Slashdot Mirror
Study Finds Value in Email Spam
Ant writes "According to a LiveScience story, a steady diet of email spam can be good for you. From the article: 'Researchers split a group of more than 2,100 Canadians into two groups. One group got e-mails that promoted healthy lifestyles, the other got none. "These were informative and motivational messages sent weekly for 12 weeks," explained study leader Ron Plotnikoff of the University of Alberta. The e-mails promoted the benefits of a good diet and physical activity. Those who were effectively spammed, as a group, saw their mean body mass index (BMI) go down, meaning it improved. BMI is a measure of body fat based on height and weight. Overall BMI rose for the control group, which did not get the emails.'"
Is "smapping" an activity that my mother would approve of?
A glass of red wine a day is good for you.
By reading this you acknowledge that you have read it.
You know what else is good?
If you have a fat wife or fat children, you should tell them they're fat several times a day. And tell them they need to lose weight. And do it in front of company when people visit. And when they're at the dinner table, tell them they don't need seconds when they reach for something, because they're fat.
And tell your daughter she's ugly, so she'll do something about her face and maybe get some cosmetic surgery. And tell your son how stupid he is every chance you get so he'll be compelled to be an educated man.
And really, nothing gets a man to be a better husband and father than constantly reminding him what a pathetic, weak, insecure human being he is. Make sure you point out how he doesn't provide for the family the way some men do and that he has a long way to go before he could ever impress you or the children. Also, if you're an in-law, do this often to your son or daughter in-law. They will thank you for it someday, for making them a better human being.
And it's proven that little girls who play with (perfect bodied) barbies have much better self-images and are much healthier than other girls. And the images on magazines, MTV, movies and television only help to positively reinforce this good self-image throughout a young girl's growth.
This also works if you're a manager or employer. Make sure to set aside some time each day to ridicule your employees and point out their failures so that they'll do better. Tell them how lazy, stupid, non-productive and wasteful they are.
There is nothing more helpful and nothing people are more grateful for than having the obvious pointed out and being constantly reminded for it. And if you look at people today, the most successful and well-rounded and happy adults are always the ones that were told what ugly, fat, stupid, lazy failures they are their entire childhood.
Too bad this doesn't work for the penis extension thing.
Oh - and by the way, the study says "These were informative and motivational messages sent weekly for 12 weeks". How is that spam?
It's a reminder, just like attaching a picture of a fat person to the door of your fridge.
The filesystem is the package manager
Bullshit. Send them a never ending supply of porn and penis enlargement spam and see how many of them are still alive at the end of the study.
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
Those who were effectively smapped, as a group, saw their mean body mass index (BMI) go down, meaning it improved.
What in the hell is smapped? Is it a statistical term?
Bet this
So they seem to have established that drilling a message home to people through their inbox can sometimes make a point. I really dont know how this is any different to any other repeated advertising/promotion, except that this kind (if sent without the users request) is actually illegal. Surely if someone wants to be reminded all the time about a specific thing, they could just get reminders to flash on the screen, instead of clogging their inbox with these e-mails..
Business Voyeur
Surely spam by definition is unsolicited? If you have a group of people choosing to receive it then it's no longer spam. Whatever the intention and results of this study, linking it to spam is simply wrong.
Disclaimer: The above comment was made while under the influence of too much coding and not enough sleep.
Simply spending more time on the computer, whether it be reading spam or Slashdot, is apt to make me forget about the time and be less likely to cook up a large meal.
Wait, wait, wait! Based on this study, getting all of the emails for "V1AGRA" and "C1AL1S" will actually improve my libido without actually buying the drugs! Cool!
It is not so much the spam itself (though I have to question why they refer to the emails as spam when it seems that they were primarily informational emails), but the constant suggestion to live right and healthily that put the idea into the recipients' heads to do just that.
It is very similar to the rise in karate school enrollments after a popular martial arts movie like The Karate Kid is released. People take whatever they can from any message and sometimes those messages can lead to action. In this case it was towards weight loss, in others it is towards violence, in others it is towards humanity towards fellow humans.
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
Based on the logic of this article. I'll be leaving now to puckup some "Horney Coeds" and take them to a farm for some "Hot barnyard action".
Spammers don't send reminders to exercise you morons! They try to get you to buy penis enlargment pills.
The emails were informative. I see nowhere in the article that they promoted a product or service.
