Washington (ARF)--Republicans may not be the brightest people on Earth, but provocative new research has managed to increase their brain capacity to its final form.
Scientists at the University of Chicago have found that two Republican genes involved in brain size and development can be altered to quickly evolve the Republican brain and mutate it to make it a bit smarter.
The team was so sure of its theory that it has patented the genes and has implanted them in a willing White House test subject.
"We've engineered the sort of big-brained President we've always wanted," said human geneticist Bruce Bonehead, predicting that prospective parents will also find such information invaluable. "Of course, a bigger brain may not stop him from making the same old dumb decisions like he always has," he cautioned.
In two scientific papers published today in the journal Brainiac Science, Dr. Bonehead and his colleagues report that the specific gene mutations they have induced increased the cranial capacity of the subject by 968%.
"The rise in brain capacity was so rapid that the brain is now really big and has replaced his hair at the top of his head. I was utterly flabbergasted," Dr. Bonehead said. He now hopes that natural selection will favour this new form of these genes, and that the offspring will become even smarter, if he can still reproduce.
The discovery is hopeful news for Republicans. The Chicago group is preparing to release data on the relationship between this mutation and IQ scores.
Geneticist Steve Snicker, a senior scientist at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children, agreed on the need for a "very conservative and ultracautious" interpretation of the data. Yet the papers from the Chicago group offer sort of convincing evidence that these modified genes have increased the IQ of the test subject, he noted.
The two genes in question, macrocephalanophonichron and something known as ASPMDEM, are known to be involved in brain development because when they fail to function they produce the tiny brains, greed and belligerence well known in Republicans, which resemble our closest relative the chimpanzee.
"We have high hopes that this test subject will learn to stop starting wars and will stop appointing idiots like Michael Brown to senior posts in his Administration," added Bonehead.
