Have you every read about some new science experiment or research study that just seems... well, stupid? If you've ever gotten to the point where you've wondered what other bogus things they'll pay people to learn about, you're in luck. Here's 7 of the most ridiculous studies ever:
Sex, Drugs and Science
If this first group of studies show us anything, it's that scientists are as drugged up and crazy as the junkies up the street from me.
Elephants on Acid:
If you were going to see the effects of LSD on an elephant, wouldn't you start with smaller doses and progressively increase the dosage until there was a noticeable change in their behavior? I sure would. But the researchers on this one aren't like you and me. Instead the researchers working on this one started off by injecting the poor beast with 3000 times the dosage needed for an average human, despite the fact that elephants weigh around 50 times what the average human weighs. Within two hours, the animal died. The scientists defended their actions by saying they had used LSD plenty of times and were sure it was safe. They then concluded, "elephants are highly sensitive to LSD." Apparently another scientist found their results to be suspicious, so he gave elephants LSD in their water. In his study, the elephants acted a little funny, but were totally fine.
Turkey Arousal:
We've all heard stories detailing how stupid turkeys are -like the one that says they'll drown if you leave them in the rain. Well, some of those turkey stories may be bogus, but two Penn State researchers discovered that turkeys are so stupid they can be trained to be aroused by little more than sticks. Their experiment consisted of creating a model female turkey that could be progressively deconstructed. The scientists would then gauge the turkey's interest in the "female" and then remove some parts of her body and try again. They were expecting the birds would lose interest after is was stripped down enough. Surprisingly, the turkeys were aroused even when the model became little more than a stick with a head. I guess this not only shows how stupid turkeys are, but how perverse they are too.
Source | Photo Via Vicki's Nature [Flickr]
Semen As an Anti-depressant?
I always thought scientists were supposed to be unbiased. I mean, if you're hoping for certain results, might that affect your research? Obviously these researchers bypassed that concept, by attempting to prove that semen works as an antidepressant. They decided to study this theory by interviewing college women who were sexually active. Their conclusions proved that women who had sex without condoms were less depressed than women who used them. Of course, their research was extremely preliminary and they didn't even bother to take into account additional factors, like the fact that women not using condoms are more likely to be in serious relationships. It doesn't take a scientist to figure out that this might play into someone's relative level of happiness. But like I said, this study was about as unbiased as all those tobacco company ones that couldn't connect smoking with cancer.
Source | Photo Via Zen [Flickr]
Paging Dr. Obvious
The rest of these studies are amazing -in that someone actually bothered to research things so obvious:
Head Banging is Bad For You:
Who would have ever thought that aggressively and repeatedly throwing your head up and down would be bad for you? Gee, I never would have imagined that spinal damage and brain trauma could have resulted from head banging. Obviously, I'm being sarcastic. After years of dating a metal head, I can assure you that head banging can certainly make you retarded...or at least, it doesn't help your intelligence at all. The only good thing researchers found was that head banging is unlikely to leave you unconscious. What is really funny is the researcher's suggestions for the metal genre. They suggest metal bands play more mellow tunes and less "beat oriented" music. They also urged label to place anti-head banging warnings on their cds. Oh, and listeners were advised to start listening to "adult-oriented rock" instead of heavy metal. Yeah, that's gonna happen real soon.
Source | Photo Via Cayusa [Flickr]
Male science nerds likely to be virgins:
Hmmm, who is most likely to be a virgin, a party-girl, a jock, or a nerd? Think about it. No surprise here; male science nerds between 16 and 25 are the most likely to not have had sex. At least the study provided some legitimate reasons for this statistic, rather than the typical "nerds are pimply and boring" theories of popular media. The study reasoned that these nerds were the population segment least likely to be in situations where they would meet potential lovers. Apparently, doing homework and going to the library doesn't help you meet chicks. Hey, at least they're being productive. Interestingly, female art students were the most sexually active.
