The article, "Pathology in the Hundred Acre Wood: a neurodevelopmental perspective on A.A. Milne" was a spoof written for the Holiday issue, but it quickly took on a life of its own. The article became front-page news as far away as Sweden, and 3 of Britain's national newspapers — the Times, Independent and Daily Telegraph — commented on it, as did the Chicago Tribune and New York Post; the National Post even wrote an editorial. (The CMAJ article has since been nominated for one of the coveted 2001 Ig Nobel Awards presented annually at Harvard University, themselves a spoof of the Nobel prizes.) CMAJ also received more than 40 letters to the editor.

"We could only shake our heads about the reaction," says Shea. "We have been amused and bemused that some people think we get paid for this or that this work was done during some mythical 9-to-5 working hours when we should have been doing Important Things. We also noted that some readers didn't realize that the Holiday issue is not a typical CMAJ, which leaves us wondering what they thought of the rest of the [research] articles!"

However, most readers did get the joke. In one letter, a veterinarian complained that Shea and her colleagues had been practising veterinary medicine without a licence and suggested that they should have limited their analysis to Christopher Robin. She also said that, by brown-bear standards, Pooh is a dwarf with pica, and "tail loss in Eeyore may have resulted in damage to the cauda equina, with subsequent chronic pain and depressive demeanour."