For the special Christmas edition of the journal, which frequently features quirky studies, the team decided to put their own bodies on the line. “[We] could not ask anything of our test subjects that we would not undertake themselves,” they wrote in their paper.

They developed their own metrics: the Stool Hardness and Transit (Shat) score and the Found and Retrieved Time (Fart) score.

The Fart score – how many days it took the Lego to pass through the bowels – was between 1.1 days and three days, with an average of 1.7 days.

Using the Shat score, the researchers also found the consistency of their stools did not change. They compared Shat and Fart scores to see if looser stools caused quicker retrieval but found no correlation.