Source | Photo Via Miss604 [Flickr]
Bullies Like Seeing Pain:
If bullies were compassionate they would sit around crying whenever they picked on people. The fact that they don't do so might just indicate that they are mean. Why did anyone need to set up a study to confirm that bullies enjoy seeing other people in pain? An interesting thing about this study is that it was the first time anyone used fMRI to evaluate how respondents reacted to different emotions. Instead of being empathetic like the brain of a normal person, bullies mind's activate their reward centers when they see videos of other people being picked on.
Source | Photo Via ZZClef [Flickr]
Television Viewers Are Unhappy:
It's common knowledge that television and other forms of entertainment are a way for people to escape their problems. If you run home to watch tv instead rather than hanging out with friends, you might be unhappy. Did we really need a scientist to tell us that people who socialize are generally more happy than people who sit at home watching tv all day? What's more crazy is that they needed over 30 years of data to back up their claims. The only unique thing the study discovered was that many viewers are actually addicted. (Marx was right about television, is this evidence that the scientists are commies?):
"Addictive activities produce momentary pleasure and long-term misery and regret," said Steven Martin, co-author of the study. "People most vulnerable to addiction tend to be socially or personally disadvantaged. For this kind of person, TV can become a kind of opiate in a way. It's habitual, and tuning in can be an easy way of tuning out."
Funny, I've was using the audio/visual equivalent of heroin the whole time I was researching this. I swear I could quit any time. Source Now that I've written this, I think I've got a couple of ideas I could get funded. For example, are people happier when they're warm at home or cold in the middle of nowhere? Or maybe I could find out if donkeys really die when they take a bunch of cocaine and other drugs at a bachelor party. Do you guys have any ideas for awesome studies?
Comments (30)
But, please read Marx carefully and have some common sense. How could have he even known the effects of TV when he lived in the 19th century?
The person who really made such comments about TV was Theodore Adorno, a Frankfurt School Marxist scholar and musician who wrote extensively about the effects of Capital and pop-culture.
This is a very typical mistake because Americans are taught to hate Marx without ever reading or understanding his ACADEMIC CRITIQUE (NOT REVOLUTIONARY DOCTRINE)of Capitalism
-Christopher
Skidworth, learn from your esteemed prey. Don't jump to conclusions about people. Teach, don't preach.
peace out
Marx called religion the opiate of the masses. TV as the opiate of the masses is of much more recent vintage.
it should be a worldwide project though, just to make sure.
What about getting some of these researchers to test if it is true that it is not the fall that kills you, but the sudden stop at the end?
Kids have a right to learn about evolution in science. Religious theory certainly has no place in the science classroom. Perhaps if they take a religion/history class, they can learn about the many theories of how we came to be (not just the Juedo/Christian/Islamic way). What about Buddhism, Hinduism, and the many ancient religions? What ever they believe should be their own choice.
And yeah, thats a ghetto blaster!
I'm not even particularly religious, but I find myself doing this sort of thing all the time on the internet.... sheesh...
Where did we come from? I don't feel the need to answer that. Some people do, and they say that God created the universe. To them, I ask where God comes from.
As the editor who published Science Made Stupid, I can assure you that Justin is completely correct.
I wonder what that chart would look like... (Yes, I know it's not real. It would still be amusing to see.)
"Cain and Seth married their own sisters. At this time in history God’s prohibition against incest was not in effect. The degradation of human genetic information and the resulting physiological breakdowns that occurred as a result of sin had not yet taken great effect."
So...where in the Bible does it say that? Was the world somehow less "sin-cursed" at that time? What proof do you have of this from the Bible? If anything, the Old Testament depcits an angry, vengeful God who is *so* angry with His creations that he burns them, turns them into pillars of salt, drowns the world, etc.
Or are you just making things up to justify the obvious problem of incest within the creationist model?
"Now, of course, we frown on incest and have made it illegal because we have the knowledge of its effects on the resulting offspring. The mistake we make is looking at the Genesis story through the lens of our own cultural constructs. We cannot assume that there was not marriage between these siblings simply because Genesis does not explicitly say there was not."
Are we also making mistakes by looking at Genesis literally? Your logic could also be used to imply this.
