I estimate (because I just spent the last few minutes working it out) that in the West, around 4,300 research studies are released to the media every day. This represents an appalling trade in cobblers, for two simple reasons: you can always rely on hacks to get the wrong end of the stick, and you can always guarantee that the researchers involved were devoid of commonsense.

The Slog and its predecessor nby started out in this niche, but after a few weeks I was overwhelmed with the number of examples I either found in the media, or people sent me. You could probably earn a comfortable living running a site called The Bollocks Exchange. The trouble is, after a while despair replaces humour as the response to watching clever-but-dim people churning out utter nonsense. Also, nby soon discovered social services, bankers, big boss denial, liars, Peter Mandelson, economic madness and EU corruption. So in that context, researchers seemed relatively harmless – and tedious.

But I have to share this one with you because it breaks the first rule of all successful human discovery: assuming a causal relationship between two results.

Scottish researchers have discovered that people who don’t clean their teeth regularly are more likely to suffer heart attacks. They studied 11,000 people, and found that those who didn’t brush their teeth regularly were 70% more likely to have a ‘fatal cardiovascular event’.

Now I don’t know about you, but I hear the words ‘Scots who never clean their teeth’, and a picture of Rab C Nesbitt leaps into my mind. And I think of old Rab and conclude, ‘Lots of other things like Scotch and deep-fried Mars Bars and being too lazy to clean his teeth will kill Rab long before gum inflammation even gets on the shortlist’.

But no. The BMJ backs the study, asserting that ‘previous work has also shown a link between gum disease and heart problems’. I must barge in here, by the way, and observe that walking about in a string vest and lying face down in gutters on a regular basis are very strongly correlated with dying young as well.

The more sensible chaps at UCL and the British Heart Foundation point out that ‘poor oral hygiene is often associated with other well known risk factors for heart disease, such as smoking and poor diet’.

Our two chums Alan and Adrienne have an imaginary character they call Dr Bollocks. He comes out with daft theories, and whenever anyone at supper says something silly, they go “Doctor Bollocks!”. It terrifies the guests, but it reassures me that real people don’t go into medicine.