Ok, this is stupid science.

This is stupid science. This is also stupid journalism. And, ultimately, it's just stupid.

To succeed in academia, you need to publish results. And, those results need to have a result, or you can't publish. In other words, if you don't find anything, you can't publish. This might make sense, but it is actual fact, a narrow and artificial criteria. Why? Because it means that if your hypothesis isn't proven, you through out all your work. And so someone else might have the same idea as you, and instead of reading your paper and not doing all the work, they just go through all the work again. There are more stupid things about this, but essentially academia is capitalism run amok in a socialist system. I won't elaborate.

To succeed in journalism, you might think you need to seek out significant emerging events and describe them, which is pretty much exactly >not< what journalists do. The problem is this: new stuff is generally not very well known. Things that are unknown need describing. And frequently that might go further than having an extended back story. It might even need research that goes further than the pages of your newspaper. And who benefits if people do that? Not the advertisers, and not your paper, and so neither do you.

And besides, people don't buy newspapers in order to read! How the hell did you get that idea? They buy the newspaper in order to, in unequivocal order of importance:

- be titillated
- have something to say to their coworkers and spouse to prevent the icy silence of broken dreams
- feel better about themselves
- be informed about stuff

So, what you need is news that pertains to hot button, titillating topics that reaffirm people's self esteem and sense of superiority, while being work-safe friendly in order to prevent outbreaks Naughtiness In The Work Place. of already have people excited about. A good example of this would be video games, and, more specifically, how horrible they are for you. Say, causing you terrible, life threatening problems such as staying-up-all-night-to-finish-that-last-level-on-a-school-night.

For your edification, here is a press release that meets all the above criteria. Apparently, staying up late and playing video games causes a lack of sleep.

I am amazed. I had no idea. Should this being the DSM-IV? I'm sure that, back when video games didn't suck, I had this disease in a most horrible way.

Computer/console gamers who play for more than seven hours a week and who identify their gaming as an addiction sleep less during the weekdays and experience greater sleepiness than casual or non-gamers, according to a research abstract that will be presented on Monday, June 8 at SLEEP 2009, the 23rd Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies

Results of the study indicate that excessive gamers have significantly poorer sleep hygiene and sleep less on weekdays than other gamers; a significant positive correlation was found between the hours of game play and sleepiness. Gamers who reported that their gaming interfered with sleep slept for 1.6 hours less than other gamers, while those who claimed to be addicted to gaming slept one hour less on weekdays.

Woah. I had nooooooooooo idea.

Science Codex: Playing games late in the night makes you sleepy