Say It Ain’t So: Scientist Links Beer Consumption Negatively to Success
March 24th, 2008 by Heywood
In what is almost comical enough to be an article from The Onion, The New York Times breaks down a study by none other than “Dr. Grim,” a Czech scientist who correlates beer drinking and a lack of success among scientists in publishing academic papers. What is particularly interesting is that Dr. Grim correlates not just the fact that a scientist drinks beer with his or her success as a publishing author, but finds that the more a scientist drinks, the less success he or she has in publishing. Choice quotes from the article include:
Matthew Symonds, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Melbourne who has also studied factors affecting scientific productivity, called the results remarkable.
“It’s rather devastating to be told we should drink less beer in order to increase our scientific performance,” Dr. Symonds said.
and
In spite of his study, Dr. Grim, who said he would on occasion enjoy more than 12 beers in a night, is not on a campaign to decrease beer drinking among scientists. Why not? His answer: “I like it.”
The quality of writing at the New York Times has clearly never been higher.
(via SteveB; via NYT)
