http://cache.io9.com/assets/base/img/thumbs140x140/io9.com.png http://io9.com/tag/mad social science http://io9.com/tag/mad social science

A bizarre experiment carried out at CalTech has led economists to an even more bizarre assertion. Governments allocating spending for public goods like education should use "neurotechnology" - mind-reading via fMRI brain scans - to determine who should be taxed. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5356920&view=rss&microfeed=true

As part of a new campaign to interact with bloggers, the Air Force has issued this complicated flow-chart to teach officers how to comment on blog posts. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5125002&view=rss&microfeed=true

Reality television, consumed with liberal doses of MySpace and Facebook, will make friendships of the future far more promiscuous. So says a newly-released study about people who invest a lot of time in creating profiles of themselves online (which is increasingly all of us). The authors of the study have discovered an intriguing trend in the way people are re-define "friendship" after hanging out a lot online. The good news is that current trends all point to more casual sex for people who "friend" each other online. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=380162&view=rss&microfeed=true

This chart compares the body mass index (BMI) of superheroes in Marvel comics with those of typical American women and men. Researchers Karen Healey and Terry Johnson used physical stats from Marvel's Web site to show that the vast majority of female superheroes are underweight, though the males are mostly normal. Just to remind you, in the BMI scale, below 18.5 is underweight, 18.5-24.9 is normal, and over 25 is overweight. Healey's analysis of what this means is hilarious and thought-provoking. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=362025&view=rss&microfeed=true