Who put these people in charge?

Looking around, it’s easy to believe we’ve lost our fundamental sensibilities. But some things come along that help us realize we’re actually wiser than a lot of people with big titles and money and responsibilities.

Like social scientists and academicians and politicians who commit time and money to study….what any of us can readily answer through our common sense.

The United States is so wealthy that we award researchers millions of dollars per year to fund “important” studies that report nothing beyond common sense. Why does it take a research team of PhDs to create statistical tables to report findings that everyone already knows? The market for research studies continues to grow as everyone from politicians to new parents now relies on it to furnish credibility.

Among recently released studies is one containing the amazing finding that breathing clean air is better for one’s health than breathing dirty air. As reported in the January issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, a research team from the Harvard School of Public Health and Brigham Young University examined pollution content in 51 U.S. cities during the 1980s and 1990s and found that people living in cities where air pollution had declined enjoy increased life expectancy concomitant with increases in air quality. Wow.

No kidding.

The authors of the study conclude: “A reduction in exposure to ambient fine-particulate air pollution contributed to significant and measurable improvements in life expectancy in the United States.”

In case that did not change your world view, try this one: Did you know that high school dropouts are much more likely to succumb to cycles of dependence rather than independence and are, overall, less productive in a global economy? According to a “groundbreaking” study conducted by The Economics Center for Education & Research at the University of Cincinnati, at the request of the Ohio Alliance of Public Charter Schools (OAPCS), on average, each student failing to graduate from high school will end up costing Ohio taxpayers $3,909 per year from age 16 to 64, or about $191,500 over a lifetime.

Didn’t we know this stuff already? Of course. How do these studies get approved, for crying out loud?

There’s more.

Are you sitting down for this one? According to a new study, virginity pledges adolescents make are not lasting. Really? Virginity pledges alone do not decrease teenagers’ sexual behavior, says a report in the January issue of Pediatrics.

So, we turn to these for credibility….or comic relief?

Except it’s not funny.

In the end, many of these researchers are given university tenure and awards for telling us things that our parents taught us–for example, toxins are toxic, education is vital for making a contribution to society and supporting oneself and one’s family, and sexuality divorced from a strong moral code restricting it to marriage is aimless and damaging.

In today’s meritocracy, we have traded in time-tested guidance from our elders for costly university studies. Even opinion-heads like me have come to rely on these studies for public credibility. They permit me to say, essentially, “See, I told you so.” As a result, we pay for insight that we could get for free from clergy, older family members, and other sources of wisdom.

So, knowing that, how do we stop paying, and start using our common sense?