beer goggles

As I browsed through the morning's news, once again the BBC caught my eye as they explained the Beer Goggles effect. At first I thought this was some sort of joke, but apparently researchers at Manchester University, have worked out a formula to calculate how beer goggles affect a drinker's vision. The beer goggles are, in fact, merely the result of drinking and the effect it has on your vision which can, they say, transform "ugly" people into beauties - until the morning after. A poll taken showed that 68% of people wished they hadn't given their phone number to somebody when they saw them the next day and realized they weren't attracted to them. This is the result of beer goggles.

Alcohol has always featured strongly in Britain where there is a pub every few hundred yards in both cities and the smallest of villages. Directions are always given using the name of a pub, such as "turn right at the Dog and Duck, then follow the road until you reach The Victoria", and many people go to the same pub, or "local", to socialize and generally hang out. However, the concept that scientists were actually putting time into researching the effect on your ability to decide if a person was good looking or not based on how much you had drunk, again made me realize there are many differences between England and the US! They have even devised an algebraic formula to take into account the amount of alcohol consumed, smokiness of the room (and believe me, it is smoky!), luminance of person's interest, Snellen visual acuity, and distance from person of interest.

In his research commissioned by Bausch & Lomb, Nathan Efron, Professor of Clinical Optometry at the University of Manchester said that the above formula meant that someone with normal vision, who has consumed 5 pints of beer in a smoky room will score 55 when viewing a person at 1.5 meters distance, which would result in moderate beer goggle effect.

When calculated this is what the scores meant:

Less than 50: no effect
Between 1 - 50: an unattractive person appears less "visually offensive"
Between 51 - 100: non-appealing people become suddenly attractive
More than 100: someone not considered attractive looks like a super model.