From the Wall Street Journal's Real Time Economics blog--courtesy of John who can't seem to figure out WiFi in the Edmonton airport--here's a story backhandedly making fun of John and my former colleague at East Carolina University:
Hot off the National Bureau of Economic Research electronic presses: Frat boys drink more.
Or, more precisely, being a member of a fraternity — even after adjusting statistically for the fact that drinking guys are more likely to join a frat — has “a large impact on drinking intensity, frequency and regency, as well as various negative drinking consequences that potentially carry negative externalities.” So writes Jeffrey S. DeSimone (B.A., Swarthmore College, 1991; Ph.D., Yale University, 1998), now teaching at University of Texas at Arlington.
This just in: Academics are paid way too much money to spend way too much time coming to obvious conclusions.
