The stuff that passes for science these days is unbelievable.

Here's a news report about a "study" which (so it is claimed) shows that violent video games make young men smoke marijuana!

"Parents have been told the message that violent video games and violent media in general can influence the likelihood that their kids will be aggressive," Dr. Sonya S. Brady told Reuters Health. "What this study suggests is that they might increase any type of risk-taking behaviour."

According to the report in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, playing a violent game caused young men's blood pressure to increase, and appeared to have a greater effect on those that came from violent homes or communities. No matter what background each male had, the researchers found that playing a violent game made the young men in the study less cooperative and more competitive in completing tasks with another person.

After playing one of the games, the males participating in the study were shown a scenario of a teacher telling his class that he suspects some students have cheated, but also that he is proud of those who did well. The teacher then asks a boy called Billy to stay behind after class so that he may speak with him. Participants were then asked to put themselves in Billy's position. When asked how likely it was that the teacher was going to accuse them of cheating, those participants who had been playing Grand Theft Auto were more likely think they would be accused.

Who knows, there might be an association between blogging and drinking. Or even pot-smoking!

After I finished laughing out loud, I tried to find out more about the study's "conclusions":

In the second report, Sonya S. Brady, a postdoctorate fellow in psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco, and a colleague tested the reaction of 100 college men, 18 to 21 years old, to two video games,Grand Theft Auto III or The Simpsons: Hit and Run.

"When the men played the more violent video game, Grand Theft Auto, versus the less violent video game, The Simpsons: Hit and Run, they had greater increases in blood pressure, and those who played Grand Theft Auto had more negative emotions and hostile feelings," Brady said.

In addition, those who played Grand Theft Auto had more permissive attitudes about alcohol and marijuana use, Brady said. "Video games cannot only influence aggression, but might also influence attitudes toward risk-taking behavior," she said.

New research conducted by Dr. Sonya Brady at the University of California, San Francisco and Professor Karen Matthews at the University of Pittsburgh, recently published in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine (April 2006), suggests that violent video games can be gateway drugs of sorts in that they can lead to "permissive attitudes toward violence, alcohol use, marijuana use, and sexual activity without condom use."

(The logical error is called post hoc ergo propter hoc.)

Here's my ironclad scientific conclusion: the more I'm exposed to bad logic, the higher my blood pressure is raised, the more negative and hostile my feelings become, and the more permissive my attitudes about alcohol and marijuana use (to say nothing of heroin use) become!

I suspect that this is a gateway which forces me to write blog posts, which are truly the gateway to utter ruin.

Clearly, more studies are needed.

So where's my gummint grant?