Why Do Men Have Nipples? Review
I read Why Do Men Have Nipples? and finished it because well, I didn't go to work today because I'm sick again and also because I skipped all the crappy portions of the book. By crappy portions I mean all the IM conversations between the authors of the book that are pointless and not entertaining or edifying that really shouldn't have been included in the book. After reading a few of them in the beginning, I just skipped them to get to the more interesting answers to the proposed questions. And sometimes the answers weren't even satisfying, or in my opinion, correct. First of all, it seems very piece-mealed together and inconsistant regarding the quality of the answers given. I think the authors really didn't do thorough research for some of the answers. They found one answer and then were just like "ok...w/e that works." I will list two examples that kinda bothered me and I think they overlooked studies or evidence that seem credible enough to me.
Example A. The question "Does sugar really make kids hyper?" was answered with (I'm paraphrasing) "No, kids often eat sugar at events where they're more likely to be hyped up like birthday parties etc." Yah but kids eat sugar all the time, especially in obese America, kids often eat sugar every day. I've actually heard of a study (Unfortunately, I don't recall where I heard this from, but the findings seem plausible based on what little I know from my Intro to Psych class) that claims that children act more hyperactive not because of the sugar, but because their mothers expect them to act hyper. Which seems quite plausible since people, kids especially, fulfill expectations, even when they are not consciously announced. Mothers will act aggitated as if the child is hyper, the mother will be more vigilant and notice the child's activity, tell them to be quiet more and react to the child as if the child is hyper or overacting etc. This also makes the child more hyper active because the mother is expecting them to be hyper active. It's like if teachers expect children to do worse, they do worse. It's also a "well known fact" that kids are hyper when eating sugar, so the kids unconsciously fulfill this hyper myth because they expect themselves to be hyper, they are hyper. However, I have not personally read the study or even remember who conducted, but I think that would have been a stronger answer than "they only consume sugar at events where kids are hyper." riiiiiight
Example B. The question "Can someone be scared to death?" was answered with a "Yes," and the evidence given was that stress / fight or flight syndrome activated by a stressor can cause a strain on the body. However it did not detail what happens in the body that causes strain, and they didn't bother to explain how prolonged exposure to stress can tax your body and what it does to the body. They cited statistics about cultural fears, how the Japanese and Chinese fear the number four and more deaths appear on the fourth of the month for Japanese and Chinese people (I'm assuming there's a scientific correlation, although that was not included in the language and I didn't see any kind of bibliography for the study.) This implied that the number was responded to with fear and stress because of the cultural connotations and this pushed the patients overboard and they died. However, there are far more significant studies for stress, with post traumatic stress syndrome and heart attack studies with type A people (people who do not deal with stress well) that would have served as better evidence.
While I understand this book was supposed to be entertaining...it wasn't really. Some of the things were interesting, but most of it wasn't explained well, and whenever they tried to be casual or funny they just sounded sloppy. It was one of those books I could feel myself editing...and that just takes the joy out of things. I just didn't like it all that much, and I really kind of hate that I spent money on it. I'm thinking of returning it to Barnes and Nobles.
Hopefully all of my future reading material won't be so crappy.