Longitudinal cohort study of the displacement of teaspoons (2005)

This is an article from the BMJ Christmas issue. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bmj.com&#x2F;about-bmj&#x2F;resources-authors&#x2F;article-types&#x2F;christmas-issue" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bmj.com&#x2F;about-bmj&#x2F;resources-authors&#x2F;article-type...</a>:<p><i>“We publish a special two-week issue of The BMJ over Christmas and New Year. We are pleased to consider all kinds of articles, including reports of original research, for this issue.<p>The soul of the Christmas issue is originality. We don’t want to publish anything that resembles anything we’ve published before. While we welcome light-hearted fare and satire, we do not publish spoofs, hoaxes, or fabricated studies.”</i><p>See <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bmj.com&#x2F;content&#x2F;355&#x2F;bmj.i6679" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bmj.com&#x2F;content&#x2F;355&#x2F;bmj.i6679</a> for examples.

A few times, I almost emptied some scraps on my plate together with a spoon or a fork directly into a rubbish bin. Since observing that, I have always wondered how many other spoons I have inadvertently thrown over the years.

That&#x27;s all fine and good... but where have all the good forks gone? I bought 20 nice Oneida® stainless steel forks, brand new.... and I&#x27;m now down to the one I keep in private reserve. This in a household of 3 people, and 2 cats.<p>Sure, the weird old forks with 3 tines, or the tiny old shrimp forks?? never disappear... just the good ones.<p>Are the cats hiding the good forks?

Hmm, maybe dedicated &quot;measuring out&quot; spoons should be chained to their corresponding container, so at least you can use them for measuring out sugar and coffee. For stirring you can always use other utensils in a pinch.

that was a funny read... but the thing that made me spit tea was:<p>&gt;Teaspoon displacement and loss leads to the use of forks, knives, and staplers to measure out coffee and sugar, inevitably causing a reduction in employee satisfaction<p>How on earth does one measure granulated tea&#x2F;coffee etc with a fork or a STAPLER?!?

Best paper I’ve read in a month, even before they quoted Douglas Adams.

&gt; Ethical approval Our study was approved by the director of the Burnet Institute.<p>For research on humans, you need to use the institutional research board. It’s unethical to use approval from a director, as they have a direct conflict of interest in this crucial research being performed.

My parents hosted a wedding reception at their house. After the reception, my aunt insisted on digging through all the trash. We let her have her fun. She triumphantly returned an hour later with a dozen pieces of my moms silverware. People are careless.

When all the cups and glasses have disappeared in our house, usually a trip via the teenagers bedrooms rounds up the missing vessels.<p>We don&#x27;t have strong teaspoon attrition though - maybe because the teenagers don&#x27;t drink tea or coffee? Who knows...

Butter knives seem to stay forever, since no one really uses them.<p>Then spoons.<p>Forks being the most useful, seem to disappear the fastest.