Scientists Prove Beer-Goggles Effect is Real -- Efficacy of Spitting in the Wind Currently Under Review

In the latest revelation to come out of science’s unending quest to prove the utterly obvious, a recent UK study has shown that being drunk makes the people around you appear more attractive. This is following on from shocking research conducted in France that determined that loud music is often played in places serving alcoholic beverages. A look into whether drinking in the winter increases the likelihood that one will attempt to urinate one’s initials in a snowbank is set for the first snowfall.

The beer-goggles effect is of course commonly known to all drinkers and the sober ugly people hanging around them looking to get laid. Lowering inhibitions and standards right along with them is what alcohol is for. However, it was never proven in a controlled, scientific setting, and for some reason, some academic types at Bristol University in the UK thought it should be.

The researchers gave both a lime-flavored alcoholic drink and a similarly flavored non-alcoholic drink to 84 university students, who may or may not have shown up solely because they heard word that an egghead was giving out free booze. They were told to drink what was given to them and then shown pictures of people their own age once they were finished. The slightly tipsy students found the students in the pictures more attractive than the control group did. Hence: the beer-goggles theory formerly bandied about ignorantly is now established in fact. Interestingly, the heterosexual group of students with a drink in them also found members of their own sex more attractive, which might result in an unexpected conclusion to the evening the next time Billy and Bo Dog go out for a Friday debauch.

The study’s lead researcher said that ethical constraints prevented him from giving his subjects more than the equivalent of a few glasses of wine, something he regretted. "We can look at smaller doses and we can look at slightly higher doses," he said. What people would be rating others on HotOrNot.com after having, say, fallen down the stairs in a puke-stained drunken stupor is thus a matter of pure conjecture. In the meantime, alcohol, will continue with its sacred mission of giving hope to those battered mercilessly by the ugly stick.