Fairy Remuneration - Size Does Matter

In a landmark study, released yesterday, by the Inner-West Centre for Hidden People (Fang Division) - a direct link has been shown to exist between the size of teeth taken by the Tooth Fairy and the amount of money left behind.

While previous research has hinted at a connection, no conclusive evidence has ever been put forward. Researchers in the field of Tooth Fairy Remuneration have had difficulty producing any first-hand evidence of the process actually occurring, and as such, no direct link has been able to be shown.

"You've got to understand the conditions these guys work under" says Dr Cuspid. "These are 'Hidden People'. It's in their nature for them to be invisible. Any experiment we set-up to view the process directly has either failed due to the random non-appearance of the entity, or has been interrupted by the presence of an unwanted foreign body - say, the child's parents".

All previous attempts to view the phenomenon have met with failure.

"This isn't just a limitation of our measuring equipment, or our ability... knowledge - it's actually dictated by the basic laws of para-normality"

As one of Dr Cuspid's students, Roy, put it plainly. "Fairies are difficult to see, even at the best of times. Even when we know they're there".

Many previous lab controlled tests have been run. "You see the tooth go into the suspension, you see the money in the morning - but we've never actually seen the transaction take place... that's the holy grail, of course".

Dr. Cuspid points out that some previous lab tests have worked. Two previous sets of experiments both bore positive results - where all others have failed. The only common factors so far noted between the two successful trials has been the proximity of the parents to the sleeping quarters of the target children - which has prompted some researchers to theorise that the Tooth Fairy's behaviour is effected by the location of the children's parents. Many explanations have been posited for this finding, including the requirement for quantum entanglement to be maintained between parent and child, in order for the Tooth Fairy to perform an exchange. Steward Horodecki's theory of quantum decoherence, as it relates to the non-local connection between parent and child, states that the connection is more likely to enter a state of decoherance when the relatives in question are separated by more than a certain distance. Dr. Cuspid believes it could be this decoherance that reduces the Tooth Fairies ability to remunerate in the absence of the child's parent.

Other commentators have pointed to the lack of filming equipment as the important factor in the experiments that showed positive results. Proponents of the "camera effect" point to anecdotal evidence that children trying to film the Tooth Fairy have always failed to get remunerated for their tooth, or have done so, at a later date, when not filming. Exactly what might cause this "camera effect" is not clear... but some have pointed to Quantum Mechanics as the final explanation for this effect as well.

Again, Dr. Cuspid explains: "Like in many areas of science, the evidence is there. We can see the inputs, and the outputs of the 'reaction'. We think of it like 'electron state jumping' - we can see the evidence, under labaratory conditions, carefully controlled labs, with open doors, parents in close enough proximity and no cameras running... we've seen the penomenon from beginning to end... but we'd like to set-up an experiment that allowed us to actually see the transaction taking place... that's why we need continued funding, to continue the great research we've seen to date."

"Any experiment we set-up to view the process directly has either failed due to the random non-appearance of the entity, or has been interrupted by the presence of an unwanted foreign body - say, the child's parents"

As evidence of the kind of work he's talking about, Dr. Cuspid points to the results of his most recent experiment - which shows conclusively, so he says, the direct proportional relationship between the amount of money delivered by the Tooth Fairy and the size of the tooth supplied. In one of his carefully controlled experiments - Cuspid's team meticulously measured the size of each tooth before it was left for the night, and recorded the value of the remuneration in the morning. In an innovative move, Cuspid's team managed to get in to measure the amount left by the Tooth fairy before the target child was woken - allowing the team to get more accurate measurements than any previous experiment.

The results show an unequivocal, direct link between Tooth size and value. However, opponents of the theory complain that Cuspid has failed to rule out other explanations for the relationship. Sue Saxby, head theorist for the Newtown School for the Study of Paranormal Beings says "How can we rule out an age relationship? This experiment completely fails to explain its results. Cuspid has refused to release the age data of the children tested... and I for one would like to know how old they were. The cause of the increasing value of the teeth could be far more elegantly explained by the increasing age of the children. Who knows. We will never know, because this data hasn't been included with the results".

Of course, Dr. Cuspid, a long-time proponent of the Proportional Price Correlation (PPC) theory, was not shocked by the results. "Of course, we've had to assume it was true up until now. If the results had come back negative... well, I would have had to question them basically. I mean - mine and a lot of my colleagues current theories are based on the assumption that the correlation exists. If this test had shown that there wasn't a correlation then, well, we would have found a different way to test it, basically.

It's nice to prove we were right, though. That's always a good feeling".