And now I explain. Evolutionary theory does not deny the possibility of a God or gods, creator, sustainer, destroyer or otherwise. It merely posits a possible (and as far as we can tell extremely likely) chain of events based on observation of the fossil record, geology, geography, archaeology and various empirically provable physical laws (such as thermodynamics). Yes, there are gaps in the fossil record due to the steep odds against getting fossilized. Fossils of small arboreal creatures are extremely rare because when a little critter dies in the woods it's usually dismembered within days by scavengers; this is why human ancestry (and all primate ancestry) is difficult to map in the absence of DNA.
One common mistake both critics and proponents of evolutionary theory make is that it is "improvement." While it is true that the earliest organisms were quite simple, and more complex forms evolved later, keep in mind that simple organisms are still here in vast numbers, and (with the possible exception of our abstract reasoning capabilities) complexity has not really increased since the Devonian Period (before the dinosaurs). Rather, evolution is the story of adaptation and mutation. "Adaptation" is actually misleading, because it implies a deliberate attempt to improve a species. In actuality, an individual that happens to have an advantageous feature may be more likely than its buddies to reproduce and pass on the gene that codes for that feature. In some instances, this can allow that particular bloodline to survive a cataclysm that wipes out the others (or allow it to BE that cataclysm as it out-eats the others!) --- or it may make no difference at all, depending on what happens. If a faster breed of jackalope takes over the island, rendering other jackalopes extinct, only to get wiped out by a volcanic eruption that re-paves the whole thing with hot lava and poison gas... well, you see how complex the story of life can get.
Various features can appear, disappear and reappear. Flight began with insects, and showed up in pterosaurs, birds and bats. Could some dinosaurs fly? Dromaeosaurs and a few others had feathers, but their ability to fly seems questionable. Also, just as some modern birds are flightless, the ability to fly may become lost in some species if the need to keep it vanishes and it becomes an unnecessary expense or a liability.
Evolution is a constant flow of activity, prompted mainly by small mutations in DNA. These mutations can be caused by radiation, or by cellular mechanisms as yet poorly understood (transcription factors, to name but one). In viruses and unicellular organisms, natural evolution can be observed by humans. In multicellular organisms, noticeable changes occur over much longer spans of time. The oldest known hominid fossils (found in Africa) may be over five million years old. Despite the fact that rapid transit only became possible in the past century, a LOT can happen in five million years. More than one hominid branch may arise, sometimes simultaneously. Groups may migrate over vast distances. Europe was home to both Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon only a few hundred thousand years ago. Despite their larger brains, Neanderthals seem to be gone. Could they mate with our ancestors? We're still not sure how closely-related they were. All humans alive today can trace their ancestry back to one hominid line from Africa that produced the Cro-Magnon. This family has since split up, migrated, re-combined, re-split, etc. and populated Oceania, Australia and the Americas via shallow seas and land-bridges --- all within the past million years or two.
Humans did not begin recording their histories, as far as we know, until less than 10,000 years ago. Even today, there are cultures (sadly dwindling) that record their histories orally, not in written form.
When one talks of thousands and millions of years, many people merely nod, take notes, and hope they remember this for Friday's test. Instead, one should take a tape measure, go out to a large field, and start measuring to get a feel for the huge spans of time. Measure 100 inches. A human life is about 100 years now (during American colonial times and before, it was half that. In some parts of the world, it's still brutal & short). Ten times that is a thousand years --- Medieval times. Another ten centuries back, and the Roman Empire is rising. You'd have to go back in time a thousand centuries to reach one million years in the past. Your tape measure ran out of tape long ago. In fact, to find a million unbroken inches of land for comparison, you'd need a desert.
As for cultural creation myths --- I take them for what they are: man's attempt to explain our origins. Considering that most of those attempts are at least 10,000 years old if they are a day, they're pretty good. Some are similar, some vastly different. All reflect truths about ourselves and how we see the Universe and our place in it. However, I see no reason to proclaim one myth more or less valid than another simply because the culture that produced it is or is not currently thriving.
ADAM AND EVE HAD MANY CHILDREN: SONS & DAUGHTERS. THESE SONS & DAUGHTERS MARRIED EACH OTHER AND HAD MORE SON & DAUGHTERS.
This world is full of idiots, probably because of the inbreeding that ocurred very early in man's history (see above).
