Hi Dr. Nick | Issue 19

Hi Dr. Nick | Issue 19

Extra! Extra!

Hi everybody,

I like to think I’m pretty intelligent. Because I am. I’m also athletic, sexy and humble. And incredibly well-hung. Despite all this, however, I still do stupid things – falling for sensationalist media stories, for example. Recently on my Facebook feed I saw a link describing a recently discovered cure for Type 1 Diabetes. Rather than immediately dismissing it as rubbish, I foolishly was intrigued enough to click on the link and read it.

The real story was that scientists had identified a signalling molecule that might play a role in part of the pathway that might have something to do with diabetes in some people. Maybe. But the media naturally decided that “cure totez coming” sounded much better than the truth, and ran with it. After all, they’re not there to tell the news; they’re there to sell the news. It made me realise that, as an intelligent, athletic, sexy, humble and well-hung member of the student media, I’ve really been letting the team down by not publishing more sensationalist and totally misinterpreted medical “facts.” So, without further ado:

1. Warm beer gives you cancer
Alcohol is known to increase your risk of throat cancer. This risk is oddly much higher with Calvados – a type of brandy that is drunk while warm – than with other types of booze. A Finnish study, “Potential mechanism for Calvados-related oesophageal cancer,” (Food & Chemical Toxicology) showed that Calvados contains significantly more acetaldehyde (a substance that increase your risk of cancer) than other drinks, but also casually mentions that higher temperature might have a role to play. They had not actually looked into this at all, however. Clearly the take-home message is: if you drink warm beer you will die of throat cancer, so keep the fridge well stocked – for medical purposes.

2. Fucking other guys in the arse makes your dick bigger (and theirs smaller)
As reported in “The Relation Between Sexual Orientation and Penile Size” (Archives of Sexual Behavior), gay men have bigger dicks than straight men, averaging 6.46 inches compared to the straights’ measly 6.14. This study was followed by another, “The Association between Penis Size and Sexual Health among Men Who Have Sex with Men” (Archives of Sexual Behavior), which showed that 41.6 per cent of the pitchers had an above average dick size, whereas only 20.6 per cent of the catchers could say the same.

By “say the same,” I mean literally: each participant just said how big his dick was and whether he thought he was “big” or “small.” All the measurements were self-taken, self-reported and wildly inaccurate compared with other studies, but that doesn’t change the fact that gays’ anatomy clearly operates on the “Highlander” principle: winning at butt-sex allows you to steal powers/ penile length from the loser.

3. Beef makes your boobs small
According to “Urinary mycoestrogens, body size and breast development in New Jersey girls” (Science of The Total Environment), fungal contamination of many foodstuffs lead to mycoestrogen exposure in 78.5 per cent of the 163 nine- and 10-year-old girls studied. Girls with high levels of mycoestrogens in their urine tended to be short and have slightly delayed breast development compared to those with low levels, supposedly due to the extreme sensitivity of pubescent girls to estrogenic substances. Beef intake was very tenuously linked to the girls’ mycoestrogen levels, which clearly explains why the (former) Evers-Swindells aren’t rocking double Ds.

4. Country Music makes you kill yourself
According to “The Effect of Country Music on Suicide” (Social Forces), listening to country music makes you want to commit suicide. Having listened to Taylor Swift, I tend to agree.
This article first appeared in Issue 19, 2013.
Posted 2:29pm Sunday 11th August 2013 by Dr. Nick.