POWER PLAY: BATTLE OF THE SEXES HITS REMOTE CONTROL

There must be an overabundance of professional researchers in this country.

Sitting around in dank, windowless research institutes, a bunch of bored men and women with doctorates, bitter at being beaten to all the cool topics, desperately try to come up with something even remotely interesting to study and write papers about so they don't have to go back into teaching.

When they use their data-gathering and analysis skills for good instead of marketing, researchers provide valuable information for and about society.

Research to cure disease or discover new drugs to treat ailments -- or at least new drugs to keep fanatical partygoers occupied -- provides obvious benefits.

Then you have people who research human behavior. Through such analysis we as a society can better understand why some people are sociopathic and do terrible things, why value systems differ depending on various factors and why millions of Americans willingly subject themselves to the horrors of country music.

While we carbon-based lifeforms do a lot of interesting and puzzling things, most aspects of life are basically humdrum and not considered worthy topics of extensive study.

However, from Oregon State University and the National Council on Family Relations comes a study that reaches conclusions which should have been obvious.

The study reveals -- big surprise -- that men constantly channel surf when watching television, and in the process annoy their wives and girlfriends.

The researchers involved in this project must not have had much experience interacting with the opposite sex.

Needing to research the differences of opinions on acceptable remote-control usage that exist between the sexes is like conducting experiments to determine if water is wet. Either these people can't grasp the obvious or they were given a federal grant, which are always doled out by people who can't grasp the obvious.

The study does not say why men are prone to channel surfing.

Perhaps men are more discriminating in their viewing choices and don't wish to waste time on programs of low quality.

While that sounds like a nice theory, it is easily disproven when one considers that many men will watch every second of a golf tournament without once changing the channel.

A more likely reason is that men try to add an element of adventure to the otherwise sedentary activity of watching television. And considering the current network lineups, you can't really blame them.

By flipping through the channels, you never know what you will find. Each trip through the cycle holds the potential for joy, disappointment or unexpected surprises. A true microcosm of life.

Will you find the program of your dreams only to discover that it will be over in six minutes, quickly transporting you on an emotional roller coaster from excitement concerning the possibilities to a hollow unfulfilled sense of failure?

The study said that women are more likely to plan ahead concerning what they will watch. Where's the fun in that? How do they know there isn't something better just a few channels down the line?

Well, you would know by reading TV Guide, but that's the easy way out.

The study also attempts to imply that women, who have worked hard to achieve equality in other aspects of life, do not have equal rights when it comes to television since men unfairly hoard the remote.

Why is it so fashionable in modern research to attempt to somehow conclude, no matter how shaky the evidence, that even the most innocuous behavior victimizes a certain segment of the population? If it were unequivocally proved that the world would end next week, somebody would claim that woman and minorities would be the hardest hit.

The reason that so many men feel the need to usurp control of the remote is that women try to torment them with unbearable shows like "Sisters," "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman" or (horror of horrors) old reruns of "thirtysomething."

Men are simply standing up for their constitutional right not to be subjected to cruel and unusual punishment.

And if they don't keep flipping the channels, they might miss a really good beer commercial.

Marc Powers is a member of the Southeast Missourian news staff.