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posted by martyb on Saturday December 13 2014, @01:02PM   Printer-friendly
from the no-award-winners-disagreed dept.

An article in the British Medical Journal maintains, based on analysis of the Darwin Awards, that men are far more likely to perform truly idiotic and dangerous acts than women.

From the article abstract:

Sex differences in risk seeking behaviour, emergency hospital admissions, and mortality are well documented. However, little is known about sex differences in idiotic risk taking behaviour. This paper reviews the data on winners of the Darwin Award over a 20 year period (1995-2014). Winners of the Darwin Award must eliminate themselves from the gene pool in such an idiotic manner that their action ensures one less idiot will survive. This paper reports a marked sex difference in Darwin Award winners: males are significantly more likely to receive the award than females (P < 0.0001). We discuss some of the reasons for this difference.

Non-technical summary available at the Washington Post and C|Net.

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  • (Score: 2) by BsAtHome on Saturday December 13 2014, @01:31PM

    by BsAtHome (889) on Saturday December 13 2014, @01:31PM (#125741)

    Well, the male population does have a bit shorter gene-pool. The X replaced with an Y surely reduces the genetic viability to perform optimally in the light of reason. The good part is that the genetic pool of (significantly) more women is no real problem. Males have only a small part in keeping the species going.

    Another funny speculation; there have been stories about viral/bacterial infections that cause behavioural changes. Maybe the male population is more susceptible to those kind of infections.

    • (Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Sunday December 14 2014, @01:55PM

      by cubancigar11 (330) on Sunday December 14 2014, @01:55PM (#125942) Homepage Journal

      You should start your comments in old TV achors style, you know, like -

      This is BsAtHome... followed by rest of the comment.

      Just kidding. More men die in accidents, due to workplace hazards, or commit suicide than women. This is all well known to anyone who bothered to look at it. Men are taught to take risk, to lead, to fight for the honor/family/country etc. This only proves that misandry exists. That women procreate with those men who will die for her and the children she has kept under her full control.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 13 2014, @01:32PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 13 2014, @01:32PM (#125742)

    Read the first link. This is just garbage.

    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Zinho on Saturday December 13 2014, @02:57PM

      by Zinho (759) on Saturday December 13 2014, @02:57PM (#125757)

      More like a joke; it's a few college students wanting to get published and keeping their wits and writing skills sharp. If you want to argue that they must have been pretty dull to start with, that's reasonable ;)

      They at least were self-aware enough to point out that their data is highly suspect, and why:

      However, this study has limitations. One of the weaknesses is the retrospective nature of the data collection. One alternative explanation for the marked sex difference in Darwin Award winners is that there is some kind of selection bias. Women may be more likely to nominate men for a Darwin Award, or there may be some selection bias within the Darwin Awards Committee. In addition, there may be some kind of reporting bias. Idiotic male candidates may be more newsworthy than idiotic female Darwin Award candidates.

      As long as they know that it's stupid and openly admit it I have no problem laughing [at|with] them.

      --
      "Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
    • (Score: 0) by Ohiovr on Saturday December 13 2014, @10:40PM

      by Ohiovr (4904) on Saturday December 13 2014, @10:40PM (#125843)

      MIT: Male Idiot Theory. How about go fuck yourself feminazi theory? Enjoy your fucking dildos.

  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Saturday December 13 2014, @01:32PM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday December 13 2014, @01:32PM (#125743) Journal
    Would we mock a mother as equally as a young male doing the same dumb thing?
    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Sunday December 14 2014, @07:17AM

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Sunday December 14 2014, @07:17AM (#125911) Journal

      Would we mock a mother as equally as a young male doing the same dumb thing?

      No... and that's a problem. I mean, it's not politically correct, it's simply sexist to deny a mother the mockery when the mockery is deserved.

      (grin)

      --
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 13 2014, @01:43PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 13 2014, @01:43PM (#125745)

    Oh shit.

