Simpsons Linked To Childhood Smoking And Winged Anal Mammals

A bunch of scientists from Australia got bored with studying the mating patterns of koala bears or studying how high kangaroos jump or whatever - maybe they just ran out of issues in Australia that required the explanatory power of science. That could happen, you know? As a result of our insatiable rage for knowledge, we might just run out of things to know.

So they said "Fuck it" and watched 400 episodes of The Simpsons. Which is what I do when I can't think of anything new to discover.

Then I don't really get how it works. Do scientists have bosses? Who's the boss of Truth? I'm not sure. But I imagine one of the Australian scientists saying "We just watched 400 episodes of The Simpsons. What're we gonna tell the Science Boss?" Then another one says "DOH!" and then another one says "You know what? There were 795 instances of smoking in those 400 episodes."

Who was the smokiest? Patty and Selma (Marge's sisters), Krusty the Clown, and Mrs. Krabappel.

Range of smoking instances per season? Between 10 and 60.

Then Dr. Eslick, a fellow of the International Union Against Cancer and honorary associate of the University of Sydney's School of Public Health said "The program's cartoon format ensured it would have a large child-age viewership." Thank you, bold Science.

So far the hard data is that kids watch this cartoon and the cartoon has smoking in it. Now, let's get to the conclusions.

"Even instances of smoking being reflected in a negative way, particularly among young characters, could have an impact on promoting children to smoke cigarettes." (italics mine.)

And...

"Viewing The Simpsons characters smoking may prompt children to consider smoking at an early age." (italics mine.)

However, in spite of this monumental foray into the articulation of new knowledge, the study failed to mention that monkeys might fly right out of my ass. Because of Marge's sister smoking. Monkeys. With wings. Clawing their way out at first. But then flying. Flying right out of my ass.

Thoughts?

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Comments

[rkmama]

Personally watching The Simpson's has quite POSSIBLY made me CONSIDER chopping off a finger on each hand and PERHAPS also MAY invite me to break into songs that kind of resemble other songs but have different lyrics. And (MAYBE!) make me say "damn" and "hell" a lot. I'm not entirely sure though, I better go ask a scientist for a definitive answer.

[Lando Finnigan]

Scientists do have bosses indeed (I am a scientist), and no, we are far from running out of anwers to find, but SOME people just have a strange grasp of 'things that would be interesting to know'. And what's even stranger is that some people will pay for that kind of studies. But I guess it's only part of the mysteries of the world. :-p