If I get an email with no commercial link, or promoting a particular product, its not spam. Spam is UCE, unwanted commercial email.
Pete Carr Owner Chatmag.com
I get it, we just need spammers who encourage us to live healthy lifestyles:
G_t outside now! Exercise! Stop using y0ur com_uter!
and shakespear donged a dozen fractal
nevermind is the people to much building
for Jill never news to many home funding
http://wexxx.shasz13.com/fsss/sm11/epl.cgi
Given that the very purpose of spam is often to sell products that are essentially empty promises, I'm going to write this study off as moot.
"Old man yells at systemd"
Do you think that spam about penis enlargement and weight loss pills will cause a measurable increase in weight and depression?
I think such a kind of study would be much more interesting.
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
Those who were effectively smapped...
if
spam = sending people annoying messages
then
smap = sending messages to annoying people?
it stands to reason.
My doctor says my weight is just fine, it's my height that is throwing off my BMI. Ideally, I should be close to 9' tall. Where's the spam that makes you taller?
That's an opt-in mailing list.
Are we gonna start calling every computer glitch a virus now, too?
Also, I bet that if the emails had been advertising actual spam, their bodies would have gotten fatter... and saltier.
You can't take the sky from me...
Spam is an excellent resource. With spam, you can receive valuable money-saving offers on quality products manufactured by reputable companies like Pfizer. Also, spam is a great way for distressed, generous Nigerians to communicate with Americans to facilitate the transfer of their riches to America.
Powered by caffeine and sugar; BSD
Hrm....so spam can actually subconsiously effect people and cause them to alter their behavior.
It seems this is only a "good thing" iff the spam people get encourages a healthy productive life style. If it's for various enlargement pills, web cams, viagra and such, as most real world spam is, it's actually probably a very *bad thing* that people are subconsiously effected by it.
...but I only get spam that wants to pump my septic tank, sell me V1aGr4, or enlarge my pEn1s.
How can that help my BMI?
And I just finished reading the Richard Feynman article on Cargo Cult Science.
Article Text below as slashdotting prevention:
Cargo Cult Science
Richard Feynman
From a Caltech commencement address given in 1974. Also in Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!
During the Middle Ages there were all kinds of crazy ideas, such as that a piece of of rhinoceros horn would increase potency. Then a method was discovered for separating the ideas--which was to try one to see if it worked, and if it didn't work, to eliminate it. This method became organized, of course, into science. And it developed very well, so that we are now in the scientific age. It is such a scientific age, in fact, that we have difficulty in understanding how witch doctors could ever have existed, when nothing that they proposed ever really worked--or very little of it did.
But even today I meet lots of people who sooner or later get me into a conversation about UFO's, or astrology, or some form of mysticism, expanded consciousness, new types of awareness, ESP, and so forth. And I've concluded that it's not a scientific world.
Most people believe so many wonderful things that I decided to investigate why they did. And what has been referred to as my curiosity for investigation has landed me in a difficulty where I found so much junk that I'm overwhelmed. First I started out by investigating various ideas of mysticism and mystic experiences. I went into isolation tanks and got many hours of hallucinations, so I know something about that. Then I went to Esalen, which is a hotbed of this kind of thought (it's a wonderful place; you should go visit there). Then I became overwhelmed. I didn't realize how MUCH there was.
At Esalen there are some large baths fed by hot springs situated on a ledge about thirty feet above the ocean. One of my most pleasurable experiences has been to sit in one of those baths and watch the waves crashing onto the rocky slope below, to gaze into the clear blue sky above, and to study a beautiful nude as she quietly appears and settles into the bath with me.
One time I sat down in a bath where there was a beatiful girl sitting with a guy who didn't seem to know her. Right away I began thinking, "Gee! How am I gonna get started talking to this beautiful nude woman?"
I'm trying to figure out what to say, when the guy says to her, "I'm, uh, studying massage. Could I practice on you?" "Sure," she says. They get out of the bath and she lies down on a massage table nearby. I think to myself, "What a nifty line! I can never think of anything like that!" He starts to rub her big toe. "I think I feel it," he says. "I feel a kind of dent--is that the pituitary?" I blurt out, "You're a helluva long way from the pituitary, man!" They looked at me, horrified--I had blown my cover--and said, "It's reflexology!" I quickly closed my eyes and appeared to be meditating.
