Bloggystyle -- The Greatest

Apparently I'm going into the wrong type of career, because apparently people get money to do worthless research like this:

"Older people with better social networks with friends were less likely to die over a 10-year follow-up period than older people with poorer friends networks," Lynne C. Giles of Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia, told Reuters Health.

But in what may come as a surprising finding to older people who rely on their children and other relatives, having a large network of relatives was not associated with longer life, Giles and her colleagues report in the July issue of the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

Giles and her team are not sure why friends seemed to help people live longer. They speculate that friends may influence people to engage in more healthy behavior, such as not smoking or not drinking too much. Another possibility, according to the researchers, is that friends may help boost people's self-esteem.

"The list of answers to this question is potentially long and complex," according to Dr. Carlos F. Mendes de Leon, of Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, who is the author of an editorial that accompanies the study.

It amazes me that not only can people get paid for this bullshit, but that these people don't commit suicide for being a general waste of life.