Thursday, March 25, 2010

Today's something or other #57

Perhaps the researchers conducting this study had a little too much to drink the night before they performed their experiments? If not... whoa! It turns out we were on to something back in university. Who knew?!

From The Daily Free Press - Study: Late-night drinking no problem for test-takers
Thirsty Thursdays have never looked better, according to a new Boston University School of Public Health study released Tuesday that says binge drinking the night before a test does not affect a student’s performance.
Conducted in partnership with Brown University and set to be featured in the April 2010 edition of the journal Addiction, the study found that participants who consumed beer the night before being given an academic test scored the same as subjects who consumed non-alcoholic beer.
Over a four-day period, the 193 student participants were given either an alcoholic or non-alcoholic beverage. The students who received alcoholic beverages drank until they had a blood-alcohol level of 0.12. The next day, participants took practice versions of the Graduate Record Exam and a mock quiz on a lecture they received the previous afternoon.
Whether they were sober or inebriated the previous night, all of the students received similarly high scores on both exams.
However, BU professor and coordinator of the study Jonathan Howland said the study only examined alcohol’s effect on test-taking ability, not academic ability as a whole.

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