A study just published, Study Finds Cat People Are More Intelligent Than Dog People, has sparked a resurgence in the public's curiosity about controversial conclusions in the social sciences. Now called Study Surfing, the resurgence is especially popular among graduate students in Abnormal Psychology at the local state college.
To provide material for Study Surfing, area librarians and archivists have agreed to spend their Friday nights and weekends compiling and summarizing the results of decades of equally controversial studies.
What they found, one anonymous source reports, has proved more than a little revealing and upsetting to the average non-Study Surfing reader.
The first installment of findings is organized--to show the hipness of librarians and archivists--in the now defunct Top Ten List format:
10. (2017-longitudinal study) Puppy people are slightly more intelligent than multiple-cat people but grow less so as their puppies get older until the differences are negligible.
9. (2007-campus interviews) Guinea pig people are slightly more personable than hamster people. Both are equal in their inability to get a date. Both have been politely asked not to apply to available Women's Studies programs. (That also applies to gerbil people.)
8. (1927-self-report) Turtle people are among the luckiest people on the planet.
7. (1999-triple blind study) Ground squirrel people and meerkat people are equally at risk for a shortened life from high blood pressure, misuse of prescription drugs, and an unnatural hostility toward utility bills.
6. (2009-police records included) Poisonous spider people and venomous snake people have equally sketchy employment records and tend to live in neighborhoods that don't welcome them. Both tend to have to play catch-up in planning for their retirements-having experienced unreliable results with lottery tickets.
5. (1957-a good year for studies) Duck people consistently score higher on personality inventories than just about any parakeet owner, although you'd never know it by talking to them.
4. (1955-according to State Department records) Tropical fish people are five times more likely to have teenagers who have illegal parties at their house when they're not at home than all the other subgroups combined. They also tend to be victims of kidnapping when travelling abroad.
3. (1937-with commentary by the editors of The Old Farmer's Almanac) Horse people are less patient than llama people while llama people are less forgiving than donkey people. Results from goat people are inconclusive (as they refused to complete their questionnaires). All are prone to excessive gambling and tend to have bad skin-from stress and getting beat up a lot.
2. (2014-written by ex-Pitbull owner) Pitbull people are 17% more promiscuous than Volvo-driving condo dwellers who've just recently upgraded their cell phone carrier. Both tend to have shoplifting convictions.
1. (1985-based on interactions with relatives, friends, neighbors, and stray cats) Mercedes-Benz hedgehog people with advanced degrees are off the charts more debt-ridden and anxiety-prone than most other pet people and significantly less well-adjusted than old ladies who take in stray cats . . . a lot of stray cats.
Librarians and archivists point out that while not exhaustive this list includes studies that have been replicated and are therefore both valid and reliable, to use two big social science terms.
Though it's difficult to predict the future of research studies, area librarians and archivists have dedicated themselves to monitoring, recording, and posting research summaries on an ongoing basis--as they become available. "We're hoping to blow it up," said the lead archivist. "We'd like to see Study Surfing take off from a fad to a full-blown trend. That'd be sweet."
