Popplethwaite’s Postulate: twaddle or truth?

by Joy Fulness

In the research reported here we sought to test Popplethwaite’s Postulate that the generosity of academic staff in contributing to a colleague’s leaving gift varies in proportion to their popularity. The study was performed with reference to three members of staff, X, Y, and Z, none of whom were actually leaving the university, X and Y merely absent attending conferences, and Z entirely fictitious. Through conversations half-overheard in the staff common room, car park, and refectory – and with additional support furnished by lavatory wall graffiti (relating to Y’s chronic halitosis) – there was general consensus that X was popular, and Y singularly unpopular. Professor Z served as control. For each individual, an empty shoe box marked with their surname was left in the secretaries’ office, and an email sent around requesting donations. The contents of the boxes were determined after one week. The box for X was then found to contain £45 in notes, a further £2 in ten-pence-pieces, and six IOUs to a combined value of £3.11. Rather surprisingly, the box for Y was also found to contain items of currency, but only £4.25 of this was legal tender; the remaining items comprised two £100 bank notes (Waddington’s), several small coins to a total value of threepence three farthings, a 1958 Co-op milk token, and what some maintained was a well-worn East African shilling, but which was subsequently identified as a tap washer. The box for Y also contained several non-monetary items, including three-pages-worth of Green Shield stamps, a bottle of Listerine (travel size), and something rather squidgy and yellow. The box for Z held £85. We are thus forced to conclude that imaginary colleagues are more popular than those who actually exist, or else that Popplethwaite didn’t know his arse from his elbow.

Dr Joy Fulness, is a Reader in Semantics and Irrelevancy at St. John’s College, Bolton. She has an international reputation in splitting hairs, and posts a weekly podcast, “Who gives a shit, and does it fucking matter anyway?” In her current research she is focused on the finer points of nit-picking, with funding provided by the Minutiae Foundation.

First published in the Journal of Imaginary Research, Volume 7, 2022, attributed to David Barlow.