  • (Score: 2) by q.kontinuum on Saturday December 13 2014, @01:58PM

    by q.kontinuum (532) on Saturday December 13 2014, @01:58PM (#125748) Journal

    The investigation misses several points. First of all: All humans are in huge parts idiots. It is already proven that most decisions are made first, being rationalized afterwards. Therefore there is no fundamental difference between taking "acceptable" risks and taking "idiotic" risks. Men might be more prone to risk-taking. There are several explanations for that without leaning on idiocy. Traditionally, men are the breadwinners, while women are the house-keepers. For bread-winners, hunting and risk-taking was a necessary property, as was for fighters to defend the village (or country). If a soldier starts thinking too much about his personal risks, he will look for ways to let others do the risky jobs, rendering the overall army inefficient.
    Traditionally, women are the care-taker of the children. Since raising children is a serious investment of resources, it is quite important to be cautious about their safety.
    Also, in case of a war, civilization can recover easily with less men, but less woman can be a severe problem, since women are the bottleneck of the reproductive chain: One man can suffice to impregnate multiple women, but one woman can't carry easily the children of many men (well, she could manage a couple of men over the years, but capacity is seriously limited).

    I appreciate research on fundamental differences between women and men. While I seriously see the necessity for the equal rights movement nowadays, and I definitely think that for most properties fluctuations within one group can be higher than the average difference between both groups (e.g. a careful man will probably be more careful than a careless woman), it might show that some tasks are better fulfilled by the average woman and others better by the average men, and enforcing quotas on jobs might not be a good idea.

    --
    Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 13 2014, @07:21PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 13 2014, @07:21PM (#125802)

      fuck off, this isn't even news. Everybody knows men can be idiots

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by NoMaster on Saturday December 13 2014, @02:07PM

    by NoMaster (3543) on Saturday December 13 2014, @02:07PM (#125752)

    5 comments in, and I'm gonna get me some popcorn.

    Ain't nothing like chewin' on some empty carbs to the "woosh!"ing sounds of a 150-year-old running joke going over everyone's head...

    --
    Live free or fuck off and take your naïve Libertarian fantasies with you...
    • (Score: 2) by Geezer on Saturday December 13 2014, @03:43PM

      by Geezer (511) on Saturday December 13 2014, @03:43PM (#125771)

      Bingo! +5 Insightful. This joke was old when Kant was a pool hustler.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Covalent on Saturday December 13 2014, @03:06PM

    by Covalent (43) on Saturday December 13 2014, @03:06PM (#125763) Journal

    Um, it makes you more aggressive. It makes you take more risks. Men have lots more of it in general. This one is a huge "DUH".

    But that testosterone (and the accompanying aggressiveness / risky behavior) was advantageous to our ancestors, or it would not have survived long in the gene pool.

    Modernity has produced new ways of killing ourselves...and the risk takers (read: mostly men) among us pay the price.

    Nothing to see here...move along.

    --
    You can't rationally argue somebody out of a position they didn't rationally get into.
    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by mcgrew on Saturday December 13 2014, @03:29PM

      by mcgrew (701) <publish@mcgrewbooks.com> on Saturday December 13 2014, @03:29PM (#125766) Homepage Journal

      I've said for years that men are stupid (myself included) and women are evil. Now they just have to prove the second part!

      --
      mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 15 2014, @04:57PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 15 2014, @04:57PM (#126205)
        The second part is proven - just go check out the female commentary on this story over at Buzzfeed. Or Tumblr, if you're brave enough. Misandry on full public display...
    • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 13 2014, @05:26PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 13 2014, @05:26PM (#125790)

      A common misconception.

      Testosterone injections cause the body to try and equilibrate by increasing oestrogen levels. Oestrogen increases aggression.

  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 13 2014, @07:57PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 13 2014, @07:57PM (#125811)

    It is all about IQ standard deviation. For men it is a few points higher, leading to a flatter bell curve. That means the dumbest people in the world are men, and the smartest are men too. Of course no journal would ever publish a paper indicating that men on the high end of the scale are smarter than women and that is why so few women are in STEM or in positions of significant power. Instead we get this sort of thing, cherry picking for the sake of laughs and confirming a very recent social norm in degrading male intelligence.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 15 2014, @03:22AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 15 2014, @03:22AM (#126070)

    [...]