Professor Scott Napper is now quite the Internet celebrity, all thanks to his announcing that he is planning to conduct a research meant to shed some light on the health benefits of mucophagy.

What makes Scott Napper's endeavor stand out amongst other such scientific projects is something some people might wish to refer to as the yuck factor.

Long story short, muchophagy is basically one fancy way of referring to some people's habit of eating their own boogers.

Thus, what Scott Napper intends to do is try to figure out whether or not picking one's nose and feasting on whatever one finds while exploring these “caverns” helps the body in any way. Nature World News informs us that, as far as this University of Saskatchewan professor is concerned, there has to be one perfectly good (and scientific) explanation for why kids and sometimes even grownups feel the need to eat mucus.

This is because nature only “asks” people to do certain things when those things benefit the individual.

It is his belief that, since boogers contain germs, eating them might help a person's immune system become familiar with such threats.

In other words, boogers are likely to up the efficiency of an individual's immune system by forcing it to undergo regular training.

The professor is currently looking for students who are ready and willing to cast all preconceived notions aside and start gulping down nasal debris, all for the sake of science.

Those who will agree to take part in this research are to be divided into two groups: one will be asked to eat their own boogers, whereas the other will be asked to abstain from doing so.

Rumor has it that the volunteers will also have some molecules inserted in their noses, yet information on this procedure is, for the time being at least, rather scarce.