A team of British researchers from Newcastle University claim to have discovered that men are bigger idiots than women. The researchers decided to test the theory by examining sex differences in “idiotic risk-taking behaviour” among Darwin Award nominees over a 20-year span.
The Darwin Awards commemorate those who die not in accidental deaths but in idiotic accidents involving astonishingly stupid methods.
Worthy candidates include a man stealing a ride home by hitching a shopping trolley to the back of a train, only to be dragged two miles to his death before the train was able to stop. There is also a terrorist who posted a letter bomb with insufficient postage stamps and who, on its return, unthinkingly opened his own letter to disastrous result.
Of the 413 Darwin Award nominations, 318 were independently verified and confirmed by the Darwin Awards committee. It was found that out of the 318 cases, 282 Darwin Awards were awarded to males and just 36 awards given to females. Males thus made up 88.7 percent of Darwin Award winners and this sex difference is highly statistically significant.
