Tell Me Something I Don't Know.

In the past few months, the nation has been rocked by a series of shocking disclosures, several in the form of scientific studies. First, the Securities and Exchange Commission revealed that a substantial number of financial analysts own stock in the companies they follow, and may thus be compromised by their dual roles as financial oracles and cheerleaders.

To make matters worse, these analysts often buy shares at cheap, pre-IPO prices in companies brought public by their employers. More alarming still, many analysts, after purchasing these inexpensive pre-IPO shares in companies they cover, subsequently initiate coverage with a "buy" recommendation.

Astounding as these revelations were, there was more jaw-dropping news on the way. According to a study by professors at Massachusetts Institute of Technology Michigan State University, and Stanford University, auditing firms that receive substantial fees from the companies they are paid to audit are more likely to stretch the limits of acceptable accounting practices and be less independent in their reporting. The report, based on a survey of 4,200 company filings with regulators since February, found that auditor objectivity tended to be "impaired" in cases where the auditees paid more for non-audit services than for auditing services.

Still in your chair?

Wait--there's more. A study of 6,000 workers at three companies, conducted by researchers at Yale University, unearthed the astonishing news that depressed employees are twice as likely to take time off from work for health reasons as workers who do not define themselves as depressed, and seven times more likely to be less productive. According to the study, from The Journal of Psychiatry, "the perceived stigma associated with depressive disorders may thus result in a high proportion of hidden costs to employers." in other words, depressed workers might be doing irreparable harm to the economy by concealing their true state and showing up for work in the wrong frame of mind.

Though this troika of broadsides may come as body blows to the average American, many of those "in the know" have seen this sort of thing coming for years. I for one had long had an inkling that analysts were more likely to issue "buy" recommendations on stocks they owned than on ones they didn't.

And not to blow my own horn or anything, but the results of the academic study about auditors also left me a bit non-plussed. Isn't it basic human nature to give one's benefactors the benefit of the doubt? Though I was grateful to the folks at MIT, Michigan State, and Stanford for doing all the statistical legwork, they didn't exactly solve Fermat's Last Theorem or uncrypt the Holy Grail.

Finally, I don't think I'm the only one who had a hunch that depressed people were less productive than non-depressed people. You only need to compare the economies of Eastern Europe, where everybody seems to be down, with those in the West, where most employees seem pretty chipper, to realize that a bad mindset and a misfiring economy go hand in hand.

It would seem that we have now entered an era of intense obviousness, where researchers will go out of their way to confirm what we already know and journalists will go out of their way to act surprised. This being the case, we can reasonably expect to see a number of non-eyebrow-lifting studies appear. Here are a few examples:

* Deaf Americans are far less likely to replace their stereo equipment than Americans with good hearing.

* Sons of former U.S. presidents are more likely to become President of the United States than humble goatherds.

* A goodly number of world-class swimmers and runners secretly use performance-enhancing drugs.

* The French are obsessed with fine cuisine; the Brits considerably less so. In related news, polenta appears on more menus in Manhattan's Little Italy than in the Greek district of Detroit.

* City streets are more dangerous at night than quiet country lanes.

* Rock stars rarely read Montesquieu. What's more, athletes in all four major sports continue to eschew Diderot, Verlaine, and Proust.

* Last but not least, scientists will soon provide conclusive proof that Rome was not built in a day. Nor, for that matter, Milwaukee.

Joe Queenan is a regular columnist for CE.