Rebecca Barry: Studies in stupidity result in hysteria

It's not easy living your life by a study. Everyone does it, reads the latest experiments in the news and adjusts their lifestyle accordingly, much as one does listening to the advice from their parents when one is on their way to the school ball.

Thousands of Kiwis are in the process of counting the salt granules they consume following warnings we're exceeding our recommended daily intake.

There's nothing like a good study, and while plenty have merit (time to stop licking the rim of that margarita glass), there's ample hysteria and nonsense being unleashed on the world daily.

A hypothetical example: 927 brunettes from Denmark took part in an experiment whereby half the group consumed mashed potato and gravy while running on a treadmill in Louboutin clogs, and the other half consumed mashed potato only and wore second-hand moccasins. The results showed that those who had eaten the gravy were 10 times more likely to become serial killers but the non-gravy train swore 63 per cent more often and were 92 per cent more likely to throw potato at the researchers.

Many quests for knowledge have only created confusion in our kitchens, bedrooms and minds. A study from New York's Albert Einstein College of Medicine found that people who survive into their late 90s and older are genetically programmed to do so. So you're allowed to lick that margie glass after all.

There's more. Social Psychology Quarterly reports that more intelligent men (smart-arses) are more likely to value sexual exclusivity than less intelligent men (dumb-arses). So bag yourself a smart-arse or you'll be picking Rachel Uchitel's hair off his suit in three months.

Sometimes it's not the studies that are the problem but those who write the headlines communicating their results.

"Princeton researchers recently found that high-fructose corn syrup prompts considerably more weight gain" reads one such pearler from the university itself. Did they really send 14 stressed-out Ivy Leaguers to the lab or did the lecturers who married dumb-arses overdose on sugar when word of their infidelities spread?

Sometimes I'm pretty sure social scientists carry out experiments just to show the boss they're not mucking around on ChatRoulette. A recent study published in the scientific journal Demography claims sugar daddies outlive cougars (presumably cougars eventually fall prey to digestive disorders after periods of over-indulgent consummation, ahem, consuming of prey.)

Another study from the peer-reviewed PLoS One publication claims that you can pick a person's political affiliation by their face. Was the study conducted immediately after David Cameron's appointment? It didn't say. Nor did it specify if this theory applied to both of the faces belonging to politicians.

Mind you, the Dutchman who observed two million couples in an attempt to predict mortality rates must have been serious about his work (was he part of a couple, though?) He learned that a wife, who is seven to nine years older than her husband, experiences a 20 per cent increase in her mortality rate, whereas males who get hitched with younger females prolong their life span by 11 per cent. The best choice for a woman is to marry a man of exactly the same age, he decreed. All very well if you're the type to ask for someone's birth certificate on the first date.

Another recent study at Imperial College in London suggests some of the human immune system's defences against the virus that causes dengue fever actually help the virus to infect more cells. At least this study can be applied to real life. Never, ever go to the tropics.

But the best study of the lot comes from the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs.

"Watching R-rated movies may lead to early alcohol use," says the headline with as much conviction as a truant teen.

Researchers questioned nearly 3600 children and followed up two years later. In that time, 3 per cent of the kids who said their parents never let them watch R-rated movies said they had started drinking alcohol, compared with 25 per cent of those who said they were allowed to watch such movies "all the time". Because Kill Bill really makes you gag for a Bloody Mary.

How best might should we interpret these results? Perhaps by not marrying a dumb younger man who whisks you off to mosquito-infested Barbados for a loved-up holiday, buys you a salt-crusted margarita and suggests you watch an R18 movie.

According to the latest study, that's asking for trouble.