POINTLESS RESEARCH

Startingly obvious results from scientific research. this week: repeatedly hitting your head is not good for your brain.

MEDICAL research promises a lot but with the great ‘groundbreaking’ results comes extraordinarily pointless findings, too.

Every year a massive 85 per cent of the money spent on studies conducted worldwide — £65 billion — is squandered on useless research, a recent conference heard.

Pointless research is especially bad news if you are a rodent, if a study published by scientists at Ohio State University in the U.S. last year is anything to go by.

Presenting their results at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, they revealed that if you repeatedly bash a mouse on the head in a short space of time, it suffers brain damage, then has trouble with memory and learning new things.

The researchers said their study could help medics to understand why athletes such as American Football players can develop chronic memory problems after suffering repeated blows to their heads during games.