Every year the BMJ – the new hip and trendy title of the venerable British Medical Journal – gets into the Christmas spirit with some slightly frivolous research.

This year has some truly choice picks.

Declan Patton and Andrew McIntosh, of the University of New South Wales, are worried about fans of metal music doing themselves an injury. They note that an average ‘head banging song’ has a 146 beats per minute tempo and could cause injury if the head doing the banging is moved more than 75 degrees.

“To minimise the risk of head and neck injury, head bangers should decrease their range of head and neck motion, head bang to slower tempo songs by replacing heavy metal with adult oriented rock, only head bang to every second beat, or use personal protective equipment,” they write.

They add:

We can also use the theoretical model to estimate the injury levels to two of the greatest head bangers, Beavis and Butt-head. When head banging at a tempo of 164 beats per minute to “I Wanna be Sedated”9 the range of motion of Beavis’ head and neck is about 45°, which is below any injury threshold of both the head and neck injury criteria. Butt-head, however, preferred to head bang with a range of motion of about 75°.

Everyone’s favourite professor of complementary medicine, Edzard Ernst, has been doing a systematic review of frankincense in all and any medical conditions. “The evidence for the effectiveness of B serrata extracts is encouraging but not compelling,” he says.

The pick of the bunch though is the wonderfully titled Rugby (the religion of Wales) and its influence on the Catholic church: should Pope Benedict XVI be worried?

I’ll let the authors do this one in their own words:

In recent times, an intriguing urban legend has arisen in Wales: “every time Wales win the rugby grand slam, a Pope dies, except for 1978 when Wales were really good, and two Popes died”. We used historical data to examine whether the Vatican medical team caring for Pope Benedict XVI should be especially vigilant in this, a year in which Wales won the grand slam.

After a bit of number crunching they conclude:

The special theory of papal rugby is nothing more than an urban myth, based largely on two Welsh grand slam wins in recent memory. This comes as something of a relief, as we are at a loss to see how the events could be linked, especially given the continuing rapprochement between Catholic and Protestant churches.

Nevertheless, using the Six Nations data from 2008, our model for the general theory of papal rugby predicts that 0.62 (about 3/5) of a Pope will die this year. It could be argued that Wales’ strong win over Italy artificially inflates their measure of performance; however, based on the historical evidence, we do not believe the Vatican medical staff can fully relax until the new year arrives.