The life cycle of a pop-psych news story: 1. Respectable paper comes out in respectable journal. Author's institution notes that the research could be spun to

The life cycle of a pop-psych news story: 1. Respectable paper comes out in respectable journal. Author's institution notes that the research could be spun to sound interesting to the general public, so they send out a press release. 2. First round of over-sensationalization, in the sciencey-news sector of the media. 3. One week later, the bottom-feeding media gets a hold of the story via a vague skimming of the over-sensationalized version, and sensationalizes it even more. 4. For the next forty years some randomly twisted version of the article becomes "common knowledge". Welcome to stage 3, courtesy msn.com and the Department of Completely Missing the Point.