“study says many studies suck”
i had to share this article which i found on sfgate.com. it’s not so much that i think it’s a well-written piece of journalism. actually, i kinda wanted to comment on it because i think it includes a sentence that is longer than any run-on i’ve ever been criticized for writing:
Sure, couples who can discuss their issues and share emotions and who actually respect their mates, yes, they might live longer because, well, they’re healthier overall than the numb thick dolts who repress their rage and beat the dog and then get sick all the time and suffer depression and alcoholism because they’re shut down miserable meatwads and oh by the way THIS ALL HAS ABSOLUTELY ZERO TO DO WITH COUPLEHOOD OR FIGHTING and everything to do with whether or not you’re a tolerable and decent and somewhat emotionally open person regardless of marital status or whether you scream at your husband about the dishes, and therefore “Spouses Who Fight Live Longer” is complete misleading crap and it should be “Emotionally Functional Humans Are Better Off Than Repressed Stunted Time Bombs Gosh What A Shock But We Had To Make Something Up To Get Our Goddamn Funding.”
wow! at least it uses six commas. i think this exonerates me from being the worst run-on offender ever though. thanks, Mark Morford - i applaud your disdain of the period and the use of run-on for emphasis. i’m very emphatic sometimes myself.
but seriously, despite my literary criticisms (which barely have their own legs to stand on) the guy raises a good point. everything’s being boiled down into asinine studies which often turn directly into the ammo that our “leaders” and those pressing for particular kinds of change use to sway public opinion. of course i don’t think that’s always a bad thing — this country desperately needs some change. but statistics can easily be manipulated or so pathetically and unscientifically derived that the resulting “facts” can easily be misused or taken out of their proper context, or just amount to plain old bullshit.
so the next time you see some “factoid”, don’t be so quick to believe it without knowing and considering the source. the study telling you you’ll reduce your chances of salmonella by using brand x counter wipes is probably funded by the multinational conglomeration that owns brand x, or some other seemingly unrelated think tank they own too. the study disputing global warming might be funded by the oil company who stands to lose billions in oil sales to ethanol. and the study that says using ethanol instead of oil will help slow or reverse global warming might be funded by one of the few agribusiness giants that dominate our food economy and who’ve changed our food system for the worse by homogenizing and commoditizing corn, so much so that it makes economic sense to force feed it to ruminants who can’t normally survive on it, still have all this leftover corn to sell which would make great ethanol, but fail to mention the amount of energy that has to go into growing all that corn to begin with, and the how the destructive farming practices required to grown so much homogenous corn so densely results in significant ecological and environmental damage in its own right, and how all those corn-fed cows and the antibiotics and crap they also have to ingest to survive on a non-natural-to-them diet in such closed quarters, and how all that’s passed up the food chain to the consequently ever-fatter and prone-to-significant-illness american eater.
these are all things i just made up, i don’t actual have links to such studies, though you can read a lot more about the subject of commodity corn and the resulting impact in The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan (though you should totally question the author and his sources here still too). i’m just speaking in hypotheticals, though i bet if you searched the web you could find something that matched each example i’ve made up here. the point, simply, is “yes! question what you read and where and who it comes from.”
and by the way…i think i did beat Mark’s run-on. bring it bitch!
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