When familiar behavior you see every day happens, you think to yourself, I know that behavior is what I’ve been told that behavior is, amirite? Brand new research gives absolutely incontrovertible proof that we may be completely misunderstanding common behavior. Boom!
A new study by unnamed researchers at some universities we’ve never heard of before shows that we’ve been completely wrong. That familiar behavior is instead a different familiar explanation of behavior we’ve also seen many times before.
Using unspecified methods on a sample you can count on the fingers of one or two hands, they manipulated the people or animals doing the behavior so that this really cool thing happens that will surely be awarded a prize if it ever gets through peer review.
“This is groundbreaking research,” said another researcher whose quotation just happened to appear on a university press release about the study.
“We need to completely change our prior conceptions as a result of this single, tiny study,” said the nearest researcher who would answer my call before my deadline.
“I would be cautious about overinterpreting one study,” said one of the authors who is looking to fund another postdoc. “We definitely need to study this more.”