Study: There Are Too Many Studies
If you feel like your FB newsfeed is full of studies — caffeine is good for you, caffeine will make your heart explode, smartphones make you dumber, but they also kill your boner, etc. — you’re right. A new study from researchers in California and Finland have found that because there are so many goddamn studies it’s getting harder and harder to keep tabs on relevant info. (Hmmm … maybe they should do a study on what consists of “relevant info”?) Of course, the eggheads had an egghead name for it: attention decay. Nerds.
From the study’s authors:
“Over the past years, thanks to the Internet, a huge amount of data has allowed a thorough investigation of the dynamics of collective attention to online content, ranging from news stories to videos and memes. Here attention is measured by the number of users’ views, visits, posts, downloads, tweets. It is also noted that the attention decays over time, not only because novelty fades, but also because the human capacity to pay attention to new content is limited.”
Also: Study: Smelling Farts Might Cure Illness—Seriously
The safe bet? All scientists should put their brainpower toward something meaningful, like curing cancer abolishing swamp ass and foot odor. In the meantime, we’ll continue to flood our brains with the evidently useless knowledge of studies, like the one we highlighted above this paragraph about how farts might be able to cure illness. You know what that means, don’t you? More taco nights!