MERRY Christmas, men.
To celebrate the best of the season, the British Medical Journal has this gift for you: you're idiots. You're idiots who are more likely than women to die from idiocy. They're calling it Male Idiot Theory (MIT).
Hospital accident and emergency departments stand testament to the fact that men are more likely to take part in risk seeking behaviours - they are more likely than women to be admitted for emergency hospital treatment after accidental injuries, more likely to suffer sporting injuries and more likely to be involved in fatal road traffic collisions.
However, there is a difference between risk taking behaviour and idiotic risk taking behaviour and researchers wanted to find out more about this.
Male Idiot Theory is the observation that men are idiots and idiots do stupid things.
To test it, academics had a look at the Darwin Awards. The Darwin Awards recognise those who have died in unfortunate circumstances of their own devise. For example, the man so eager to return home he tied a shopping trolley to the back of a train and was dragged two miles to his death. Or the terrorist who posted a letter bomb, failed to pay the correct postage and opened the package when it was returned to him. Or the chap who hijacked a plane, robbed the passengers and jumped out of the aircraft with a grenade - the pin of which he threw into the cabin, accidentally keeping the business end with him.
Winners take the top prize by helping rid the gene pool of the fatally daft.
Academics took a look at data collected on the idiotic behaviours shown by winners of the Darwin Award from 1995 to 2014. Of 332 that were independently verified by the researchers, 14 were shared by male/female couples, leaving 318 for assessment.
Of these, 36 awards went to women and 282 to men. That's nearly 89%. Researchers say the result is statistically significant, but is it significant for the male of the species?
Well, the academics say yes. They say it backs up the hypothesis that men are idiots and idiots do stupid things.
However, they do say it could be that women are more likely to nominate men for the award. It could be that men drink more alcohol than women or that they're more likely to take unnecessary risks as a rite of passage, for social esteem or for bragging rights.
Maybe that's the fundamental definer of the difference between men and women: we've worked out that there's not much point to a captivating anecdote if you're not alive to tell it.
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