HELSINKI. Having already given the world such trivial nonsense as the formula for creating the perfect cup of tea, the formula to find the happiest day of the year, and the “Blue Monday” formula to find the most depressing day of the year, scientists have now finally unlocked the secrets of which of these formulas contains the most useless and pointless bullshit.

Formula

The new self-referential formula was created by leading academic Olaf Bjornagen. “The formula is really quite simple”, Bjornagen explains. “It is based around a number of simple variables, such as the likelihood that the research was funded by a company with a new product to plug, and the probability that the person behind the formula is referred to as ‘a leading academic’”. Other variables Bjornagen uses include whether a PR company decided the conclusions of the research before it began, whether the formula looks pretty when written out and how quickly any sense of credibility disappears once the formula is closely scrutinized.

“The formula is really quite meticulously designed”, Bjornagen continues. “I’m really proud of the amount of ironic bullshit we were able to cram in. We also put a lot of thought into how it would look in free newspapers, how it would sound on daytime radio, and how likely people would be to retweet it. We’re also pretty confident that if you try and put any numbers into the equation, you’ll quickly discover that it contains some really nice mathematical inconsistencies and bits of broken logic.” Bjornagen was however unable to produce a copy of the formula for publication in this article, remarking that “you appear to have missed the point”.

There has also been travel chaos right across the UK, with a train being cancelled in Scotland and a bus getting a little bit stuck on a hill in South London.

Photo credit: Tom Small, via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0