That's just an example of the kind of things that overwhelm me. I also looked into extrasensory perception, and PSI phenomena, and the latest craze there was Uri Geller, a man who is supposed to be able to bend keys by rubbing them with his finger. So I went to his hotel room, on his invitation, to see a demonstration of both mindreading and bending keys. He didn't do any mindreading that succeeded; nobody can read my mind, I guess. And my boy held a key and Geller rubbed it, and nothing happened. Then he told us it works better under water, and so you can picture all of us standing in the bathroom with the water turned on and the key under it, and him rubbing the key with his finger. Nothing happened. So I was unable to investigate that phenomenon.
But then I began to think, what else is there that we believe? (And I thought then about the witch doctors, and how easy it would have been to check on them by noticing that nothing really worked.) So I found things that even mor
I know, I know, just couldn't help my self but... This puts Readers Digest in a whole new perspective.
You never catch me alive
My 1997 Mindspring account gets over 100 spams per day. I go through them at about two per second just so see if someone i know, or something I have actually signed up for, is sending something and hasn't gotten my new address. I used to only read the headers and body to see where to report things, but there's too much for me to report it all now.
Okay, I acually RTGDFA. Screw this crap!
Those who were effectively smapped, as a group, saw their mean body mass index (BMI) go down, meaning it improved. BMI is a measure of body fat based on height and weight. Overall BMI rose for the control group, which did not get the emails.
Spam has been estimated to cost the U.S. economy several billion dollars a year in decreased productivity and anti-spam efforts. Meanwhile, the new study shows that mass email might produce small effects on a case-by-case basis, but it could be effective because of the low cost and large reach, Plotnikoff said.
"MASS EMAIL" my ass. They don't know the effing difference between solicited and unsolicited emails.
Screw this crap.
Tag lost or not installed.
What effect does penis enlargement spam have on the size of actual penii?
What about spam that is very negative: your too small, your credit is bad, you need pills, your account is about to be canceled...
I wonder if this makes some spam a health threat.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
They obtain large government grants on the strength of elaborate proposals that, when passed through a suitably calibrated crap filter, say nothing, then spend the money buying iPods for their kids, and laptops and broadband for their favourite researcher's kid sister. Once the money is gone, they come up with a paper that says "When two houseflies crawl up a wall, it makes no difference to the average vertical speed of either housefly whether his counterpart is standing on his left or his right.", get published in a journal, get a free trip to speak at a conference somewhere, then they go back to square one and start writing up an application for another grant.
[sarcasm] I can't wait until I've finished my doctorate so I can hop on this gravy train [/sarcasm]
#disclaimer.not: All examples of corruption in this post are real.
I find your ideas intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Thats just daily health and nutrition advice...
Probably because it goes without saying. =) You were TOO correct with your post. =P
but spam is not just UCE. Spam is any unsolicited bulk email.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Now what if they sent 5 or 10 a day, every day? Wonder if the test group would be paying attention to the message then.
So it's going to get larger and shoot more just from the spam I get! Cool.
Now to find some one that will appreciate that.
That would explain why I've been feeling so horny lately...
If you open yourself to the foo, You and foo become one.
AC comments get piped to
that's not really going to help anyone lose weight. ;)
Creationists are a lot like zombies. Slow, but powerful and numerous. And they all want to eat our brains.
I can't remember the last time that I had spam that contained "informative and motivational messages." Unless you consider viagra ads motivational, that is ;)
unzip ; strip ; touch ; grep ; find ; finger ; mount ; fsck ; more ; yes ; fsck ; umount ; sleep
The article isn't about spam. It's a study of the effects of e-mail-based affirmations. It doesn't take a bunch of goofball researchers to demonstrate that daily affirmations are influential, but what does that have to do with spam? Nothing.
Spam is universally acknowledged as unsolicited, deceptive, indiscriminate, often illegal and immoral solicitations.
If they want to do a legitimate study on spam, then use spam, NOT uplifting e-mail messages.
People that stand next to a fire hydrant on a daily basis are less likely to develop various forms of cancer. Come on. I am not a statistician, but so many "studies" can be done linking things to other things. A bulk of them that actually follow a trend that doesn't make sense probably aren't even directly related, and have something else in the people's lives that links them together.
In undeveloped countries, the consumer controls the market. In capitalist America, the market controls you.
Could you repeat who are the "sponsors" of this "study"?...
