The ‘duh’ studies

It’s been a good year for science: 2016 is when we got a new prime number (274,207,281 – 1), learned that humans probably won’t be able to live to 200 after all, and started research on whether poop transplants can solve obesity.

But amidst this ever advancing tide of human progress, there was also the occasional researcher who spent months poring over data — only to arrive at a conclusion that unfortunately seemed kind of “duh.”

This is still honourable work; science can’t all be dinosaur digs and Mars missions and Higgs bosons. But that doesn’t mean we can’t make fun of it.

Below, seven examples from 2016 of Canadian researchers’ most nobrainer conclusions.

Marijuana makes rats lazy

The University of British Columbia, of all places, knows full well about the “slacker effect” of marijuana; the drug’s penchant to remove energy and ambition from its users. But PhD candidate Mason Silveira wanted to see if the “slacker effect” would be cancelled out if marijuana was enriched with more cannabidiol, the drug’s pain-relief ingredient. If so, the effects would have been revolutionary: pain relief without the side effect of listlessness. Unfortunately, after giving the rejigged marijuana to a bunch of rats and testing their motivation, the conclusion was that it still made them lazy.

Pulling sturgeon out of the water by their heads is bad for them

This Canadian-led study, published in Conservation Physiology, was looking at catch-and-release sport fishing. Specifically, the catch-and-release of white sturgeon on the Fraser River, a fishery so intense that it’s estimated that the average sturgeon is yanked out of the water by anglers about once a year. Researchers took 48 fish and subjected them to “fishing conditions” in a lab. The result? Lots of stress, and some death. “Just because it doesn’t die, it doesn’t mean no harm is done,” Ken Malloway, chairman of the Lower Fraser Fishing Alliance, said upon the study’s release. “How about if I torture and release you?”

Pets make people happy

This survey was funded by Ontario’s Nutram Pet Products, so it’s fair to assume that they had some kind of bias as to the final result. The company surveyed 1,000 pet owners and found that 71 per cent claimed to be happier after owning a pet. The remaining 28 per cent are presumably cat owners.

Sex education class is awkward for high school students

Published in the British journal

BMJ Open, this study included survey responses from Canadian high school students and their counterparts around the world. It found that students everywhere found sex education to be “cringey” and “highly embarrassing.” All is not lost, however: The researchers suggested that rather than having sex ed taught by Mr. Johnson the rugby coach, schools bring in “experts who maintain clear boundaries with students.”

People hate airline fees

In another corporate-backed survey of dubious scientific motivation in July, the Canadian online travel agency Flight Network surveyed 700 people and found that 74 per cent did not care for new airline fees, such as extra costs for checked bags, meals or in-flight movies. Of the “pro-fee” crowd, 17 per cent were indifferent and nine per cent took the economics-approved argument that these fees are a great way to ensure that frills are paid for by the people who use them.

Higher food prices cause people to shop differently

When 1,000 Canadians were asked online if their shopping habits had changed with higher food prices, 53 per cent said yes. According to the results, released in November, this altered shopping behaviour included looking for deals or thinking about what they were going to buy before going to the store.