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Thanks, perhaps, to falling stock markets and turmoil in the Middle East, Britons have become even more superstitious than usual, according to a report published today.
The Scots top the UK superstition league table, followed by the English, Welsh and Northern Irish. Women are more superstitious than men, and young people are more likely to touch wood, carry a talisman, or walk around a ladder than the old, according to the survey conducted by Richard Wiseman, a psychologist at Hertfordshire University.
To mark national science week - which has just ended - Dr Wiseman launched an internet survey of national superstition, and found it "surprisingly high, even among those with a scientific background".