In today’s backward World, our scientists need to spend more time on important issues that can truly impact human life and change it for the better. As a species, we owe it to ourselves to not be stingy when it comes to investing in our very survival. So it is commendable to see that scientists are doing just that. You see, it turns out that it was absolutely necessary to find out whether men and women have a difference tolerance threshold for cold.
After exhaustive studies scientists have found some very interesting information.
Female test subjects usually have an higher average core temperature (97.8 degrees Fahrenheit versus 97.4 degrees); however, it was observed that women tend to have colder hand temperatures (87.2 degrees versus 90 degrees). This, maybe, possibly, in some circumstances mean that women are able to maintain their core temperature better but have trouble maintaining the temperature in their extremities. There were also some other fascinating findings.
It turns out the research had to be conducted because none of the scientist had access to actual women in their day-to-day lives. Otherwise they would have had ample experience in knowing that girlfriends, wives, etc. have very low tolerance for cold. Unfortunately, hundreds of man-hours and tens of thousands of dollars were wasted to find out what every boyfriend or husband could have confirmed in five seconds.
O’Connor, Anahad “The Claim: Men and Women Differ in Their Tolerance to Cold” NYTimes.com. The New York Times. October 26, 2009. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/27/health/27real.html?ref=health. October 30, 2009.
Not funny. Next?
LOL, it was pretty damned funny. you just didn’t get it..
I found it funny that there was nothing to get.
The POINT of this, to the stupid, is that they did a study that revealed information that everyone knew. And they probably spent millions doing it.
Maybe they just faked the study so that they could observe real women up close.
Scientists test for common sense becasue every once in awhile, it turns out to be flat out wrong. Examples include the Stanford Prison experiment done by Philip Zimbardo and the infamous “shock experiment” (I can’t remember the actual name right now) by Stanley Milgram. Both of these were Psychology experiments by the way. And the results of both of them totally defied what most would assume would’ve happened based on “common sense”. Others would include the experiments that showed the “bystander effect” phenomenon which is the more people there are around you, the less likely you are to get any help in any given situation (including life threatening ones, like rape and murder).
This was all just an FYI by the way, I wasn’t reaming anyone out for being “ignorant of science”. No, that’s not sarcasm
Research like this doesn’t cost millions, not even hundreds of thousands. If you really believe it takes so much time and money to get a few dozens of men & women and take the temperature of their core and limbs, that’s a massive FAIL.
I’m afraid there is some misunderstanding about what science is. The quoted research, which I have not read and I take at face value from the article, provides only data and simple conclusions from it. Science is done by putting observations into a bigger pictures that involve, not only other observations, but also models/theories that makes sense of a collection of observations and even make some predictions.
So, collecting data, such as the one discussed in the article, is the basis for doing science, rather than the science itself. Admittedly, people who do this are also scientists.
The method of collecting such observations, especially in the social /behavioural / medical and sometimes biological fields involves statistical arguments. I assume that this is what the numbers represent – a study over a group of people. What you experience with your female partner is not a good enough statistic. Surely you couldn’t tell from your daily experience that the difference in core temperature is 0.4F, etc. Or do you claim that precision is also not an issue that scientists should be concerned with?
Whether this is worth the money invested in the study is an even more ambiguous question. With such considerations people like Einstein would never have got any support to study general relativity – one of the loveliest pieces f science mankind seem to boast. What was that good for in practical life other than 80 years later for the GPS system?
I therefore agree with one of the above commenters. This was not too exciting. You have so many better articles. Next.
Respectfully,
Physics
Physics, you must be some sort of rocket scientist or something.