Wednesday, May 04, 2005
This Explains A Great Deal
No wonder I could never get my parents to pay attention to me.
Now that I have told the joke, I have to comment that I have never read a worse "scientific" protocol in my life.
Researchers at the University of Alberta carefully observed how parents treated their children during trips to the supermarket. They found that physical attractiveness made a big difference.They rated the kids on a one to ten scale? Oh please! To make such a thing even slightly less than utterly subjective they would have to use a large panel and average the ratings. And how would that look in a supermarket? Tweleve people following you around deciding if your baby is ugly or not.
The researchers noted if the parents belted their youngsters into the grocery cart seat, how often the parents' attention lapsed and the number of times the children were allowed to engage in potentially dangerous activities like standing up in the shopping cart. They also rated each child's physical attractiveness on a 10-point scale.
Since when is standing in a grocery cart dangerous? And how do they account for other possible factors that could affect the parents behavior? Maybe there is a connection between ugly kids and stupid parents?
I hope there is a lot more to this "study" than reported. I have seen junior high school students design better experimental work.
