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Study Finds Anomaly with Amateur Radio Operators
1 April 2017 | by Results from a study published by University of California Berkeley in The Journal of Psychology found that amateur radio operators are 45% more likely than the general public to believe fake news articles or material with misleading or outright wrong claims. Researchers weren’t specifically studying amateur radio operators, but discovered the correlation by accident. The report noted:
“We tested over 15,000 adult subjects and recorded profiles of each person… the common attributes like age, race, ethnicity, etc. and also their likes, dislikes, hobbies, diets, habits, etc. We discovered a strong and unexpected correlation with those claiming to be amateur or “ham” radio operators after running all of the data through an analysis using a recently developed Reverse Polish Bayesian algorithm. The unexpected data correlation continues to have the research team puzzled and further study is warranted.”
There is currently no proven explanation for the correlation, however one plausible hypothesis has emerged, that exposure to high levels of radio frequency energy combined with very fatty diets and long periods of television viewing, with political and news programming exposure, causing the frontal cortex of the brain to rapidly atrophy. Researchers are struggling to reproduce the characteristics as lab mice either die or become very disinterested when exposed to the combination of factors, especially when frequencies in the 3.5 Mhz range are used in experiments.
This article originally appeared in Radio Artisan.
21 Responses to “Study Finds Anomaly with Amateur Radio Operators”
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WHO writes this CRAP?
Note the date.
My favorite April 1 story was in QST a few years ago. Someone had reportedly designed a multi-band antenna using laser beams for elements.
Don….date noted. The other correlation, probably much more significant, was with the aspect of Ham Radio operators fanaticism with sitting in darkened rooms, alone, in the middle of the night, listening to radios hum and watching them glow in he dark. When even a dummie knows you can’t see anything on a radio.
lol its a april fools joke you guys!! 🙂
I’ll bet most hams don’t know that “gullible” is NOT even a real word, and can’t be found in the dictionary!
YES, and 100% for those who voted for (___fill in the blank, I won’t).
LOL, good one! Fair and Balanced, right?, YOU decide, YOU be the judge, fool. Had me fooled there for a minute…
Nice April Fools article. However, there may be some truth to this. Perhaps it is the result of many years of believing the published radio specifications are true and the thousands of 59 signal reports during contests.
I have searched for excerpts of the quotation in the Journal of Psychology and simply cannot find an article in the journal with a match. Could you give the complete citation for the study you are publicizing?
73,
Frank
Ok…you got me! April Fool here…
What bothers me is how many people will believe this!! It will bring the respectg , if any, of us HAMs to a new low.
I found this hard to believe, so I checked it out. I found it defined in 7 of the 8 on-line dictionaries I pulled up: one who is easily duped or cheated was the consensus. The first good example that came to my mind was democrat, common evidence shows they’ll believe nearly anything.
Wasn’t UC Berkeley where they had riots not too long ago and the rioters were allowed to do their mischief with the school fully dependent upon taxpayer funds to correct the damage and rebuild?
It would seem that a good April Fool joke effort would have picked a smarter school than UC Berkeley to give the story credence. For example, if you will, The Good Buddy Edimacated Skool of Higher Larnin’??? Then there’d be no question as to whether the story was somehow based on fact or more from fiction. {;->
Besides, I heard that UC Berkeley set April 1 as the date for release of all their interoffice emails in an attempt to beat other hackers from doing so. Jerry Brown was consulted in this matter so it must be a wise decision…
For all you kids out there. This is shades of Hugo Gernsbachs April fool’s author, “Ulysees Mohammad F.Fips,III” who wrote such great articles for the old “Short Wave Craft” magazines of the 1930s. One was about a small amplifying device to replace tubes that only required a few volts, lasted forever,and had no filament. He even published a schematic and drawings of the device. Got a lot of laughs from the readers.
Hewlett Packard fans will appreciate the reference to RPN.
FAKE NEWS!!!
Just Wonderful !!
If I say anything else, …….
Are they really(fcc) going to reinstate the morse code im 61 years old and have trouble hearing sometime due to vietnam war this is unfair. K5geb
I don’t have the problem with high levels of radio freq. energy I always make sure I have my tin foil hat on when I’m on the radio (Chuckle)
As an aside, HOA organizations are planning to do more research/studies on buried antennas. Their interest is because they found that this kind of antenna causes little interference to others and the background noise for the ham is often less than measurable.
The report is due to be published next year, about the first week of April. Action may be sooner, though, in anticipation of the reports being favorable.
Home entertainment system manufacturers are also pushing this; they may even pay part of the expense for the study. The ARRL has hinted that they may have to revise the data on the “dangers” of radiation from nearby antennas.
Baloney. I have noticed in recent years how the media distorts even simple things and puts a left wing spin on things. Like people who sneak into the country are not illegal aliens but calls them immigrants and fails to notice that today Democrats are
are basically Communists.