Perhaps The Most Ridiculous Waste of Money, Article

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20090428/sc_livescience/soundsscarescrawnypeoplemoreeasily

Let's go over the points to this article:

1. The title is called "Sounds Scare Scrawny People More Easily"
2. The first line is "Scrawny people tend to think approaching sounds are closer than do strong people, a new study found."
3. Now let's look at the meat of this very important finding:

Evolutionary psychologist John Neuhoff and colleagues at the College of Wooster in Ohio asked 50 people to listen to an approaching tone, and press a button when they thought the sound had arrived directly in front of them. The researchers found that almost everyone - about 98 percent of people - pressed the button somewhat early, even after going through 10 practice runs where the scientists told subjects when they were pressing too soon. The average lead time was 130 milliseconds, but some subjects jumped the gun by about 500 milliseconds, or half a second.

The psychologists also rated everyone on a physical fitness scale, based on recovering heart rate after exercise and grip strength. Strikingly, they found scrawny people consistently judged the tone to be right before them sooner than buff people did.

Not only did some jerk, who is probably envied by all at the Acoustical Society, and who probably got grant money, conduct this awesome experiment to BLOW YOUR MIND, also only tested 50 people. 50 PEOPLE!! Any amount over 10 people, and you normally take out the guesswork with anything. That is how they create medicines, and when most of the people die, call it the "Swine Flu" or "Hotel Bombing."

Here is the guy who performed this test: http://jneuhoff.com/

Ok, ok. He seems like a good guy. If you read in there, he used to drive 7 hours to and from home to be with his wife and kids while taking an out of state job. That is admirable. I don't mean to harp on HIM, but rather the WHOLE THING.

Looking further into his website I notice this: "I became interested in links between music and language after hearing a fascinating talk by Ani Patel at APCAM in 2008. I currently have an NSF grant to study these links in more detail."

So I clicked in to see what this NSF grant was, and sure enough he has a grant for this.

Initial Amendment Date: February 10, 2009
Awarded Amount to Date: $38371

$38,371 to find this out ...and for what? Maybe there is better use for that money. This stuff happens all the time too, and I know the clear reasons for studying things, but stuff like this should be put on back burners. Rhesus Monkeys can live in peace. Oh wait! Here is some more from his website:

"Collaborative work with Asif Ghazanfar at Princeton examines the perception and multisensory integration of looming objects in Rhesus monkeys. Our findings support an evolutionary "error management theory " in the perception of both auditory and visual looming perception."

WHO CARES? Why would I want to know the origins and explanations to why Spanish speaking countries like to play drums with shiv knives? Or why would I care that Polish people learned to say the word "Ooh" because that is the sound that comes from a person when you hit him/her in the stomach with a guitar? WHO CARES.

How much do we want to learn here? Do we want to learn so much that it takes away from anything we wonder about in the world? I see so many articles with new research shows "why you're fat" or "DNA links X and X" and I get why it can help in the future. These are beneficial.

Fat Man eats less trans fats
Fat Man's heart doesn't explode
Fat Man doesn't live with an oxygen mask
Fat Man doesn't live off of insurance
Fat Man becomes medium sized man
Fat Man lives a better life
Fat Man teaches his kids better habits
Others pay less
World Better! Weeee!

But what about scrawny people being scared more easily?

Scrawny Man hears Dodge Ram earlier than Buff Man
Scrawny Man moves out of the road .005 seconds earlier than Buff Man.
Buff Man goes to beat the crap out of the Scrawny Man, just for kicks, BUT WAIT! Scrawny man could sense that danger before it happened, then runs back out into road and gets hit by that Dodge Ram.

Where is the return on the investment with most of the research being done?

Well at least the article ends cute:

"Our prediction is that if you're more likely to be a predator, you wouldn't have the need for as great a bias, but if you're a bunny you need a larger margin of safety," Neuhoff said.

Aww...bunnies! (GUN BLAST)

Casey