Claudio Feliciani and colleagues at the University of Tokyo watched people walk through train stations, airports and shopping centers, and ruled out handedness, footedness, eye dominance and sex as the reason crowds drift one way. Fine work. I respect it the way I respect a well-made sandwich I won't finish.
Then, in Nature Communications, a science journal, they added a line asking readers not to blame the Coriolis force — the spin of the Earth that nudges hurricanes — or the planet's magnetic field. Preemptive resignation. They know their audience.
Somewhere a man is typing "but the toilets" into a comment box. The researchers saw him coming from across the ocean. I won't be reading the follow-up, but I hope it ruled out ants.
Based on the original article "Scientists Discover a Strange Global Pattern in The Way Humans Walk".
