In an incredibly moving piece published in the New York Post on Wednesday, a successful executive described why he won’t date hot women any more. The brave soul, Dan Rochkind, is pictured legs akimbo, holding a phallic beer and an expression that says “I can and will hold this bowel movement”. Rochkind explains that hot women “get full of themselves”.

Now, before we dig into the science here, let me state plainly a few concerns about some of the other individuals mentioned in the piece. I am concerned about Benedict Beckeld (described as having “a doctorate in philosophy and the body of an Adonis”), who has somehow lost his shirt while playing the violin. Where did he lose his shirt? Was it a nice shirt? I am also concerned (and/or possibly excited) about his jeans slipping any lower than they are already.

Then there is Sonali Chitre, a 34-year-old who is photographed with wooden hands, a painful posture and come-hither eyes. Chitre explains, with no irony whatsoever, that she “dumped her hot boyfriend because he was too vain”.

But I shall lay these concerns aside as I dig into the study cited in the piece.

Studying attractiveness, researchers at Harvard University, the University of La Verne and Santa Clara University found that the more physically attractive a partner was, the less likely a relationship would last. But before you go cancelling the wedding to your beau, the methodology used in the study was less than perfect.

In one experiment, the researchers chose 376 men at random from high school yearbooks from 1977 to 1980, rated them by physical attractiveness and found out how long their marriages lasted. The researchers explain, “Each of the photos was rated by two independent female coders on a scale from 1 (very unattractive) to 10 (very attractive).” The men got a score of 3.5 on average. Eesh.

The words “independent female coders” certainly has a ring to it, but were the 22- and 26-year-old women involved really all that objective? This, alas, is the main problem of attractiveness research: it is hard to measure “sexy”. Studies disagree on whether being hot helps or hinders when it comes to getting a job, keeping a partner or making friends, partly because people disagree about just who exactly is hot.

Rather than using academic papers to predict what kind of a romantic life you’ll have, it might be better to take a leaf out of Rochkind’s book. At 40, the Upper West Side resident says he has found happiness after choosing a “merely beautiful woman” rather than a hot one. But perhaps Rochkind’s bliss actually lies in his apparent total lack of self-reflection about his own attractiveness.