Flashback Friday: Does garlic protect against vampires? An experimental study.

Image: Flickr/Ross HarmesWe all know that garlic will supposedly keep vampires at bay. But where does this legend come from, you ask? Who cares!? It's here to stay. What we really want--no, NEED-- to know is whether or not it actually works! But since actual vampires are in such short supply, how can anyone test this hypothesis? Well, we can do what many scientists do on a daily basis: come up with as realistic a model as is plausibly testable, and run experiments using that. It's true that this is not the same as testing the hypothesis directly, but by iteratively approximating the real thing using models, scientists can learn a lot that will help get us to the "real" answer. In this case, the model for vampires that these Norwegian doctors settle on is ... the leech. Yes, it's a bit of a stretch, but hey, it still makes ...