Its past two in the morning, unusual for me to be up at this time. So I thought I should read something intellectually stimulating, and ended up with a paper in the British Medical Journal on depression in elderly people. And then I saw a link of "Most Read Articles" which was completely bizzare.

One of the papers on the "Most Read" list was

Phenotypic differences between male physicians, surgeons, and film stars: comparative study

From the abstract:

Objectives: To test the hypothesis that, on average, male surgeons are taller and better looking than male physicians, and to compare both sets of doctors with film stars who play doctors on screen.

Participants: Random sample of 12 surgeons and 12 physicians plus 4 external controls (film stars who play doctors), matched by age (50s) and sex (all male).
Interventions: An independent committee (all female) evaluated the "good looking score" (range 1-7).
Main outcome measures: Height (cm) and points on the good looking score.
Results: Surgeons were significantly taller than physicians (mean height 179.4 v 172.6 cm; P=0.01). Controls had significantly higher good looking scores than surgeons (mean score 5.96 v 4.39; difference between means 1.57, 95% confidence interval 0.69 to 2.45; P=0.013) and physicians (5.96 v 3.65; 2.31, 1.58 to 3.04; P=0.003). Surgeons had significantly higher good looking scores than physicians (4.39 v 3.65; 0.74; 0.25 to 1.23; P=0.010).

Conclusions: Male surgeons are taller and better looking than physicians, but film stars who play doctors on screen are better looking than both these groups of doctors. Whether these phenotypic differences are genetic or environmental is unclear.

The full article is up on the BMJ for your reading pleasure but I think the abstract carried the point through well enough.

Didn't know people can actually get funding to publish papers like these. But I don't mean that it might necessarily be a bad thing.