Black Coffee, Psychopaths, and Pseudoscience | Intellectual Takeout

Black Coffee, Psychopaths, and Pseudoscience | Intellectual Takeout:

• The internet says if you drink black coffee you're more likely to be a psychopath. So it must be true, right?

A “news story” currently trending online suggests that psychopaths take their coffee black. 
Or taking your coffee black is a sign of psychopathic tendencies. 
Or something.

I take offense to this--not because I drink black coffee, but because it’s so tiring.
For starters, this study is old.
It was pounded to death in 2015, and even then media couldn’t get it right.

...“The study in question does not actually say that people who take their coffee black have psychopathic tendencies.
The researchers who wrote the study didn’t actually ask anyone about whether they take their coffee black.
And what the study does say about the relationship between taste preferences and personality traits is probably meaningless and worth ignoring.”

If you wish to read the actual study for yourself, you can do so here.
Which brings me to the science and the study itself.

Is anyone else skeptical of the value of such a scientific pursuit? 

Today we laugh at the scientists of the past who practiced in pseudomedicine, such as those kooky phrenologists who believed the shape of one’s skull determined one’s psychological attributes and intellectual abilities..."
Read on.