Im not pushing this on you, i just want to see if there are other people that beleive this too.
I beleive that we have a somewhat distant creator, who is the origin of the matter that created said big bang.
OR
That matter could have just been "there" like the creator could have been.
Seriously though, why does only the first generation require females?
As for incest, apparently, there is some theory about there being taboos against incestuous relationships going back into the most primitive of societies. Something to do with staying away from your closest relations.
Jeez, people, the graph was meant as a joke, lighten up here!
With that said, the fact that evolution needs "Faith" in a missing link makes it as much a religious cult as any "Church" and therefor has no place to be taught as fact!
Science and it's doctors smoked cigarettes in the 70's, in their office with pregnant mother's to be with less rates of asthma... today with all the new chemicals in our world created by the genius of science, all is going backwards for the human species..... science is man's foolishness and I am 100% certain that God created my kind so I am .00001% ahead of you Thomas!
So God didn't create everybody? Now I'm confused. You wouldn't think a power-mad deity like that would allow the rest of us to evolve if he was creating his own competing product. But I guess 4000 years ago there was no patent office to complain to.
I think you totally misunderstand what science is really about. A scientist makes observations to gather facts and then proposes a theory (e.g. the thoery of relativity or the evolution) to fit the facts. If the theory is a good theory it will fit all the facts and enable us to make useful predictions.
As more facts come to light the theory may change. This happens often in science - for example Netwon proposed a theory about planetary mechaincs that fitted the facts known at that time and worked very well for a few hundred years in predicting the movements of the moon, planets, comets, etc. But more accurate measurement revealed (amongst other things) an anomoly on the orbit of Mecury. This could not be explained by Netwon's theories and it wasn't until Einstein came up with the general theory of relativity that the anomoly was explained.
And that's the key difference between your faith based aproach and science. The prevailing scientific wisdom CAN change - new facts and discoveries come to light and new theories have to be postulated to explian them. That's why a scientist will say "I'm 99% sure of...". some new information may come to light to take out the theory. Whereas the faith based person simply has to say "Despite a total lack of evidence I believe this is true. I know I'm 100% right."
Faith based people are fond of pointing out some area where science has been wrong (e.g. your point about cigarette smoking doctors) and claim it as some sort of proof that science is therefore flawed. No, it's constantly adapting. Faith based people seem less kjeen to have the massive mistakes of religeon pointed out to them - remember when the so called christain church started witch hunts and burned millions of innocent women to death at the stake? How about the Church's steady insistence that the earth ws the centre of all and the sun went round the earth?
Not to be too picky on Abrahamic relegions, have you heard about the time when many believed that a God caused lighting and thunder? Some even had a name for that God - Thor. Well, not too many Thor worshipper's about these days...
If you have a scientific theory that the biological diversity on this world was the product of a master designer or creator that's fine. Just put forward your EVIDENCE. Evidence, by the way, is something more than "I can't think of another cause so I'm going to introduce an omnipotent, magical being who did it all."
The world is a wonderous beautiful place - at least to us - but it's not evidence of the existence of an omnipotent, magical being. Lightning is also wonderful and beautiful but nowadays we know it is caused by natural forces not Thor. And the world is also full of horrors and suffering. We have wars, diseases, plagues, hunger, death, destruction - are these the results you'd expect from an omnipotent, omni-present mystical being? Seem to me more like the results from an office temp with bad attitude.
And how well does your design/creationism fit the facts? Why would a god who created us bother to go to the trouble of leaving all these fossils scattered about the place? Just to fool us?
But you can believe in whatever you want - the easter bunny, the tooth fairy, Yahweh, whatever... Just don't expect the rest of us to stop trying to understand the world and propose evidence based theories that help us make sense of the universe and let us make useful predictions.
As for your crack about "science being mankind's foolishness"... I take it that you live in a cave or mud hut, dress only in furs or things you find lying about and have never visited a hospital or seen a doctor? Sure thing.... every facit of your modern lifestyle and comfortable existence owes a debt of gratitude to science. If scientists and other free thinkers in centuries past had listened to the church we'd all still be living in squalor and ignorance.