Last week medical scientists at Johns Hopkins University released the reports of their latest long-term experiment. Through repeated trials it was shown that participants who had a larger hand length than their face, were statistically more likely (p=.0012) to develop some form of cancer in the next five years.

The experimenters did change their measurement techniques early on, but that data was removed. Initially a modified Brannock device was used to measure hand and face sizes, but it proved to be too slow and Footlocker threatened legal action if it wasn’t fixed and returned.

The newer style was much more efficient and although it was qualitative observational data, it was quite effective. Participants were asked to put the heel of their palm on the lowest rostral part of the chin and stretch their fingers vertically as high as they could.

If the fingertips (not counting nails) surpassed the hairline at the superior region of the noggin bone, they were put in the potential cancer group.

Bald volunteers were asked to leave due to confusion on where their face actually ended, accounting for a 4 percent loss of the sample size.

A check up with a re-measuring session was done every year for five years to test for signs of cancer and hand/face size ratio changes.

The cancer was screened for by feeling up the nuts and knockers of the males and females respectively and then scanning them with the Oncology-O-Matic, a non-invasive machine with a 100 percent chance of detecting all cell abnormities and tumors instantly.

As expected, 415 out of the 417 people in the cancer group had developed some sort of malignant cell mass, rejecting the null hypothesis. The remaining two had died in a seven car pile-up carpooling to the second check-in.

A post-mortem fondling showed that they had not developed anything within the first year, but it is unclear if their low-risk lifestyles of alcoholism, chain smoking from aluminum cans, hotdogs eating contests and daily finger smashes/bone filings would have made them outliers.

The Cynic implores all of its readers to ask a close friend or roommate to test them as soon as possible, keeping in mind that the unexpected and blinding pain that will follow is all part of the process.