Scientists this week announced plans to investigate the hypothesis that stress is caused by difficulties in peoples' lives.
School class, 4B set about trying to prove the hypothesis: "We'll start with this hypothesis," claimed one 14 year old scientists in his biology class, "we'll perhaps spend about an hour playing with the bunsen burner, throwing copper sulphate into the flames...then we'll write a quick half-assed paragraph and call it a hypothesis."
"Then, next week, we'll start on the experiment. I don't know how exactly, probably something to do with a Van De Graaf generator and some more copper sulphate crystals. Then, the week after, we'll do our results in a lovely scatter-graph and a conclusion that's based mostly on supposition. We'll try and evaluate our results at some point."
Scientists are hailing this new approach as revolutionary. Don Winters, reknowned Cambridge fellow said: "Wow, these kids have really got an idea here. We like the way they do things. Of course, it isn't all that dissimilar to what we do...in fact, from what I can see there's only one difference. We've never thought of using copper sulphate into the bunsen burner...that might be fun."
The general public is said to be 'nonchalent' about the outcome of these experiments.
