Completely Stumped by this Article. Help me!

[ANUBIS951]

What is the essay Researchers Say by Ian Fraizer a parody of?

Could someone explain this article to me and what issue it is criticizing?


Link to article
http://fluff.info/blog/clippings/newyorker_research.html

[hawthorns]

I'd like to help but I'm still ROFLMAO at that opening paragraph. It sounds like a fantastic Monty Python skit, but maybe that's just me :smilielol5:

Sorry, I couldn't make it any further. I tried...

[ClaesGefvenberg]

If it is a parody of anything, perhaps Candide by Voltaire would come to mind? After all, that "Tout est pour le mieux dans le meilleur des mondes", or "all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds" stuff could be considered diametrically opposite to what Ian Frazier writes in Researchers say.

/Claes

[PoeticPassions]

He parodies life itself, despair and the human condition. But also research in some way and all of the constant studies that come out about seemingly obvious things... 'researchers say... that eating green vegetables will reduce risk of cancer.' Really?

Researchers say that life is hard. No kidding, right? He's really criticizing our obsession with all of these research studies and how we take them at face value or follow them devoutly, even when they seem unreasonable.


I really enjoyed the article. It was quite funny... Can you measure how hard life is? Or how difficult death may be?

'In a personal note in the afterword, researchers stated that, statistically speaking, life is "just too much," and as yet they have no plausible theory how anyone gets through it at all.' hahahaha

'Nine out of ten of the respondents, identified by just their first initials for the purpose of the survey, stated that they would give up completely if they knew how.'


Maybe he's also pointing out the commonalities that we share and how we're not all that different from one another.

[PeterL]

That appears to be a parody of many really stupid "scientific" studies that either have no results or determine that what has een known for millenia is true or not. There are many government funded studie that sshpould not have been funded.

[KCurtis]

:lol::lol::rofl: :rofl::smilielol5: :smilielol5::lol:

I laughed so hard I cried.

[Elsie93]

http://www.infoocean.info/avatar2.jpgI'd like to help but I'm still ROFLMAO at that opening paragraph.

[cafolini]

This was written by Big Foot.

[Des Essientes]

The article is a satire of the pharmacutical industry. If such a study really existed, that scientifically proved Pessimism to be true, then everyone would be candidates for Prozac-style medication. The firm supposedly funding the study is called "Flammia Brothers". In ancient Rome priests were called "flamens".