DO YOU remember that dodgy cheesecake you had a few years back? The one that gave you a queasy stomach and made you swear you’d never touch the stuff again? Are you still traumatised by the treacle tart that laid you low with suspected golden syrup poisoning?

One rarely forgets such incidents — indeed, memory may eventually become a powerful ally in helping us to stick to January diets. By using scarily effective techniques for developing false memories, Professor Elizabeth Loftus, from the University of California, convinced a group of students that as children they had become sick after eating hard-boiled eggs or pickle. The students later indicated that they would avoid the foods in future. Loftus, who will publish her results in Social Cognition next year, concludes that “food is a surprisingly easy target for memory manipulation”.

More than 300 volunteers were asked to fill out a questionnaire of what they had eaten in the past. Later they were given a personal food profile into which Loftus inserted a fictional dalliance with an egg or pickle that had made them ill. Surprisingly, a quarter of the volunteers swallowed the lie and “remembered” the event. Then, when they were asked what they might eat at a barbecue, they were more likely than other participants to avoid eggs or pickles. Not only that, but when the story was changed to one in which they had pleasant memories of eating asparagus, susceptible participants displayed an increased inclination towards the vegetable.

Disappointingly, the method didn’t put people off crisps — though it turned them against strawberry ice-cream. Loftus suspects that the food has to be fairly novel in order for people to avoid it. This is, of course, unfortunate news for chocoholics. Loftus also questions the ethics of implanting false memories in greedy patients; more bad news for the sweet-toothed.

• THREE THOUSAND years ago the Chinese drew pictures of ships pulled along by giant kites. Now a German company, SkySails, is attempting to realise this vision. It is constructing huge, inflatable parafoils and believes that by using them to harness wind power, diesel fuel bills can by cut by half. The sails also make for a smoother sail, reports Science Business, reducing wear and tear on a ship’s hull.

  The sails can cover an area up to 5,000 square metres, almost the size of a football pitch. But there are glitches — the crew must be able to reel the parafoil in safely without tumbling overboard. If all goes well, the sails will make their first appearance in 2006.

• THIS COLUMN loves geeks, and if you want one to watch in 2005 make it 52-year-old Craig Newmark. He is the founder of craigslist, a network of no-frills online sites featuring classified advertisements (www.craigslist.org). Newmark started it in 1995 as an e-mail flyer to his friends in San Francisco; it soon expanded into a citywide site offering small ads for new room-mates, new jobs and, controversially, one-night stands. The site earns around $10 million a year from employers posting job ads. These are the only fees charged.

  With six million people in 75 cities logging on every month, the “world’s bulletin board” justifies its nickname. The online auction house eBay bought a 25 per cent stake last year, for an undisclosed (but possibly Googlean) sum. Best of all, Newmark vows to remain a nerd.

• RADIO 4’s arts programme, Front Row is just the kind of brain muzak I need at 7.15pm, when I’m scraping spaghetti hoops off the kitchen floor (feeding time finishes when The Archers does). But Mark Lawson’s chat with Michael Crichton a few weeks ago jarred. Lawson may be clever, but he ain’t no meteorologist, as was plain from his attempt to discuss the latest product from the Crichton blockbuster mill.

  State of Fear is spun around the shaky bobbin that climate change is a nonsense. Crichton was treated as if he were an expert climatologist, rather than a gifted storyteller. One author’s reservation was turned into global revelation.

  The exchange was further evidence of what Philip Ball, writing in Nature recently, calls “a culture (common in literary circles) that regards scientific facts as a matter of personal taste”. Expertise becomes irrelevant. Which is why, next week, I shall be offering my learned opinion on the terrible sound installation at Tate Modern.

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