Monty Python's silly walk: A gait analysis and wake-up call to peer review inefficiencies
Thursday, March 12, 2020 - 16:50
in Health & Medicine
Fifty years ago, Monty Python's famous sketch, "The Ministry of Silly Walks," first aired on BBC One. The sketch pokes fun at the inefficiency of government bureaucracy. It opens with the Minister (John Cleese) walking in a rather unusual manner to his work, the Ministry of Silly Walks, where Mr. Pudey (Michael Palin) is waiting to meet with him to apply for a government grant to develop his silly walk. In the spirit of Monty Python's humor, based on an actual gait analysis, a Dartmouth research team finds that the Minister's silly walk is 6.7 times more variable than a normal walk. The findings are published in Gait & Posture.