Being a social scientist is a pretty thankless job, though, particularly among the ever-cynical English, who generally dismiss all of our findings as either obvious (when they accord with ‘common knowledge’) or rubbish (when they challenge some tenet of popular wisdom) or mumbo-jumbo (when it is not clear which sin has been committed, as the findings are couched in incomprehensible academic jargon). At the risk of falling into one or all of these categories, I will try to explain how the hidden rules of the after-work drinks ritual make it such an effective antidote to the stresses of the
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