The Onion: A study released Monday by the University of California-Berkeley shows that 100 percent of Americans fail to disclose the full truth about what they think and do in private.

“While startling and often embarrassing revelations about the private lives of politicians, pro athletes, and celebrities surface on a routine basis, our research indicates that Americans out of the public eye also have a lot to hide,” said Berkeley sociology professor Dr. Mia L. Greene, who headed the 10-year study. “Surprisingly, famous people aren’t the only ones participating in shady business dealings, substance abuse, and peculiar sexual activities.”



As well as keeping the kinds of secrets that, if kept by famous people, become tabloid fodder, average Americans engage in strange and obsessive behavior that, if revealed, would humiliate them.



“The secrets of the people living next door are often just as icky as the scandals that make the papers,” Greene said. “If Claire Mallon, a 43-year-old bank teller from Rockingham, VT who still sleeps in the same bed as her elderly mother, were to receive the level of attention we give Kobe Bryant, we might see headlines like, oh, ‘Cash-Doling She-Sicko Snuggles Mommy.'”



The Berkeley study, based on exhaustive surveillance of thousands of individuals, as well as information gleaned from personal diaries and nosy neighbors, undoes any perception that people living in quiet obscurity are without bizarre tendencies. According to Greene, every single study participant had a history of abnormal behavior.



More here.