I would never do that to you, I would never drive that fast

Hold the front page. No, hold several inner pages, too. A team of "scientists" have done some sciencing and discovered that listening to faster music might make you drive faster.

The scientists are based at Ben Gurion University - we mention that because they deserve to hang their heads in shame - and their findings are being pushed by a company which does something to do, vaguely, with cars:

A team of scientists at the Ben-Gurion University in Israel carried out the study exploring the effect of music tempo on driving. They found that music tempo consistently affected both driving speed and the driver's perceived speed estimates: as the tempo of background music increased, so too did the driving speed and the driver's speed estimate. The tempo of background music also consistently affected the frequency of traffic violations; disregarded red traffic-lights, road crossings and collisions were most frequent with fast-paced music.

But hang about... if you're driving faster, that means you're going to be less in control of your car, stopping distances will be longer, and so on, which means that it's the speed which makes you more likely to screw up and make mistakes. Not the music.

Although if you're playing George Sampson's Headz Up, you might be tempted to spin your car on its roof.

The car-related business then chips in with some findings of its own:

[They] also ran a recent consumer survey which revealed that 73% of respondents admitted to having speeded in the past and of those over 70% revealed that they listened to loud rock and fast dance music.

So... most people have, at some point in the past, driven faster than the speed limit; and most people listen to rock or dance music.

I haven't done the survey, but I very much suspect that if you did, you'd find at least two thirds of people in the UK have worn trousers. And I bet at least two thirds of them have eaten pizza. Therefore, eating pizza makes you wear trousers. (If Pizza Hut and Next want to send me an email talking money, I'll even do them a press release.)

Do they have another expert on hand to try and explain these surprises?

Eve Oldfield, Cognitive Neuroscience specialist said: "The study results imply that music tempo increases driving risks by competing for attentional space in the brain; the driver is distracted and driving capacity reduced with the increase in the number of temporal events which must be processed and require larger memory storage."

If you Google Eve Oldfield, the first response is the press release with the story in it; you then get a Facebook public listing which lists that Eve Oldfield as a fan of Ben Goldacre. That would be the Ben Goldacre who spends much of his time pointing out flaws in this sort of non-science. That could just be a wacky coincidence.

But why should rock music be the only music that does that? Wouldn't a convoluted lo-fi romance song also command your attention? How about if you liked singing along with quiet-is-the-new-loud stuff? Wouldn't that demand more of your attention than merely flinging in a Top Gear compilation CD?

In short: Hasn't Ben Gurion University just wasted a bit of its money and time and tarnished its reputation?

[Thanks to James P for the tip]