(Murderous) Strangers on a Train

You're paranoid. No, no, don't try to deny it. Science says so, and it's always right. Behold the new survey!

Ask people whether they're paranoid, and most say they're not.

But take a peek inside their heads, says King's College London psychiatrist Daniel Freeman, and things get weird.

Freeman and his colleagues put 200 virtual reality helmet-clad people in a subway ride simulation populated by ostensibly neutral avatars who read newspapers, looked around and sometimes caught their gaze.

Afterwards, Freeman asked subjects what they thought of the avatars. Almost 40 percent experienced one paranoid thought, he reported yesterday in the British Journal of Psychiatry.

I have two quiblets (Latin: "small quibbles") with this study. First, is it really so surprising people are more paranoid when riding the subway? It's small, its cramped, and there's always the chance some psychopath might be sitting next to you, ready to shiv you and pass off your corpse as just being asleep. Frightening place, subways.

Quiblet two: take a look at the virtual subway they used for the study. Those people are terrifying. They're like "The Sims," only evil. I'd be paranoid if I was riding on a subway filled with those guys.