How to become a neuroscience researcher:

Step 1: Submit a grant request for research into head injuries resulting from car surfing.

Step 2: Spend five years spending that grant money like crazy on tequila and high class prostitutes.

Step 3: Submit a conservative angled report specifically blaming Jackass, YouTube and what the hell, GTA as well. Make some nice graphs to support your findings.

Well there really has been a study by neurosurgeons into the incidence of car surfing and examined 74 cases that resulted in injury over ten years. That’s right in ten years of study 74 cases was enough to warrant some concern.

The result of that concern, the release of GTA games and Jackass movies corresponded with an increase in car surfing during those periods, while times when no GTA or Jackass has recently been released saw a reduction in injuries. That’s their link.

Never mind that Jackass movies are released in the summer when kids are off school and likewise GTA games tend to come out leading up to summer or Christmas holidays when the age group who enjoy car surfing have time off from school and college. Never minded that they only looked at four states in the US, all southern states with large rural areas.

Never mind either that car surfing doesn’t actually exist in GTA even as a minigame or scored activity and the physics for when you are standing on a vehicle are actually one of the odd lacking areas of the game series. Even Nico Bellic stands as still as Michelangelo’s David defying all the laws of physics while the car below him motors along.

So that expression we like to use, ‘It’s not brain surgery’ to imply that something isn’t that difficult or require a lot training, I guess if this is what brain surgeons are coming up with we can’t use it anymore.

Pretty graphs are soon to appear in a newspaper or current affairs program the next time some drunk kid becomes road jam as a result of car surfing. These people should get Darwin awards, not be the topic of neurosurgeons research. How’s that Alzheimers cure coming along incidentally?

Of course I might be speaking out of turn. You might see the connection between car surfing and ‘what them kids are watchin’. If so I would like to make you an offer, I have a rock that protects me from tigers I would like to sell to you, I’ve carried it around for years and suffered not a single tiger attack.

You can read the whole report here if you want in PDF form, just don't expect it to seem any less stupid in its official font.

Bonus Lowbrow Points: One of the researchers involved is Professor A. Wang, ha ha ha, well that cheered me up some.