The 30 human guinea pigs were ushered into the dimly lit laboratory and shown to their seats.

To maintain scientific rigour, they were isolated from one another, with at least three empty seats between them. As the experiment began, researchers watched their every move.

After two hours of being subjected to a particularly challenging programme, they were debriefed. What had it felt like? How did it compare with their past experiences? The researchers then left to consider the evidence they had collected.

Last week their results were published, to blanket media coverage. Bjarne Holmes, who led the team of researchers at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, was deluged with requests for interviews from newspapers and radio stations here and in Sweden, Germany and America.

The findings of the study? That romantic comedies do not accurately portray people’s everyday experience of love.

The 30 subjects of the experiment had averred that Serendipity, a 2001 film starring John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale which featured “a billion rom-com clichés”, according to a review in The Sunday Times, was not how their own love lives panned out.

Welcome to the University of the Bleedin’ Obvious – where last week researchers produced a vintage collection of earth-shattering discoveries.

First came the revelation, from Leanne Proops of the University of Sussex, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States, that horses recognise members of the same herd by sight and by their neighing.

Then researchers from the University of New South Wales, in Sydney, announced that their studies of a sometimes equally hard-to-read animal – fans of heavy rock music – had found their habit of head-banging was bad for the brain.

These were just the latest potential contenders for the Ig Nobel prizes – presented each year for science that makes the lay person laugh out loud.

In Britain alone this year research has been published concluding that heavy drinkers may forget their most negative boozy experiences and consequently continue to drink; that a nice cup of tea makes people feel calmer; and that women find displays of kindness and generosity an attractive characteristic in men.

All of which prompts the question: why do academics spend time and money investigating what seems like blindingly obvious common sense? HOLMES, who works in Heriot-Watt’s family and personal relationships laboratory, insists that his work is both socially valuable and relevant.

“Film is prevalent and influential, and when it deals with a subject matter like love that younger audiences have little experience of, it could have a profound influence on expectations,” he said. “We hope this research will help them retain more scepticism about film, and maybe even lead to happier relationships.”

He confessed, however, that compared with his department’s research with the NHS into how infants bond with their mothers and how happiness in marriage affects the ageing process, “the rom-com study is very much the lighter side of our work. It’s not that it is unimportant but we do take it with a pinch of salt”.

The head-banging expert, Andrew McIntosh, is convinced his research, which was published in the British Medical Journal, will prevent more young people from suffering brain damage because of vigorous head movements in the throes of their musical passion.

However, he conceded: “This is certainly the advice your mother would give you. And we conducted the research because my colleague, Declan Patton, is a heavy metal fan.

“However, this is also an excellent way of promoting the discipline of biomechanics which can only be good for promoting the university and encouraging people to study.”

Proops was emphatic in her defence of her horse communication study: “People are often anthropomorphic so they assume that their cats and dogs recognise them and are sitting there imagining them before they come home from work.

“Our study confirmed that horses use cross-modal representation and complex memory processes, and associate the sound of another member of a herd with a mental image of the other animal. This has never been shown before.”

While proving hypotheses with experiments is what academics do, these days they have another priority too: securing funding.

Last week the official rankings of British universities’ research efforts were published in the “research assessment exercise” which will determine the destination of £1.5 billion of government grants up to and including 2013. Proops’s research matches one of the assessment areas in that it is “a new area of study”.

Though ineligible for British grants, work like McIntosh’s scores well because it has “significant practical applications” – he proposed that head-bangers should wear a neck brace.

Another factor in determining the excellence of a particular university department is the number of citations its work receives in academic journals. Here lies a reason for the studies into the apparently obvious: research in America has shown that citations are linked to media coverage.

In 2005 a study by the American Association for the Advancement of Science found that a mention of research in The New York Times would double the number of citations, and coverage on national radio and television could boost the number of references by 1,000%.

Similar research for the UK is being planned by Alex Bentley of Durham University who has said that the increased emphasis on citations and the growing number of online journals is forcing academics to try to make themselves “the Britney Spears of science”, after the overexposed pop star.

