Now what do you mean by that?” Oh yes, I know that there are regional differences!

But why does Dr Wiseman want to study them only in the UK in his so-called worldwide research? Which countries has he chosen anyway? We find a list of 70, the most exotic mixture imaginable. Estonia is there (which has about 1.3 million inhabitants), China (with 1.2 billion inhabitants); the Middle East, Central America and Africa are countries, too, according to this list. Then there’s the word ‘Other’ which includes the rest of the 200 countries of the world. Dear, dear, is that serious research?

Let’s have a look at the jokes proper, where do they all come from? ‘LaughLab has been a world-wide success, so far we have had 250 000 jokes submitted and over a million joke ratings have been registered.’

Now we come to the rotten core of the whole ‘research’, I can only use quotation marks for it. They’re all in ENGLISH !!! That’s Anglocentrism at its worst. Yes, I know, English is THE world language, but that doesn’t make it the only one. Only last week I read that linguists count 6 000 languages at the moment, how can Dr Wisemaern claim to find the funniest joke ‘of the world’ when he doesn’t look into other languages? What he can find is a joke people who speak English as their first or second or whatever language agree upon as being funny, that’s all.

You’ve followed me so far, it’s high time I gave you some examples. I think I can say in all modesty that my English isn’t bad; if I do so, it’s partly your
fault as you keep paying me compliments. ;-) If I have problems understanding the point of a joke, what about the people in, say, Uzbekistan, who know English as a third language after their own and Russian? I’ve got nothing against Uzbeks, God forbid, I don’t even know any.

Obviously the jokes are integrated into the research without being checked beforehand, so many come with typos which might be a reason for not understanding them. Unfortunately I can’t give you an example, I clicked too fast when I came across such a case.

I’m now giving you two jokes which I simply can’t understand, you don’t have to explain them to me, that’s not the point.

1. Q.: Why can’t you buy any aspirins in the jungle?
A.: Because the parrots ate ‘em all.

2. Q.: What did the man say when his dog fell over a cliff?
A.: “Dog Gone!”

???

What do I do? The ‘laugh-o-metre’ has five possible choices from ‘very funny’ to ‘not funny’, I click on ‘not funny’, of course, as all the other participants will do with all the jokes they simply can’t understand language-wise.

The fav joke of the Canadians is the following:

Q.: What do you call a woman who can balance 4 pints of beer on her head?
A.: Beatrix.

I don’t know how long I brooded over that joke until at last I saw the light! Of course a joke you can’t understand at once isn’t funny at all. The problem with this joke is that it’s based on a pronunciation of the name Beatrix which outside English speaking countries nobody uses. I can say at least for Continental Europe that we pronounce it
Be (‘e’ as in ‘very’) - ah - trix, no allusions to ‘beer’ or ‘tricks’. How can such a joke be included? Search me.

Let’s come back to the headline in
the German newspaper which got me interested in the whole thing. My interpretation is that when the Germans have understood a joke - or think they have - they’re more ready than other nationalities to click on ‘very funny’, it doesn’t say anything at all about their own sense of humour!

I could tell you the bestest (Hi, Jill!) joke so far, which I happen to find funny indeed, but I won’t, go find out for yourselves. Instead I’m going to quote one more insight of Dr Wiseman’s:

“Laughter is good for us. It makes us less stressed and provides a boost to our immune systems. Research shows that people with heart disease are 40 percent less likely to laugh in a variety of situations compared to others of the same age without heart disease.”

Please read the last para again, slowly. I’m thinking of submitting it as a joke, what do you think, will it score high?

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