First of all, there are lots and lots of "common sense" ideas that turn out to be very wrong. At one time, it was "common sense" that bad parenting caused autism. It took scientists actually doing the work of testing that idea to show that it was wrong.

Secondly, the strength of the effect IS surprising. I would have not have predicted that the correlation with bullying would be stronger than the association with abuse.

Third, there are far too many people that think bullying is a relatively harmless "rite of passage". If this result helps to stimulate a national discussion about bullying that alone is very useful.

Funding for scientific studies is based on peer-review from indepentent panels of experts in the field. In my field, less than 10% of the grant applications get funded. The ones that do get funded are deemed to be of great value. Do you think you are more qualified to decide which studies have value and which ones don't than panels of world-class experts?

If you can suggest a better system for allocating research funds, I'm all ears.

Jogree, I also hear that people who are stupid as children grow up to be stupid adults who marry stupid spouses and have more stupid children. Would you agree, based off your "common sense"?

The real problem is, many parents don't see anything wrong with little Jimmy or Jane's bullying behavior. Many parents either refuse to see that their children can, in fact, do wrong or worse, they see bullying as some kind of social Darwinism at work and their child being a bully means they are "winning" against the competition. It is all fine and dandy to say Parents should be parents, but how do you suggest dealing with parents who encourage bullying? To them, they are parenting. Their kid is top dog. Everyone else are just whiners. I'm not saying they are right -- quite to the contrary -- but when you say leave it up to the parents, that's what you are going to get from a fair number of them. This is a social problem and needs to be dealt with by society.

Saddened you are so right here. My kid was bullied for awhile by a kid whose parents totally thought their kid could do no wrong. Said my kid was a liar. Totally wrong-and what message does that send to the kid? He stopped this crap when my kid stood up for himself. Hope he does well in prison!

Adults VASTLY underestimate the amount of bullying that goes on. A big part of the problem is that kids are a lot smarter than parents and teachers give credit for. Parents and teachers think "well, I don't SEE little Johnny being mean to anyone so he must not be a bully".

Duh... of COURSE you don't see it -- little Johnny may be cruel and mean but he isn't stupid. He's going to do his bullying when you aren't looking.

When I was a child I was bullied nearly to the point of destroying my life -- and the teachers and school administrators absolutely insisted (and actually BELIEVED) that no bullying was going on.