Remember that guy you went to high school with who was the smartest kid in the class, but he didn't have the common sense that God gave a crowbar. Ever wonder what happened to him? I think I know. He's working on government-funded research projects. And after spending billions of your tax dollars, here are some samples of what he has "discovered" through all his research.
For example, there is a study presented by the American Psychological Association that showed that religious faith helped people recovery from surgery. "The contribution of social support to hope suggests that those who perceive more support at this critical moment may feel more hopeful about their recovery," it concluded.
So let me get this straight, it took a PhD from the University of Connecticut years of study with hundreds of heart patients to determine that believing in a God who cares for your well-being, and belonging to a group of people who share your belief and support you through your illness will have a positive impact on your recovery. They could have saved a boat load of money by just going to church on Sunday and listening to the sermon. Any six-year-old fussing on his mother's lap in the pew can tell you it feels awful good to know that God loves you. But then again, hearing it from an overpaid PhD makes it sound more true I guess.
Then there's the study by the Bureau of Justice Statistics that reported that violent felons often had previously committed other crimes. It reported that 56 percent of those arrested for murder, rape, robbery or assault had already broken the law before.
Again we could have saved the government - you and me -a lot of money by just asking the high school principal which kids were headed for trouble. Then we could spend our money on helping those kids before it was too late and they became another obvious statistic with the Bureau of Justice.
Researchers for the Rand Corporation spent their time and our money listening to rap music and concluded that it affected teenagers' attitudes toward sex. Exposure to lots of sexually degrading music "gives them a specific message about sex," the report stated. The end result was that teens who listened to sexually explicit music were twice as likely to become sexually active within two years.
Let me if I understand this. It took a roomful of college professors to conclude that whenever a 14-year-old plugs an iPod into his or her head 23 hours a day with lyrics that depict all men as studs with only animal sexual gratification on their minds and all women are nothing but sex objects, and that message is conveyed with a bump-and grind beat that a generation ago was only heard in XXX movies, then why should we be surprised those teens have warped attitudes toward sex? Again, the Rand Corporation could have saved a lot of money by just talking with my grandmother when I was growing up. "Turn off that horrid music," she would yell at us every time we turned the radio on. "It'll warp your mind and send you to hell." I can't guarantee the hell part, but it looks like she was right on the money about warping our minds.
But my favorite study was the one that surveyed 2,000 North Carolina high school students about their television viewing habits. It concluded that teenagers who watched pro wrestling were more likely to behave violently. Boys who watched wrestling six times in two weeks had a 77 percent higher chance of getting into a fight and girls were 170 percent more likely to duke it out with someone.
Can you imagine that. These very intelligent people have concluded that watching grown men - and women I might add - hit one another in the groin, beat each other senseless with chairs, and then heave someone headlong out of the ring and onto the cement floor, all the while thousands of fans are cheering them on and calling for more blood and guts, makes impressionable teenagers more violent if they watched it every day.
Again, they could have saved us a lot of their research money by just talking to my mother. "Turn off that trash!" she would tell us every time we tried to watch anything she thought too violent, and that included everything but Lawrence Welk. "It'll turn you into a juvenile delinquent." I used to think that she was so old-fashioned and out-of-touch, but I guess she was right after all. I've got a research study to prove it.
John Graham is an Advocate Columnist. His column appears each Sunday in the Advocate. He can be reached at jgraham19@woh.rr.com.
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