Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Better Measure His Fingers

I love to read the pseudo science studies that are churned out by PHD's looking for publication, rather than accuracy in their findings. Because those researchers and teachers must "publish or perish" in their positions, there ae re many interesting studies to cite.
One of those I read today is the study by researchers at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada. Uh....hey studied the effect of finger length in men as a cause of aggression by them. Their conclusion- How long a man's second finger (female fingers are apparently not as important to promoting aggression?) is relative to his fourth finger appears to predict whether he is prone to be physically aggressive toward others.
But wait! It isn't finger length itself that causes aggression. It's male testosterone, as indicated by the finger's length. Those men whose second fingers are shorter than their fourth ones were (according to the study) exposed to more testosterone in the womb, and this may cause them to be more prone to physical aggression later in life.
The study author, Allison Bailey, said (with a straight face, not even a smirk) that "More testosterone in the womb predicts more physical aggression in men." How can such a study be conducted scientifically, you wonder? Well, Bailey and her team measured the finger ratios between the 2nd and 4th fingers of 298 psychology students, and asked them to complete a questionnaire measuring their aggression.
The questionnaire measured four types of aggression: physical ("if someone hits me, I hit back"), anger ("I flare up quickly"), hostility ("I am often eaten up by jealousy"), and verbal ("I tell my friends when I disagree with them"). And the study showed that shorter second-to-fourth finger ratios predicted proneness to physical aggression, but not the other three types of aggression. Sigh... I think many people would like to "give the finger" to Bailey and her fellow researchers for coming up with that hypothesis.

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