Newcastle Scientist Finds Men Are More Stupid Than Women

12 December 2014, 06:44 | Updated: 30 March 2016, 13:50

Research by a scientist at Newcastle University's found men really are more stupid than women.

The research, carried out over a period of 20 years, found when it comes to needless and untimely deaths, men win hands down.

It was based on 'The Darwin Awards', an annual review of the most foolish way people have died.

It found almost 90% of silly ways to die between 1995 and 2014 were 'won' by males.

The Darwin Awards are named after Charles Darwin, and recognises those who have accidentally eliminated themselves from the human race by stupid methods.

Some of those include a man stealing a ride home by attaching a shopping trolley to the back of a train, only to be dragged two miles to his death before it was able to stop  and a man who shot himself in the head with a 'spy pen' weapon to show his friend it was real.

Of the 318 cases looked at, 282 (88.7%) were awarded to males and just 36 to females.

The research has been published in the Christmas edition of the British Medical Journal.

Dr Dennis Lendrem, of the University of Newcastle, said:
"Idiotic risks are defined as senseless risks, where the apparent payoff is negligible or non existent, and the outcome is often extremely negative and often final.

According to 'male idiot theory' (MIT) many of the differences in risk seeking behaviour, emergency department admissions, and mortality may be explained by the observation that men are idiots and idiots do stupid things.

There are anecdotal data supporting MIT, but to date there has been no systematic analysis of sex differences in idiotic risk taking behaviour."