Spending five years and three million pounds of public money on a questionable study may seem like every researcher's dream, but the real reward comes when the study is done and various papers give your results three inches on pg five with the headline "Study shows tall people buy larger furniture". As millions of disinterested people run their eyes apathetically over the headline, perhaps even considering discussing it with colleagues before deciding it's not really worth it, the researcher basks in the warm glow of a valuable contribution to the shape of human society.
But now researchers in Oxford have hit upon the golden goose- a machine which generates such headlines without the need for wasted time and money spent on doing the research. This morning alone it has produced "Children may die later than their parents", "Women 70% more likely to get pregnant than men" and "People who watch The Jersey Shore are just terrible people."
Public concern that these headlines are not backed up by actual research has not materialised as no one ever checked up on them anyway.