"A sysadmin is a cross between a detective, a police officer, a gardener, a doctor and a fireman"
This proves that messages that tell people about healthy lifestyles can improve people's health. Unless all of the "make big penis now" and "v1agr4 is teh bomb" and "urgent message from Uganda" and the racist crap from spam worms can somehow be considered "promoting a healthy lifestyle". Spam is the stuff we don't want. Messages promoting healthy lifestyles are what you will get if you subscribe to something that you wanted. At that point it's not unsolicited.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Are they implying that all the spam I get about enlarging my penis are actually increasing the size of my penis?
I've never gotten messages with motivational messages in it. They usually accuse me of having a small penis, having an erectile dysfunction, or want me to send money to Nigeria in hopes of getting millions back.
Spam is not beneficial.
Instant Karma's gonna get you...
Getting punched every morning helps with your constitution. Toughens you up. Let's encourage it.
At least, I think it helps. I'll do some studies.
xkcd.com - a webcomic of mathematics, love, and language.
Is this related in any way to the affect of Subliminal Messaging? While yes, we KNOW we are reading these spam messages, the affect seems to be the same. I haven't RTFA yet, so if im on crack, ignore me.
If you like what I've said here, and want to read more, go to http://www.krillrblog.com
I'm so skinny if my BMI goes down at all, I am fairly confident I will die. Is spam going to kill me? This isn't good news at all!
Nagging works. We have to hide this from the world, especially females. Hell, this is fuckin' bigger than Roswell.
Table-ized A.I.
So part of the blurb could be rewritten:
It's redundant with common feeling and thought of (at least) the /. crowd.
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
Wow, that's great. By the same reasoning, I could conclude that merely *receiving* spam that promises me to "3NLAGRE YUR P3N1S!" etc., my penis will indeed grow. Seems far-fetched? It's basically the same claim.
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
If a steady stream of spam about healthy living is making these people lose weight, I wonder what the spams I'm getting are doing about the size of my dick?
This is such rubbish. If you want to lower your BMI or get healthy, drag your arse to the gym! But continue to actively block and filter SPAM, as it's better for everyone's health (mental included). :-P
This article brought to you by the Gator Company
Pictochat Art!!!
However, I'll bet the study didn't check their blood pressure.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Yeah well, aparently beats and brussel sprouts are good for me too; however you won't be soon catching me eating the fuckin things anyways.
Did the they use spam obfuscation techniques like 'D0n't e4t fat' or 'You suohd be caaaarreeeful abuot your diet'. Without them I won't call any text as spam, that's like a new World of 'advertisement' communication.
The article says their BMI went down, assuming they lost weight, maybe they all just got taller?
so if I get spam telling me to take viagra and watch porn, will my Body Mass Index go down too?
I've always wanted a 12 inch cock. And now, i can have one and all i gotta do is kill spam assassin.
----
Go canucks, habs, and sens!
This so called study assumes that you actually read the crap in your inbox. Most of us here would not be affected. How many of you even open something from any person or organization you don't know? Straight to the FTC and then the shitcan from my inbox.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
If they're right, I should now have a 4'-long and constantly erect wiener, a 50 gallon vat of C!AL!S and V!AGRA, all the FR33 MICROS)FT SOF)TWARE I'll ever need, and be sleeping with hot housewives every evening..
I call BS on that study.
There do exist people in the world (myself being one of them) who have the opposite problem from "The Average American"... I cannot keep enough weight on to stay healthy... If my BMI were to go down, then I probably wouldn't have enough reserve fat to survive from one meal to the next. And before anyone says "Boy I wish I had your problem", no you don't. Trust me. Being constantly on the edge of dangerously underweight is not fun, healthy, good for one's social life, etc. etc. etc. It is a less common problem, but it is no less of a problem. In fact, I dare say that in many poor third world countries, being overweight would be looked on just as being underweight is here.
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
Or, instead of hoping to get spam, you can sign up for a health mailing list.
I'm gonna go measure my penis now...maybe it's been getting longer!
this proves spam is more harmful? Since the 10+ I get each day tend not to be helpful proactive life solutions but instead viagra, gambling and porn ads.
Hmm... maybe it is helpful.
As it turns out, a re-examination of the study reveals that the subjects burned on avarage of 2,000 calories a day by pressing "delete" on all of these messages. In addition to the extra exercise, they were also consuming more time away from food since they were spending all of this time deleting emails. Finally, many subject becames so frustrated with their email that they took up other hobbies and found themselves actually going outside seeking something to do.
