Faith and Science: Improbable research: mind your head!

As a young Canadian doctor newly relocated to Papua New Guinea, Barss wondered what were the most common kinds of traumatic injuries that produced patients for the Provincial Hospital in Alotau, Milne Bay Province.

Ahmadiyya Times | News Watch |
Source/Credit: Guardian | UK
By Marc Abrahams November 15, 2010

Coconuts can be responsible for nasty head injuries, as a study in The Journal of Trauma reveals

Knowingly or not, Indian government officials acted in accord with published medical advice when they ordered recently that coconuts be removed from the trees at Mumbai's Gandhi museum for fear that a nut would descend on to the head of President Obama. Should those officials wish to more fully educate the public, they could distribute copies of the study Injuries Due to Falling Coconuts by Dr Peter Barss, which appeared in the November 1984 issue of The Journal of Trauma.

As a young Canadian doctor newly relocated to Papua New Guinea, Barss wondered what were the most common kinds of traumatic injuries that produced patients for the Provincial Hospital in Alotau, Milne Bay Province. He discovered that "2.5% of such admissions were due to being struck by falling coconuts".


Few individuals perished from coconut strikes. One who did was "a man who had come down to visit the coast from his home in the mountains of the island, where there are few palm trees. He was perhaps unaware of the dangers of falling coconuts. He was standing beneath a tree as another man kicked down a coconut. It struck him squarely on the top of his skull; he dropped, and died within a few minutes."

Barss touches on the Newtonian mechanics of a free-falling coconut, explaining that:

"An average unhusked, mature dry coconut may weigh from one to more than two kilograms. A nut whose husk is soaked with water, or a green coconut, can weigh as much as four kilograms. When such a mass is accelerated by gravity, after falling from a height approximately equal to a 10-storey building, and then comes to rest by being suddenly decelerated on to someone's head, it is not surprising that severe head injuries sometimes occur."

Important and interesting though the physics may be, the report's most important impact, like that of a plummeting coconut, is on human health. Barss's hard-hitting conclusion is: "The physical forces involved in a direct blow to the skull by a falling coconut are potentially very large. Glancing blows will, of course, be less serious."

Thanks to Indian officials and perhaps also to Barss, Obama's recent visit to Mumbai was devoid of coconut trauma.

Barss has in his career treated many kinds of injuries specific to the parts of the world in which he was living at the time. Visitors to what are for them far-off climes would do well to consult the medical literature for a quick heads-up on what to watch out for when they arrive. Barss specialised for several years in illnesses and injuries characteristic of the South Pacific. His reports include: Injuries Caused by Pigs in Papua New Guinea (Medical Journal of Australia, 1988); Grass-Skirt Burns in Papua New Guinea (The Lancet, 1983); Penetrating Wounds Caused by Needle-Fish in Oceania (Medical Journal of Australia, 1985); and Inhalation Hazards of Tropical "Pea Shooters" (Papua and New Guinea Medical Journal, 1985).

• Marc Abrahams is editor of the bimonthly Annals of Improbable Research and organiser of the Ig Nobel prize

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