I’ll tell you what I want, what I really, really want — I want someone to get a trowel and an empty soup can, dig these ear worms out of my brain, and feed them to a Karma Chameleon. They’re driving me nuts!

Ear worms — or auris vermis, to use the full scientific name that I just made up — are those pesky snatches of tunes that play over and over in our heads completely against our will and without regard to our sanity.

Let’s call them phenomena exaspero musica.

Well, b-b-baby, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet, because scientists spent actual research dollars to determine the 20 catchiest tunes from the last 70 years. I’ll tell you if you really, really want to know, they deemed ”Wannabe” by the Spice Girls as the most infectious of all the ear worms wriggling through our squiggles of gray matter.

Dr. Ashley Burgoyne, an admitted computational musicologist, led researchers at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester, England, in the study.

The 12,000 participants rounded out the top 10 with “Mambo No. 5,” by Lou Bega; “Eye of the Tiger,” Survivor; “Just Dance,” Lady Gaga; “SOS,” ABBA; “Pretty Woman,” Roy Orbison; “Beat It,” Michael Jackson; “I Will Always Love You,” Whitney Houston; “Don’t You Want Me,” The Human League; and “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing,” Aerosmith.

There’s a glaring omission. Years ago when kids roamed about our house, the worst infection I suffered came from a giggling, purple dinosaur. This led to my theory on what really killed the dinosaurs.

The way I figure it, dinosaurs thundered about the earth tra-la-la-ing ditties until the brains of all the other creatures threatened to explode.

One day, Fred the Wombat and Larry the Musk Ox marched up to one of the herd of singing dinos and growled, “For Pete Seeger’s sake, knock it off. At least sing some Bachman Turner Overdrive once in a while.”

A purple dinosaur dipped his head in an ”Aw, shucks” giggle, and lilted into the worst ear worm of all, that one about loving you and you loving me and being one big happy family.

“It’s now or never,” a berserk Fred shrieked at an insane Larry, and, well, minutes later, dinosaurs became extinct.

(Editor’s note: “It’s Now or Never” by Elvis Presley ranks 13; BTO’s “You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet” hit No. 14 and “Karma Chameleon” by Culture Club ranks as the 16th wormiest song. Seeger didn’t make the list. MMMbop, baby. Uh, No. 12, Hanson.)

As a 1970s high school grad, it’s Bee Gees worms stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive snapping my synapses, ah-ha-ha. (Didn’t make the list).

This summer, the bridge of an Andy Gibb song ran laps around my cerebrum for weeks. At inappropriate moments, I’d belt out, “Lii-dee-liiii, lii-de-li-de-li-dee-liii.”

Finally, the worm wiggled into the lyrics but developed partial amnesia. My cranium swirled with substitute words: “You arrrrre, dum-de-dum-dum, dum-de-dum-dum.” It was like Peyton Manning in that ad singing lyric after odd lyric to the tune of an insurance jingle.

The scientists plan to continue their studies. I have a suggestion worth all the research money we can throw at it: How to debug our brains from ear worms. Because I hear the ghost of a purple dinosoar dancing my way, and it’s not going to be pretty.

— Sing along with Burt at burtseyeview@tribtoday.com or at the Burton W. Cole page on Facebook.