Basically it says that the Jedi Mind Trick may work if you are persistent in application.
No sig for you!!
I think the real reason they all lsot weight was because of the calories they burned deleting all the extra spam. On a side note in order for them to lose weight from the instructional emails they'd first have to follow it's instructions. Last time I checked, following the instructions in spam was bad. VERY bad. If it's not then I'll just update my credit card number at this website, order some herbal penis enlarger and check out that free ipod deal.
It takes physical effort (in terms of mousing and mouse clicks) to delete a spam message.
If this is true . . . Considering I receive 10 "size and girth" e-mails a day, my wang should be 28" by now . . .
--
"You've only got one finger left,
and it's pointing at the door."
Quit spamming the comments section!
if they take those same test subjects and send half of them with emails talking about getting a longer penis and half of them with nothing, would you find 12 weeks later that the ones receiving emails with longer penis to grow an inch or 2 or even more? /. readers, DONT TRY THIS AT HOME! this study hasn't proven to be safe! you never know what may happen. maybe receiving longer penis emails may actually have the reverse effect and *shivers* 'shrivel' it up!!!
HD Trailers
Don't even try to tell me that Microsoft and AOL didn't partner to fund this study.
Had I received this mail, I'm sure my dual combo of Bogofilter and SpamAssassin (call that paranoid), would've done their job. My BMI would've remained the same. Installing SPAM filters would've just about ended all this "scientific" [duh?] research. Remember the times when advertisers put in motivational messages every 24 frames in TV ads and it was "statistically" (and subconsciously) supposed to work. What about studying Stress and Loss of Productivity resulting from Spam? (spending time deleting all those mails without a filter.) I hope no one comes up with a study saying that'd be a nice stress buster.
No Greater Friend, No Greater Enemy! (Lucius Cornelius Sulla)
Holy missed the joke there. Did you read everything he said? At the bottom he concludes and it's obviously a joke.
Partcipant of the study agreeing to get spam... Is this not obviously a contradiction in terms?
The people who got spam probably got annoyed at getting spam, increasing their heart rate, and burning more energy.
That, or the exercise of clicking "Delete"
BMI is a measure of body fat based on height and weight.
No it isn't. How could it be? BMI is a measure that is basically a weight-to-height ratio. The problem with this is, ANY weight shows up the same - fat or muscle, it doesn't matter. Thus, the people who are in the best shape - that is, athletic people with muscular bodies - show up just the same in terms of BMI as people carrying extra fat.
This is known. It's been known for years. Everyone who knows about this subject knows that weight-to-height ratios are very misleading. So why are they STILL used? It's very hard for me to understand.
They asked for this, ergo it's not spam. Besides, most of the spam I get isn't promoting healthy lifestyles, it's promoting erectile-dysfunction drugs, pornography, and money-making schemes, primarily the Nigerian 419 variety. Never mind the viruses and the chain letters I get from my mom.
This sig no verb.
I'm gonna turn all my spam filters off right this second! If I read enough of those emails, I'll get rich quick, AND get a bigger wang.
I could do with out the steamy hot horse sex though, I hope I don't have to take the good with the bad.
Well if sending messages about getting thinner gets them thinner, does that mean that the penis and breast enlargement emails will make me fully endowed in both regions?
Video Production Support
It's very well known that the more intelligent you are, the less you are moved by the typical "lowest common denominator ad". Many of these types of people find slashdot (not through an ad mind you!) and post here. Not saying they are "better" in any way, but that's how it is.
Transcend Humanity. Please.
If I come into the office in the morning and there is a mixture of spam and ham in my inbox, it pisses me off. Getting pissed off is a sure fire way to burn calories (heart rate rises, etc), although probably not so good for you in other ways.
It works better for me because i'm the one who maintains the company spam filter, so if spam is getting through then i'm the one who'll be doing the tuning.
Not that i've had to do any tuning in a while though, i get the odd week where some new trick means that some spam is evading the filters, but then the system learns and it stops.
Shouldn't the control group's BMI remain relatively unchanged? or are they all just Americans?
"These were informative and motivational messages sent weekly for 12 weeks,"
I don't get it... This isn't the type of spam I get... the problem is that someone wanted money to justify their existance at doing their job, so they came up with this lame study... got a grant for it, and it was probibly from the government...
