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No, Oreos Aren't As Addictive As Cocaine
Daniel_Stuckey writes "If you give a mouse a cookie, you can spend all day following it around the house while it wants to do a bunch of tedious activities. Or, you can trap it in a box, keep feeding it cookies, and then make the outrageous claim that Oreos are as addictive as cocaine. Students at Connecticut College opted for the second option, and the consequences that ensued were much more annoying than making some arts and crafts with a darn mouse. Fox News reported that a 'College study finds Oreo cookies are as addictive as drugs,' Forbes explained 'Why Your Brain Treats Oreos Like a Drug,' and a ton of other sites ran with the story as well. Here's how the experiment, which has not been peer reviewed and has not been presented yet, went down. Mice were placed in a maze, with one end holding an Oreo and the other end holding a rice cake. The mice, without fail, decided to eat the Oreo over the rice cake, proving once and for all that mice like cookies better than tasteless discs with a styrofoamy texture."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_You_Give_a_Mouse_a_Cookie
Laughter is the Spackle of the Soul.
Seems reasonable that when you lock an animal (including humans) in a shitty little box it's going to over indulge in activities that work on the pleasure centers of the brain. However, given freedom and a wide range of stimuli it might be less susceptible to addiction as we have defined it. See the controversial Rat Park study (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park) which showed evidence that when researchers gave lab rats a suitable and pleasurable living environment opiates were no longer addictive.
Proof? They both seem to result in crazy people making stupid decision.
My reasoning is unassailable.
He's developed his own measure for it: The percentage of people who will develop the disease of dependency, based on the DSM-IV guidelines, if they use a drug. . . .
"According to that, the most chemically addictive is nicotine because one third of people who use it during their lifetime will develop dependency," he said. "For cocaine, it's 20 percent. For heroin, it's 23 percent."
So by that standard, Oreos = 0% addictive.
Oh, well.
If you give a mouse a cookie, he'll want a glass milk.
If you give him some milk, he'll want more. If you give a mouse more milk, he'll develop a taste for human blood.
If he develops a taste for human blood, he'll become a vampire. If he becomes a vampire, he'll have to make followers.
Now, if he makes some followers, they'll need to feed. If they feed too much, the national guard will be called out.
If the national gaurd is called out, they, too, will become fodder for the vampires. If the national guard fails, the President will call in a nuclear strike.
If a nuke is dropped, hundreds of thousands of people will die. America will become a nuclear wasteland and collapse.
With no one to keep the rest of the world's nukes in check, every crackpot nation will launch their own.
Eventually the entire earth will be destroyed. And that's why I had to kill Daddy.
He was giving a mouse a cookie. Sleep well, sweetie.
And you can't even be mad at this one since it is done by undergrads.
Yes, actually you can, this "study" isn't acceptable even by High School standards. For someone pursuing a Major course of study to make such obvious, fundamental procedural errors it's downright shameful.
They never ran any kind of control on the maze. They should have put rice cakes at BOTH exits and ran the mice through a large number of times to prove that the design of the maze isn't leading the mice to the "drugs" exit more frequently.
They never ran any direct comparison between the Oreos and the Cocaine. Just because mice chose Cocaine over Rice, and chose Oreos over Rice, DOES NOT lead to the conclusion that Oreos are the same as Cocaine. That's basic, fundamental logic they should have learned in GRADE SCHOOL.
There are only TWO possible explanation for this "study". Either these undergrads are a pack of completely incompetent fucking morons.... or they snorted all the Coke they were supposed to be using for the experiment and faked the data.
It's a good thing Oreos aren't as addictive as a drug.
Imaging if you took a hit of Oreos, got high, then got the munchies, ate Oreos, got high, then got the munchies, ate Oreos.... etc.
And you can't even be mad at this one since it is done by undergrads.
Yes, actually you can....
Seriously, a press beat up about a bunch of collage kids screwing up their class science project makes you "mad"? - And who are you mad at? - Strangely it's not the "journalist" who manufactured the beat up, it's the kids!! Little wonder the American public are so easily manipulated via their own media outlets.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.