I can only assume that somewhere there is a Center for the Research of Impractical Studies. This is the center that is in charge of putting together arbitrary data in order to conclude definitively, yet annually, the penultimate list of things like "World's Smartest Animal" and "World's Hardest Miniature Golf Course." I can only conclude that this research group is also the crack squad of brilliant minds that put together the "Maxim Hot 100" and every lame VH1 countdown show that has ever aired.
The thing is that these sorts of lists are totally meaningless and really have no credence or forbearance on anyone's lives - unless you happen to be listed. But even then, so what? Does Beyonce Knowles really put "listed as No. 1 on VH1's 2003 100 Hottest Hotties List" on her resum+â-¬? If you're important enough to make one, you're probably too important to trifle with the list in the first place.
Not a week goes by where the Center for the Research of Impractical Studies doesn't release a breaking new conclusive study to the media. You would be hard pressed to search through even credible news Web sites like CNN and the New York Times without running across some ridiculous study that really doesn't affect anyone.
This week, one of the featured articles on Reuters.com asked "what country has the whiniest workers?" I can't begin to imagine how information on this subject was even collected. What constitutes as whiney? Is there an inherent difference between whiney and dissatisfied? It seems like whining requires action along with dissatisfaction, but how would you go about measuring varying degrees of whining?
If we're measuring countries, there would have to be some sort of universal standard of whining that knows no borders; a sort of international guideline that defines whining and is not specific to individual cultures. There are certainly different ways to interpret whining in different areas of the world, just as the job markets that dictate that whining are different.
It's like comparing apples to hand grenades. There's no real feasible, scientific way to measure something like this. Yet, the people who conducted this research are etching their findings in stone. The definitive list states the French are the whiniest workers in the world, with American workers coming in a paltry fourth place. And readers are supposed to take this as gospel; some random group conducted a study based on their own parameters and measured a quality that rationally would be immeasurable and then presented their findings to the world and we just accept it.
Another study came out this week that ranked U.S. cities that have the rudest drivers. Rudeness seems like another quality that would be nearly impossible to measure because rudeness isn't an inherent quality, it's a perceived quality. What one person deems as rude could be thought of as mildly annoying by another person. There's no precedence for measuring this sort of thing because rudeness is entirely dependent on the person who is discerning the action as rude.
If you cut somebody off in traffic, driver A might try to run you off the road, driver B might give you the middle finger and driver C might not even notice that you even cut him off. So a study measuring the rudeness of city drivers is almost totally biased on what the research group predetermines constitutes as rude behavior. In essence, you're getting the group's opinion of what is rude instead of what you might actually think of as rude.
The definitive list is your list, and yours alone. These studies are wrong if you so much as think that they are wrong. Form your own opinions. Make your own lists.
Write to Paul at pjmetz@bsu.edu
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