Looking for the point of seemingly pointless research.

At the tender age of 16, I excitedly unwrapped a parcel that had come all the way from Lynchburg, Tennessee. Inside was the key to rock-and-roll rebellion: a Jack Daniel’s T-shirt, just like the one worn by the lord-of-mayhem lead guitarist with Guns N’ Roses.

Fortunately, my fondness for that T-shirt has long expired, and I never really got the taste for Mr Daniel’s whiskey. But is it mere coincidence that my seventeenth year also saw the beginning of a long and fruitful campaign of social drinking?

Researchers from the Dartmouth Medical School in Lebanon, New Hampshire, suggest that such ‘alcohol-branded merchandise’ (ABM) could have triggered my slide into intemperance.

Read more here.