1) Go to college for life
2) Think of things to study
3) Fill out Grant applications like mad
4) Profit!
I think there was supposed to be a "?????" for #3, but why question the obvious!
If I were John Stossel, this is where I would say "Give me a Break!"
--- Relax, that mass muderer is just trying to reduce our carbon footprint, one fetus at a time...
So no spam makes you fat? Why did the control group put weight on? Are ALL Candians just getting fatter and fatter every 3 months? Get real...
And so of course we should all have raging erections all the time and cheap software... Not to mention being extremely rich cause all those nice Nigerian bankers are giving away all that money...
Scientists found that reading Slashdot all day actually makes you more productive. Go figure.
XML UI Browser/Platform
Libertarian, eh?
Transcend Humanity. Please.
These people need to die.
There is no value in spam, the only value is in obliterating the people who send it.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
There are many studies showing that doctors who continually remind patients to avoid negative health activity, like smoking, eating bacon and eggs, tailgaiting, or risky sex, have healthier patients than those who don't. As Samuel Johnosn said: "It is insufficiently considered that men more often require to be reminded than informed." So it seems that anyone in a perceived position of authority sending repetitive emails can obtain similar results, at a fraction of the cost of doctors' visits. Just don't expect an overall reduction in health care expenditures, since healthier patients live longer, and people who live longer cost the health system more.
Obesity has reached the point that hospitals are putting in lifting gear previously seen only in equine hospitals.
Based upon the abstract (I only skimmed the article), I think there's sufficent evidence to throw out the survey: the control group's BMI INCREASED.
The control group should remain the same. Based upon the result of the control group increasing, we can conclude that the population should be continuously be getting fatter and fatter ad infinitum.
The article also failed to mention if the test was double-blinded and such. It fails to mention if the spam was designed to be attractive, or even unsolicited at all. In order for the survey to be valid, it would actually HAVE to be unsolicited, as people subscribing to such an email would naturally tend to be watching their diet more closely than those not subscribing. Additionally, participants that actually READ the messages are more likely to respond to a survey.
Sorry, but these are junk-statistics. Calling crap like this 'science' makes me sick.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
The people in the "spammed" group obviously got tired of cleaning up their inboxes and went outside instead, had a walk, played frisbee golf ..
would be a more appropriate title.
And you missed one level of replies, in which the person below the original, long post seriously advocates doing what the person in the original is jokingly suggesting.
I've come for the woman, and your head.
As a son of a nuclear physicist and an electron scanning microscope specialist, I disagree. My father, the physicist, receives half a million dollars in grants every 3 years. He has never used any of this money in any unethical way. For example, the printer we have at home is an old B&W printer that jams alot. My little brother is in high school and would love a better printer to print his reports and presentations out on. My father will NOT buy a new one using the grant money, because for his purposes, there is no need for a better printer. All the desktops in the house are paid for out of our own pockets. He has his laptop (about 3 years old) and sees no need to use the government's money on something that he does not NEED.
You may have dealt with some unethical researchers but please don't claim that all academics are the same. One of the most important things my dad does with the grant money is hire post-docs.
the control group members' members were found to be shirinking, whereas the other group, which did not receive the informative mails about member enlargement, had their members' members maintain the same size.
-- Prem
Aiming to tweet on a rice
Wouldn't my junk mail filter just eat this stuff?
... all the way from 1924.
They knew they were involved. They know they were being monitored. They were participating in yet another replication of the Hawthorne studies http://www.mtsu.edu/~pmccarth/io_hist.htm (halfway down).
All they needed to know was someone was watching (they signed consent forms) and be told what to do (they received emails).
Now, redesign it in the form of Stanley Milgram's Harvard experiments (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment) and have the emails say "Locate the spammer that sent this, and remove any one of their major organs through any existing orifice", and you've got my interest.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
When does my penis get enlarged ?
After all lots of spam I get suggest that.
Emacs is good operating system, but it has one flaw: Its text editor could be better.
Now this from the same source of credible and informative articles.
Another BMI discussion coming up? I'd really like to hear all about how wrong it is one more time, so I could log it all this time... Oh wait.... I was wrong. Go about your business. There's nothing here to see.
People are not wearing enough hats.
BMI is a ratio of height to weight. It is no, in any way, connected to body fat. That is what makes it pure, unadulterated bullshit. It does not take in to account age, build, or even sex. According to those who preach BMI, a man and a woman of the same height should be the same weight. According to BMI, if you are very muscular, but in such good shape you have 5% body fat, you are overweight.
