Skim the 100 most-discussed research papers of the past year, put together by the London-based company Altmetric, and you’ll see some of the oddball stuff you might expect. One study found that dogs urinate and defecate in alignment with the earth’s magnetic field. In other pee-related news, some scientists, for some reason, measured uric-acid levels in swimming pools and gently suggested that water quality could be improved if more attention were paid to "hygiene habits on the part of swimmers."
