Why the New Beard Study is Inaccurate

There’s a new study out claiming that human male beards are dirtier than a dog’s fur.

The beards of eighteen Swiss men were tested along with the fur of thirty dogs. Most of the human male beards had a high bacterial count, while only twenty-three of the thirty dogs had high microbial count.

This study is making its way around social media and people are sharing it like crazy, but I have several problems with this study.

Fault in the Science

 My first problem with the study is the science. I have a degree in psychology so I know quite a bit about research and how studies should be conducted.

My first problem with the approach to the study is that the pool of male participants is not diverse enough. When researchers are deciding to make serious claims like the one above, they must diversify the participants to yield an accurate result.

There should have been more men across more cultural and ethnic groups than just a handful of presumably white Swiss men. One must also take into account that personal hygiene has a lot to do with culture and social economic status.

There wasn’t enough variety among the male participants in the study to make a generalization about all men.

The next problem is too many dogs and too few men. If this study would have been done correctly, there should have been an even disruption of men and dogs.

Because there are more dogs than men, the results will always be skewed to cater to the dogs, simply because the sheer amount of dogs is throwing off the numbers. There should have been one dog per human to give an accurate result.

The entire research method behind this study is completely off. Because nothing about this Swiss study was done correctly, the results must be thrown out.

Personal Problem with the Study

My personal problem with the study is that I love beards.

Just the sight of a little subtle can make me drool a bit. I feel personally attacked by this study. I don’t want all those beautiful bearded kings out there to start shaving because of a very poorly done study.

I’m kidding to a degree, but my real problem with the entire study and how it is going viral is that people are being deceived.

We live in an age where information is readily at our fingertips, but all the information we are being fed is not always true (*coughs in Leaving Neverland)

This study is making its viral rounds and people who are not well versed in how research should be conducted are eating it up. It is frightening to know that we live in an era where nearly anything can be printed and people believe it.

I wrote this post as a brief precautionary tale with the simple warning; don’t believe everything you see on the internet.

Stand strong Beard Gang, your queens will not send you out to the dog house just yet.

Soul Squad how do you feel about beards? Do you find them attractive or dirty? Comment below using your Facebook profile or WordPress guest or user ID.