That isn't just quackery, it's medically dangerous.
A decade ago the company I was working for started putting out lots of happy happy joy joy stuff about taking responsibility for your own career management and managing change, and recycling Clintonesque rhetoric about "Change is Good". Half my department got laid off a couple of months later, by the same happy happy joy joy PR people. A couple of years later, my next company's PR people started putting out 3-inch-diameter buttons saying "We're Navigating Change" with a ship picture in the background, and matching mouse pads and note paper and friendly brochures about how change can be stressful but we can be highly effective people if we manage it well and drink the company Kool-Aid. The layoff that time was only about 10%, not including me. A couple of months later my pen leaked in my pocket, and I decided that I'd rather wear the stupid button and cover the ink spot during the meeting I was having that afternoon, so it had some use...
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
And all but one of them is unmarried.
The reason they're still around is because they typifies the average men:
1) tsuyoshi --- buddy
2) shinogo --- clown
3) kimutaku --- asshole
4) who?
If those people were a study group then no wonder they read their SPAM, they probably knew it was from the thing that they were /paid/ to do, so they must've read it because they thought they wouldnt be paid otherwise, or simply because they felt bad to take their money and not read their emails. :P
Normal SPAM isn't usually read, it's just discarded, so...
I never would have seen these 'motivational spam' messages. They all would have ended up in my spam bin.
It's just the old "If a tree falls in a forest.." question again.
saw their mean body mass index (BMI) go down, meaning it improved
... it'll take your mind off all the depressing news.
Or possibly that the previously healthy subjects turned anorexic.
More seriously, there was an interesting article in the June issue of Scientific American questioning whether the alleged health hazards of being overweight have been severely exaggerated. They certainly don't appear to be as great as the risks associated with being underweight (not that that's a worry for me).
Eat, drink and be merry
Just because their BMI went down, doesn't mean they lost weight. They could have grown.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur.
Just adding one funny line at the bottom does not make the whole paragraph funny!
I don't have the hard facts, but this smells a bit of industry-backed propaganda.
I'm JUST saying.
Of course the people who were spammed lost weight. They were simply more stressed, reducing their appetite, and had to use more muscles to hit their delete buttons and bang their frustrated heads against their monitors!
The spammed ones got pissed at their PCs and went outside, while the control group sat around emailing friends and families.
It could happen
Keep opening and reading spamcrap, and eventually your computer will be so totally locked down as a zombie/virus nexus that your system will lock up, your ISP will cancel your account, and all of the people you have in your email addressbook will hate you and never talk to you again (nor ever open your emails).
Eventually, you'll HAVE to go outside in the sunlight and get some fresh air, if only to go buy a new computer system.
= better health!
-Styopa
I'll get my penis and breasts enlarged, cum longer, have a lower mortgage, and all the pr0n I ever wanted, and I'll have US $25M in my bank account for that poor person in Nigeria.
I also won't spend as much time online, since my machine will be so protected by the protection the software that the spam told me about that I won't be able to use it.
And, of course, I won't have all the weight of that excess money, having invested in all those penny stocks whose value went from pennies to mils (thousandth of a dollar).
See? Way better life.
mark
You've never heard of the SPAM diet?
Please sign petition to restore sanity to our banking system!!!
http://financialpetition.org/
It's based solely on height and weight and doesn't care if you have 200 pounds of muscle or 200 pounds of fat.
I'm quite healthy and my BMI is pretty close to the "obese" category.
I'm gaining it because I have to sit all day at the computer complaining about all the spam!
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
This study only proves that spam is an incredibly effective propaganda tool.
As such it is too dangerous to leave in the hands of the public...
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
The real reason they lost weight could be that they was busy reading the spam and didnt have time to goto the kitchen. :D
Also there is a difference between informative mail that encourages healthy lifestyle and mail that says "CLICK HERE!!!", "YOU WON 1 MIL IN CASINO CLICK HERE TO GET YOUR MONEY!", "ENLARGE YOUR PENIS!", "SEND MONEY HERE TO GET YOUR HIGHSCOOL DIPLOMA", "BUY THIS AND LOOSE WEIGHT", etc...
I wouldn't complain too loud, the microphones the CIA planted in your shoelaces might pick it up...
My sig can beat up your sig.