Scientists have rediscovered America

Researchers from Princeton University found that photos of ladies in bikinis encourage a man – guess what? Almost guessed it – to look at a woman as an object of sexual harassment. 

The authors of the article "University of the bleedin' obvious" ("Research Institute of Banal Research"), published in today's issue of The Independent newspaper, sarcastically call this conclusion a sensation and remind that the words "scientists have proved" are often followed by obvious truths.

Nevertheless, the methodology and results of the work of Princeton scientists are described in detail in the note.

It turns out that when a man is shown images of women in bikinis, they turn off the part of the brain that restrains dislike. In addition, the assumption was confirmed that pornography encourages a man to perceive women as a commodity. The experiments were carried out on 21 students of traditional orientation using a tomograph. The head of the scientific group, Susan Fisk, stressed: "As we found, this department – the median frontal cortex of the brain – is turned off only in two cases. The first is a reaction to images of women in bikinis, and the second is the spectacle of homeless people and drug addicts. In both cases, the brain reacts as if there is an inanimate object in front of it." According to Fisk, in men with sexist beliefs, this part of the brain is less active.

In addition to women in bikinis, the participants of the experiment were shown images of clothed women and men, as well as "sexualized" photos in which only the torso was visible. Memory tests have shown that heterosexual men remember "sexualized" female bodies best, even if the viewing lasts only 200 milliseconds, the publication reports. From this, Fisk concludes that such images in the media and advertising are taught to see a man in a woman.

For a snack, a brief overview of several more "revolutionary" discoveries is given.

• At the University of Groningen, with the help of a tomograph, they found out that the conscious imitation of an orgasm is different from the real one: at the same time, completely different parts of the brain are active.
  The British Medical Journal published a study, the authors of which proved for the one hundred first time that the calendar method of contraception does not work.
• The University of Rochester found that the color red is associated with sex in women. (And we didn't know why they painted their lips and nails red, the authors add.)
• It is simply impossible to count studies of the connection between physical fitness and life expectancy (only one example of another article on the topic "health is fine – thanks to charging" is given, with the results of observations of fifteen thousand people).
• Children living near a busy highway are more likely to develop asthma – this time this banality was discovered by scientists at the University of Southern California.
• Haste makes people less attentive. American scientists have proved this by observing pedestrians in thirty-one countries fully armed with devices.
• Quitting smoking is good for health. This America was discovered by researchers at the University of Glasgow: according to their observations, lung indicators improve by 15% a month and a half after this courageous act. An even more surprising fact is that the editors of the American Journal of Respiratory considered the article worthy of publication.
• And now – the most important sensation! Scientists of the Medical Faculty of Wake Forest University (North Carolina), after interviewing 2 thousand students, came to the conclusion: drunk people fall more often than sober!
  The method of obtaining data for statistical analysis looks especially scientific here.

Deja vuQuite by chance, I discovered that an article with the same title – "University of the bleedin' obvious" – was published in the Sunday Times at the end of December last year and in Runet, it seems, went unnoticed.

The author asks the question: why do scientists flood us with a bunch of studies "proving" obvious truths? For example, such:

• A group of psychologists from Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh conducted an experiment on 30 volunteers according to all the rules of science. Conclusion: in romantic comedies, love relationships between people are shown not as they are in real life.
• Lin Prups from the University of Sussex confirmed that horses recognize their herd neighbors by their neighing. A very learned article has been published in PNAS.
• Australian researchers from the University of New South Wales in Sydney found that hard rock fans cause irreparable damage to their brains due to the habit of shaking their heads to music.
• British scientists (without specifying names and places of work) also found out that bitter drinkers continue to drink because they can forget about the particularly severe consequences of intoxication, that a cup of tea has a calming effect on people and that women consider kindness and generosity attractive traits of a man's character.

Publish or die

After discussing the waste of funds that the state and non-governmental organizations allocate for scientific research, the author reveals the secret of the golden key: the impact factor of the mass media is immeasurably higher than that of the most authoritative scientific journals!

A study conducted in 2005 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science showed that mentioning the work of scientists in the New York Times doubles the citation index, and if a scientist manages to get into the program on national radio and television programs, the number of references to his article in the works of colleagues can grow by an order of magnitude! 

But the fact that stupid retellings of the results of pseudoscientific works in the media are much more effective, including for obtaining grants, than publications in special journals, speeches at conferences and other traditional ways of presenting the results of scientific work is not the only explanation for the phenomenon of "Research Institute of Banal Research".

As an example, Charles Spence, a professor of psychology at Oxford University, is one of two British scientists who were awarded the dubious honor of becoming the winner of the 2008 Ignobel Prize for proving that the more appetizing crisps are, the more attractive they seem to consumers. Currently, the laureate is conducting a similar study on the peculiarities of the perception of bubbles in carbonated drinks. And six years ago, in nine months, he mastered a grant of 30,000 pounds from the chemical concern ICI to study how people react to different colors. The results of the report were retold in four hundred articles in the media and fifty radio interviews.

And such scientists – from here to the moon… For example, in 2007, the staff of the London School of Economics published a press release on the results of their research sponsored by one of the major suppliers of cell phones. Can you imagine – 85% of respondents believe that a mobile phone is important for their quality of life!

Firms that pay for such research have their own obvious profit: relatively inexpensive "gray" advertising of their brand in an article on the topic "scientists have established at what time of the day it is best to drink tea and how long you should keep a cracker in it." In the marketing departments of many large companies, there are lists of scientists who will not disdain to study anything for a little money, despite the concern of university administrations about this unscientific activity and the fact that the results of such publications often fall into the lists of common misconceptions – like the fact that heat loss from an uncovered head is greater than from any other naked part bodies or that sugar children hyperactive.

Classics of the genre

Other discoveries published in 2008 and worthy of consideration by the Ignobel Committee:

• University of Alberta Health Research Center: Students who watch more food ads on TV are more likely to eat junk food and get fatter.
• Oxford University: advertising agents who try to get into your soul without soap, often calling you by name, irritate their interlocutors with this.
• Penn State University: If children don't like vegetables, you can disguise them by adding them to other dishes.
• A group of Polish psychologists (more precisely, it is not said): men prefer blondes!
• University of Southampton Faculty of Medicine: People who experienced self-doubt in childhood are more likely to gain excess weight.
• University of California, San Diego: If you throw a rope into a box and shake it, the rope will tie itself into knots.
• Cambridge University: impulsive, risk-taking and thrill-seeking people, after trying drugs, are more likely to become addicts.
• And finally, scientists at the University of Leeds (Leeds Metropolitan University) have discovered that people work better the longer they do this job.

Citizens! Wait for new notes beginning with the words "scientists have proved"!

A Healthy Skeptic,
Portal "Eternal youth" www.vechnayamolodost.ru17.02.2009