SEVERAL readers, among them Jenney Shepherd, Caroline Hauxwell and Jackie Leung, have alerted us to an intriguing paper in the British Medical Journal, “The case of the disappearing teaspoons” by Megan S. CLim, Margaret E. Hellard and Campbell K. Aitken of the Institute for Medical Research and Public Health, Melbourne, Australia (http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/reprint/331/7531/1498). This sets out to answer the age old question “Where have all the bloody teaspoons gone?” using a classic release-and-capture methodology.
The half-life of the 70 teaspoons studied in the institute’s tearooms was 81 days, with 56 (80 per cent) disappearing during the five-month study.…
