If This Was The Onion, It Would Be Funny.

An article in Scientific American (which I found through Andrew Sullivan's blog) describes a recent study of how the brain is affected by thoughts of "love" as opposed to thoughts of "sex":

Participants in the first study first imagined one of three situations: a long walk with their beloved one (the love condition), casual sex with a person to whom they were attracted but not in love with (the sex condition), or a nice walk on their own (the control condition). Participants then attempted to solve three creative insight problems and four problems that assess analytic thinking, which were logic problems from the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) (e.g., if A <> B then ?) As predicted, participants in the love condition solved more creativity problems and less analytic problems than those in the control condition. Participants in the sex condition, on the other hand, solved less creativity problems and more analytic problems compared to participants in the control condition.

The most glaring problem here is the unexamined assumption that "love" and "sex" are discrete phenomena. What? Another obvious problem is that people lie about their feelings regarding love and sex all the time, even to themselves. Probably especially to themselves. These people ask someone to imagine "a long walk with their beloved" or "casual sex with a person to whom they were attracted but not in love with" and then expect me to believe they have any idea what that person is imagining, let alone that they've induced some measurable state? It's amazing to me that educated people present this hooey with a straight face.

I call bullshit.