How Star Wars Can Cure Bowel Cancer. You Read That Right.

We’re all familiar with the trope of surgeons playing music in the operating theatre as they root around in the bodies of their patients. Almost every study comes back saying that music in the operating room is good for the surgeon (it promotes relaxation and concentration) and thus good for the patient. But what kind of music is best?

A group of Australian researchers were investigating this very thing when they came across an odd discovery: Doctors who listen to the theme music from Star Wars are much more likely to detect bowel cancer than those who listened to other music or worked in silence.

The boffins compared how doctors did finding cancers during colonoscopies. Those who conducted the procedure were more likely to find cancerous polyps while listening to Star Wars music. Why? “Our finding that the polyp detection rate and adenoma detection rate were higher in the [Star Wars] group may relate to the heightened observation skills of the endoscopist in a conducive musical environment.

“As Star Wars fans, we must suspect that The Force was also involved, enhancing our force-sensitive abilities to detect polyps, despite an overall more hostile luminal environment.”

If you’d like probe deeper (sorry) into this study–there are some subtleties to what led to these results–go to The Daily Mail.