Parents affect Children: Shocker

In the sort of ground-breaking study that this journal will be based on, Dr Walker of the Brigham Young university (USA) has shown that people in college are affected by their parents. This overturns the previous belief that the instant they enrolled in third level, students become fully developed independent-minded bastions of solitude, immune to the effects of the virtual strangers who raised them for the previous sixteen years.

Apparently those still in close contact with their parents have less sex and drink more responsibly than others - or at least, that's what they tell older people who come up to them with a pen.

A secondary study shows that many students experiment in college, except - and this is important - for those who don't. Society as a whole is still reeling from these revelations, but wait with bated breath for the next searing expose. Mayhap Dr Walker will reveal that some college girls who claim lesbian identity are doing it for attention (except the ones who aren't)?

Likely errors: The entire data-collection process involved questionnaires filled out by undergraduate students, meaning that we run afoul of errors from

• Pre-selecting those students with nothing better to do than fill out a form on what they tell their parents
  
• The form asks about their relationship with their parents, so they'll lie
  
• It also asks about their sexual behaviour, so they'll automatically lie
  

What they could have done with the money: Bought the five pints it would have taken to sit in the student bar long enough to work all this out. Actually, one would be enough, but while you're there and surrounding by young dumb college booty you may as well. Which raises the possibility that this is all just a scam to ask undergrads about their sexual history. So spend the rest on drinks and a camcorder.

Original news article here