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​Men Are Better Than Women... At Dying Embarrassingly

The British Medical Journal tests the limits of “Male Idiotic Theory.”
​Head in a croc mouth, sure why not. Image: Shutterstock

The Darwin Awards—presented posthumously to people who die in idiotic ways—have been a mainstay of morbid humor for almost 30 years. But in a study published today in the British Medical Journal, the awards were used as a data set to support the hypothesis that, to quote the paper, "men are idiots and idiots do stupid things."

The paper, which is as tongue-in-cheek as the Darwin Awards themselves, featured a statistical analysis of Darwin winners from 1995 to 2014.

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"Of the 413 Darwin Award nominations, 332 were independently verified and confirmed by the Darwin Awards Committee," wrote the authors, who are medical professionals from Newcastle University.

"Of these, 14 were shared by male and female nominees—usually overly adventurous couples in compromising positions—leaving 318 valid cases for statistical testing," they continued.

Only 38 of the winnowed-down group of 318 were women—convincing evidence that men decisively outcompete women in the arena of dumb deaths, taking 88.7 percent of the awards to the grave with them. The authors used this to support the overarching idea of "male idiot theory" (MIT).

For a gag paper, it must be said that the team really did its due diligence, discussing a number of possible contributing factors like selection bias, alcohol consumption, and evolutionary biology.

Can't stop, won't stop. Image: Shutterstock

"One alternative explanation for the marked sex difference in Darwin Award winners is that there is some kind of selection bias," the authors write. "Women may be more likely to nominate men for a Darwin Award, or there may be some selection bias within the Darwin Awards Committee. In addition, there may be some kind of reporting bias. Idiotic male candidates may be more newsworthy than idiotic female Darwin Award candidates."

The authors even mapped out possible strategies for future research.

"We believe MIT deserves further investigation, and, with the festive season upon us, we intend to follow up with observational field studies and an experimental study—males and females, with and without alcohol—in a semi-naturalistic Christmas party setting," they wrote, likely giggling maniacally all the while.

Perhaps the larger question here is how the British Medical Journal came to celebrate the holiday season as if it's April Fool's Day. The publication has established a longstanding tradition of running a few joke papers into its Christmas edition each year. Highlights from past years have included a survey of responses to the lead author unicycling, and the genetic inheritance properties of magic.

Or, conversely, the larger question might be why so few other journals carve out space for joke papers. Where's your sense of humor, Nature? Perhaps that is a topic that can be addressed in next year's Christmas edition. For now, it is safe to assume that the huge Darwin Awards achievement gap between the genders is one statistic women aren't going to be overly eager to equalize.