Study Reveals That Cold-Hearted People May Have A Slightly Higher Cardiac Temperature

NOVEMBER 5, 2012 - LOS ANGELES, California - A sensational new study was presented at the   Annual Conference of the American Society for Innovative Cardiologists. In a study conducted by the cardiologist Dr. Baskin at the Klondike Bar University, fifty-two participants were enrolled for an evaluation of their cardiac temperature. 

Each study participant was individually taken to an examination room in the university hospital and given a Nutella sandwich. Before the participants were able to eat the sandwich, they were asked to walk across a hallway to sign a document in the conference room. Unbeknownst to the study participants, a five year old child was waiting in the hallway for each of the study participants. Upon encountering each participant, the child began crying and demanded to have a bite of the Nutella sandwich. Study participants who gave the child either the whole sandwich or part of it were classified as warm-hearted. On the other hand, participants who ignored the child were considered cold-hearted. Based on these interactions, 39 of the fifty-two participants were cold-hearted while 11 participants showed signs of warm-heartedness. Two subjects had to be excluded  from the study because the child tripped them and removed the Nutella sandwich from the participants before the research team could ascertain whether or not the participants would voluntarily share the sandwich.

Following this initial portion of the study, the participants then underwent a cardiac catheterization performed by Dr. Robbins, another lead investigator in the research team. In this procedure, a catheter containing a temperature probe was advanced via the femoral artery into the aorta and then the left chamber of the heart. Measurements of the actual heart temperature were conducted in at least five different areas of the heart. 

To the surprise of the researchers, the average temperature of the heart in the cold-hearted participant group was slightly higher (37.1 degrees Celsius) than the temperature in the warm-hearted group (36.9 degrees Celsius), although this difference was not statistically significant. At a press conference, Dr. Robbins stated that these findings may represent a major paradigm shift in how the expressions "warm-hearted" and "cold-hearted" are used:

"Our data suggest that there is actually a trend for so-called 'warm-hearted' people to have a lower heart temperature. Even though this is not yet statistically significant, we believe that by increasing the number of study participants, we may soon be able to demonstrate that the 'warm-hearted' people need to be re-classified as 'cold-hearted'. This represents a semantic paradigm shift." 

Some novelists have expressed concerns about these findings and vowed to continue using the  terms "warm-hearted" and "cold-hearted" in the conventional sense, even if the scientific data contradicts this usage.