The proliferation of scientific journals and meetings makes it possible
to publish papers whose conclusions aren't exactly earth-shattering.

Wall Street Journal / May 27, 2005
Scientists Research Questions Few Others Would Bother to Ask
By SHARON BEGLEY

Not every scientist can discover the double helix, or the cellular
basis of memory, or the fundamental building blocks of matter. But fear
not. For those who fall short of these lofty goals, another entry in
the "publications" section of the ol' c.v. is within your reach. The
proliferation of scientific journals and meetings makes it possible to
publish or present papers whose conclusion inspires less "Wow! Who
would have guessed?" and more "For this you got a Ph.D.?" In what
follows (with thanks to colleagues who passed along their favorites),
names have been withheld to protect the silly.

Want job satisfaction? A "careful choice of career is the key,"
researchers concluded in a paper this spring in the Journal of Economic
Psychology. Choosing a career based on a well-lubricated encounter at a
bar, it turns out, may not be the most promising route to career
satisfaction. People who choose their jobs carefully are more likely to
be satisfied with them than those who take a flying leap into the great
unknown.

In April, scientists reported in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical &
Experimental Research that college students tend to drink much more
alcohol than they think. Or, may I suggest, than they like to think. Or
than they admit to their parents. Or remember.

Want to reduce problems with medications, such as harmful side effects
or drug combinations that will kill you? The solution is at hand:
"Communication between primary-care physicians and patients can reduce"
such problems and the chance that patients will be harmed. That is
especially true if doctors encourage their patients to -- wait for it
-- tell them when they experience a bad side effect, concluded a study
published in the Archives of Internal Medicine in January. When
patients reported an adverse effect, they were more likely to be
switched to a different drug than if they never mentioned it. For this,
let us be grateful.

In what its sponsors called a "landmark study," scientists found that
when your fingers are numb and turning that lovely robin's-egg blue,
you make more typing effors. Er, errors. "When employees get chilly,"
the scientists concluded, "they are not working to their full
potential." Achoo!

Investigators working on that finger-in-the-chili case at Wendy's may
find inspiration in a study published online in March in the Annals of
Emergency Medicine. Every year some 28,000 kids and adults wind up in
hospital emergency rooms because some mishap has cut off a finger; one
high-risk group is men over 55. Apart from digits lost in workplace
accidents, the most common cause of finger amputation in the men is --
drumroll, please -- power tools. So anyone looking suspiciously at, oh,
sinks or toasters for their finger-gobbling potential can more
profitably focus on chainsaws.

Taking nothing, especially not their readers' intelligence, for
granted, the researchers advise men who use power tools to "avoid
exposing their fingers to direct contact" with razor-sharp blades
spinning at a few thousand rpm. Wise advice, to be sure, although
you've got to think that anyone who didn't know this is in for more
serious problems than a lost finger.

Just in case you were wondering whether it's a good idea to suck up
carcinogens and respiratory poisons when your airways are already
crippled, scientific proof is at hand. A study found that asthma
worsens the effects of smoking, putting puffers at greater risk for the
kinds of lung problems that smoking causes than people without asthma.
If you do not have asthma, your airways are in somewhat better shape to
withstand a toxic assault. Bottom line: Doctors should urge asthmatics
to quit smoking.

Far be it from me to belittle research on forensic science, since I
have written about the importance of questioning such conventional
wisdom as the reliability of fingerprint evidence and the credibility
of confessions. But surely we can do better than a February study in
the journal Psychonomic Bulletin & Review that concluded that it's
easier to identify someone close to you than someone more than a
football-field-length away. At 450 feet, the scientist concludes, "the
human visual system starts to lose small details."

If you had found yourself in the nation's capital earlier this month,
you might have heard researchers at an American Heart Association
conference proclaim that if you work full time and watch television,
play videogames or surf the Internet in your off hours, then you are
probably not engaging in as much heart-healthy physical activity as
full-timers who spend no time with TV, videogames and the computer.

Full-time workers who spend more of their down time in front of a
screen also get significantly less exercise than part-time workers who
spend the same number of hours glued to one screen or another, but do
other things with the rest of their time. (Memo to self: Working
full-time eats up . . . time.) While the finding fails the "tell us
something we didn't know" test, at least it does so with statistical
significance: It was based on data from 4,500 people.