Here's a list of possible research questions. Highly amusing and stimulating. Includes nose pickings, but also slenderman. Add the ones you like below:
https://gwern.net/question?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Boogers: what are dried nasal mucuses, or boogers, made of? What are all their types? Why do they vary so much in color, appearance, structure, and taste? If they are just dried mucus, why are there big ones deep inside the nose where drying out would seem to be difficult
While petting
cats, I accidentally discovered cats are fascinated by the smell & taste of
earwax, particularly that of humans, and this interest can last indefinitely. Dogs & humans, for comparison, are not. A number of anecdotes have reported this over the years, but no formal research appears to have been done on this
How common are, and what is going on psychologically, in the occasional eruption of large shared2 fantasy worlds (“paracosms”) among children & adolescents?There are many cases of a (typically pubescent, typically female, similar to mass psychogenic illness) child or adolescent building such an intense fantasy-world that they wind up sucking in & convincing family/friends/classmates. J. R. R. Tolkien’s worldbuilding may not have started early enough to be an example of this as his cousins & his worldbuilding was almost exclusively linguistic, but the Brontë sisters are a clearcut famous case. They typically go unreported except in extreme cases (such as the Parker-Hulme murder case3, the Slender Man stabbing, the Manchester stabbing), often reported only in passing4, as background material5 or via anecdotes—I have been told of 4 cases (3 from acquaintances, one indirectly), all of which follow the same pattern of a young female teenager building up a fantasy world (with heavy input from dreams) and engrossing friends/classmates (with the exception of a male twin pair, see also cryptophasia).