In a landmark pop psychology study that took over 10 minutes, “researchers” have concluded that pre-teen girls like Justin Bieber, which will surprise no one who has even remotely heard of children.

Hey, Beliebers: ask your mom if she loved Shaun Cassidy. Then show her this photo and ask her if she still thinks he looks hot.

Adding to the complexity of the study is that researchers obviously had their own boy crushes. “When I was younger, it was Shaun Cassidy, and we had to wait a week to see him on TV again,” said Mathilde Forsell, a nurse, whose own daughter, if you can believe the extraordinary coincidence, also likes Justin Bieber.

The study includes a whole lot of hysterically funny pop psychology:

Hearing familiar, favorite music stimulates the release of dopamine, the neurotransmitter involved in pleasure and addiction, providing the same rush as eating chocolate or that winning does for a compulsive gambler, says neuroscientist Daniel Levitin, who was able to observe the process using fMRI scans in his lab at McGill University in Montreal.

Dr. Levitin’s research also showed that musical tastes formed in the teen years become part of the brain’s internal wiring, as that is the time when some neural pathways are solidifying and others are being pruned away. That’s why the music adults tend to be nostalgic for is the music from their teenage years.

Boys also develop musical tastes in this phase of life, but adolescent girls are far more likely to become infatuated with pop stars, experts say, because they are awakening to romantic and sexual feelings that are both intoxicating and scary. Having a crush on a celebrity they are unlikely to meet is a way to try out such feelings at a safe distance. “A lot of girls I know practiced their first kiss on a poster. I don’t think that’s changed at all,” says Mark Rubinfeld, professor and chair of sociology at Westminster College in Salt Lake City.

Undoubtedly, pages of pie charts, plots of standard deviations, and formulas involving Greek letters made the whole thing look scienterrific. Perhaps you could get a pie chart printed out on a poster you could kiss off your wall.

You know what you’re probably thinking? You’re probably thinking that what this story needs is a whole bunch of reminders that kids liking celebrities is nothing new. And you are right! Because here are references to the Beatles, Elvis, Sinatra, and naturally Franz Liszt—oddly, the last Hungarian man a girl would ever voluntarily be interested in. Yeah, the Czar remembers when he was much younger, how the girls used to scream for him and get hysterical; of course, they were running in terror. Dopamine, nothing: the Czar could get ephinephrine flowing!

But does the study forget about boys? Ah, forget it—the story says that boys get too wrapped up in stuff like football to care about nonsense like Justin Bieber.

What a load of crap this study is. Maybe they could get a study going that hungry infants cry more, or another one of those ridiculous time-wasters that try to prove that teenagers sometimes act like goofuses.

Anybody doubt this got some government funding?

The Czar of Muscovy

Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.