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Not all scientific studies are useful - C C - Apr 4, 2025

Not all scientific studies are useful
https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/critical-thinking-pseudoscience/not-all-scientific-studies-are-useful

EXCERPTS: It is obvious that society has been richly rewarded with the fruits of scientific research. [...] The problem is what to do with all that information. How do we separate studies that provide potentially useful data from ones that do not add in any significant way to our knowledge base?

[,,,] Some research is just nonsensical and some is fraudulent. Some are both. Like the paper published in the neuropsychology journal, “Perceptual and Motor Skills” by a scientist from the University of Southern Brittany in France with the intriguing title, “Bust Size and Hitchhiking: a field study.”

As one might expect, this study claiming that women with larger breasts are more likely to be picked up when hitchhiking received a great deal of media attention. The same author published a subsequent study that found blond women were more likely to be successful at hitching a ride. One wonders if he is contemplating another trial to see if blond women with large breasts are even more successful.

Besides the “do we really need to know this” aspect of these studies, it turns out that the author did not have the data to support the conclusions. Neither did he have the data to support his study alleging that women dressed in red are perceived by men as having stronger sexual intent. It took years, but these nonsensical papers have now been retracted by the journal.

[...] Then there are studies that are not fraudulent, nor poorly designed, but provide no useful information... (MORE - details)

Somewhat spuriously related to the scientist mentioned above who conducted bust-size research at the French university:

Jimmy Carr: "Stephen Hawking was a 'big t_ts guy' who loved meeting women at my parties"
https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/weird-news/stephen-hawking-big-tits-guy-34982768

EXCERPTS: World renowned physicist Stephen Hawking was a “big t_ts guy” according to his friend, comedian Jimmy Carr. Carr, who got to know Hawking while he studied at Cambridge University, said: “You might know him best as a physicist but he was a bloke,” after admitting they often talked about women’s boobs.

“I like Stephen Hawking, I became friends with him later on. We used to go out a lot and it was fun,” he said in a recent show Q&A which he posted on his YouTube channel this week. [...] “He used to like it when I had a party at my house. If a lady with enormous t_ts came to say hello to him, because he was in a wheelchair and they would have to bend down, he would get a face full of t_tties..."

[...] Carr, who studied social science and political science at Gonville and Caius College, was answering a question from the audience about his favourite memory from university. He said: “It’s hard to think of one that’s repeatable, it was a different era...”

He added: “I took him to see The Book of Mormon.. and we met the cast afterwards. Stephen, he’s got one cheek muscle that works so he couldn’t say anything to the cast, so I went, ‘he’s actually very religious.’

“Stephen was going, WTF. I said yes he’s found God.”

Hawking [...] was considered a medical marvel, having lived for more than half a century with motor neurone disease... (MORE - missing details)