Toss you for it? Scientists find it can easily be fixed.

What could be a fairer way of settling something than tossing a coin? Surely it’s a 50/50 outcome, isn’t it? Not according to scientists at the University of British Columbia. As they reveal in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, they took 13 ear, throat and mouth specialists (don’t ask) from Vancouver and gave them brief training in how to make a coin come up heads more often than tails.

Even though the otolaryngologists (for such they are) had no previous experience of fixing a coin toss, over 300 throws all 13 produced more heads than tails. One even got heads to come up 68% of the time. The concluded that:

“This study shows that when participants are given simple instructions about how to manipulate the toss of a coin and only a few minutes to practice this technique, more than half can significantly manipulate the outcome.”

Sadly, although waffling about the important of the height of the toss, the way the coin is caught and how many times it spins in the air, the scientists do not reveal the secret of skewing the toss to the rest of us. So be wary in future of letting a coin toss decide anything important, particularly if you’re in Vancouver and the person you’re with is an otolaryngologist.