Yet another assessment criterion used is esteem – how a department’s academics are regarded by their peers.

“The measurement of esteem includes keynote addresses at conferences, membership of professional associations and activity on advisory bodies, but it also includes media coverage such as newspaper columns and appearances on programmes like Newsnight and Question Time,” said Vivien Lowndes.

She is pro-vice-chancellor of De Montfort University, the former polytechnic which was ranked in the assessment alongside Cambridge for its English research and which famously has undertaken research into the Bridget Jones novels.

Academics understand that gaining publicity for an apparently frivolous piece of research could put them in contact with journalists who will call again when something more serious comes up – and hopefully boost their citations and esteem ratings.

This attitude is much more common in the United States, but with the introduction of tuition fees in the UK and fiercer competition between universities, more academics are putting their head above the ivory parapet. With the “publish or perish” mantra crossing the Atlantic, it is easy to see how areas in which the results might seem preordained are attractive.

It is notable how many of the frivolous studies come from the former polytechnics, which are under greater financial pressure than the traditional universities. However, it is not confined to them.

Charles Spence, a psychology professor at Oxford University, has the dubious honour of being one of just two British academics to win an Ig Nobel prize this year. He won the nutrition award alongside Massimiliano Zampini of the University of Trento, Italy, for proving that enhancing the “crunch” of a crisp makes it taste more fresh.

Spence admits he tailors some research with the front pages of national newspapers in mind, including using easily understood percentages. He said: “We are now studying how the design of a drinks can can convince people their drink is still fizzy, reducing the amount of carbonic acid – which damages the teeth so there is a public health benefit.”

Spence has also been involved in another significant source of apparently pointless research: studies sponsored by businesses keen to give their products respectability.

Six years ago he was paid £30,000 by the chemicals giant ICI for a nine-month study of how people react to different colours. The report resulted in 400 printed articles and 50 radio interviews. “I had a minder reminding me to mention ICI,” he recalled, while arguing that the project helped further his career and actually improved his work.

He is certainly not alone in undertaking such work. Last year the London School of Economics issued a press release stating 85% of people felt a mobile phone was essential to their “quality of life”. The project was undertaken “in conjunction with” Carphone Warehouse.

A number of top PR firms keep lists of academics who they know can be encouraged to put their name to formulas for, say, the best time of day for a cup of tea and how long a biscuit should be dunked.

“Academics come cheap,” said Spence. “Companies are seeing the financial incentives of getting their name into the media this way. It’s part of the PR industry.”

It is an area that causes concern among university authorities. Spence admitted: “The press office did get upset when I was doing a project for Mr Kipling which showed the sights and smells of Christmas increased the number of mince pies people would eat.”

Others would counter that academics have a duty to challenge received opinion. Indeed, last week the British Medical Journal debunked a number of popular beliefs, including that people lose most heat through their head and that sugar makes children more hyperactive.

So how did such untruths become regarded as bleedingly obvious? Now there’s a new area for research.

This year’s classics

— Students who watch hundreds of television adverts for junk food are more likely to eat snacks of unhealthy food and put on weight, according to the University of Alberta’s centre for health promotion studies

— Call centre staff who try to be your friend by using your name – dubbed synthetic personalisation – are irritating, concluded Oxford University researchers

— Parents whose children will not eat vegetables can succeed in disguising them in other dishes by mushing them up, according to research by Penn State University

— Men prefer blondes, says research by a team of Polish psychologists on the perception of hair colour in women over 35

— Children who lack confidence are more likely to grow up to be overweight, according to a team at Southampton University’s School of Medicine

— Heaps of long string always end up in knots, discovered the University of California at San Diego’s physics department, when scientists put string in a box and shook it

— Impulsive, risk-taking and thrill-seeking drug takers are more likely to become addicts, found Cambridge University researchers

— People are better at work when they exercise, a Leeds Metropolitan University study revealed

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