Here’s how to know that a video game violence study is written by somebody with an agenda: Whenever comparisons to “unhealthful” things like cheeseburgers or cigarettes shows up.

We’ve gone into why studies like this are questionable at best before, but surely somebody like Brad Bushman, a man who has spent his professional life studying what makes people angry and a man with four degrees in psychology, this man would have a reasonable grasp of how ridiculous it is to assume human beings are driven towards violence by entertainment, right? Surely he’d get his ducks in a row before making some sort of ridiculous statement.

Right?

“Playing videogames could be compared to smoking cigarettes. A single cigarette won’t cause lung cancer, but smoking over weeks or months or years greatly increases the risk. In the same way, repeated exposure to violent videogames may have a cumulative effect on aggression.”

Oh, for Pete’s sake.

To be fair, Bushman is not a Bible banger: In fact he actually published research showing the Bible can make people more aggressive. But he obviously has an agenda, as this Wired article can tell you.

Bushman’s study took two forms: First, 70 students played either a violent game (which was actually violent, to the study’s credit) or a racing game, and then read the beginning of a story and offered their predictions of what happened next. Those who played violent games had increasingly violent predictions over the three days of the study.

Secondly, test subjects played a multiplayer shooter and were told that each time they won, their (non-existent) opponent would be subjected to a noise that got progressively longer and louder for each kill they racked up. Shocking nobody, those playing violent multiplayer acted like dicks.