The Pseudo-Science of MSN.com

Since the print media is all but dead, I, like most of my generation get my news from online sources such as MSN.com. For any of you unfamiliar with MSN, their homepage is typically littered with recent news articles ranging from world news to sports and entertainment. However, every so often they like to throw in some "groundbreaking" research study into the headlines. Typically, these "studies" are health related and tend to claim results that are basically meant to instill some type of fear in the general American public, so that we have something more to worry about other than our Caramel lattes and designer clothing.

For instance, a couple weeks ago there was an article that discussed a study that claimed findings that adolescent girls that hung out with male friends were more likely to drink alcoholic beverages. The study was done by a woman and failed to report whether or not there was also an increase in the likelihood for males to drink when in the company of females. If this truly were a scientific study they would report all of the results rather than just the results that suit their desire for a headline. I would venture to say that adolescents that hangout with members of the opposite sex are both more likely to drink more than those that only hangout with members of the same sex. Why didn't this article report that? Needless to say, at the end of the day, when I tried to find the article again, it was no where to be found on the MSN site. Hopefully, someone realized that it was a poorly written article on poorly run research. In my personal opinion I think it was an article written by some mom that wanted to find some excuse as to why her 16 year old daughter was a huge drunk slutbag.

Ok, now for today's article on how drinking games lead to high blood alcohol levels. Researchs at San Diego State University and Michigan went to college parties and gave people breathalizer tests. From their results, they found that people that played drinking games, attended theme parties, and/or attending a party with other drunk people were all positively correlated with a higher BAC. They also reported that they were surprised to find that "women drank more heavily than males at themed parties." First off, let me be the first to say, congratulations nerds you attempted to publish a story about alcohol to seem cool and fit in. Unfortunately, anyone that has ever drank and attended a party in college (on the basis of fun and not to do a pseudo-scientific study) could tell you that all of your findings are not earth shattering. People play drinking games to get drunker faster, this is not science. Really, people get drunker when people around them get drunker, holy shit!! This concept can be read about in any one of thousands of introduction to psychology text books. It's called peer pressure. You might also look under group think. As for the finding that girls drink more "heavily" than males at parties, there is no discussion about how this finding was measured. All the article says is that researchs surveyed party-goers and gave breathalyzers. If they came to this conclusion because girls "reported" their number of drinks, subtract 2-3 from the reported number and come back with your findings. If they came to this finding because girls recorded higher BACs, go back and redo your statistics to account for weight, size, and food intake. This study is called science, yet it fails to further this body of research. The researchers claim that this study is important because previous studies focused on individual consumption and recall... Great, you still didn't provide any information that over half of the American population didn't already know. Finally, they go on to say that they hope to enlarge the study to include bar settings... I'll save you the trouble, drinking games are not allowed in bars, people that go to bars in large groups will have a high BAC than the poor schmo that goes to the bar by himself, guys spend more money than girls at a bar but this does not correlate with the number of drinks each takes in because guys are stupid and we buy girls drinks. There, I just saved you thousands of dollars and hundreds of pointless hours.

In conclusion, my major problem with these studies, is their ultimate uselessness. It is pretty safe to say that thousands of dollars were spent on these studies, many hours were spent collecting and analyzing the data, and yet they provide no information that will help us in any way. What, are girls going to stop hanging out with boys so they are less likely to drink alcohol? Are people going to stop playing drinking games because they will have a high BAC? The answer to all of these questions is, NO. So why carry-out and publish studies like these that are useless. This is a general problem I have found with academic "science". Too often these studies are being carried out by graduate students and professors, who's idea of reality is sitting in their office on a friday night reading journal articles written by people exactly like them on topics exactly like they're studying. Social skills are a rare commodity in the graduate education level, which leads to a complete lack of real-world knowledge and experience. Is it any wonder that, on average, theoretical or basic research takes 7 years to be applied in a practical setting, if it's applied at all? Coming from someone who has been in the process of writing his thesis for the past 3 years, I should know just how useless this research is. Trust me, my thesis provides no useful contribution to the real-world and everyday life. Yet, when I finish it my colleagues will presumably praise it as a good piece of research. It is not. It's a piece of crap. In the end, all that comes about is research that is completely devoid of any common sense and usefullness. If you want to do something usefull, develop an alcohol that loosens everyone up and allows everyone to have a good time without time traveling, developing temporary Down's Syndrome, and generally making poor life decisions.