BOSTON?Scientists and researchers at Harvard University have spurred controversy over a new study intended to discover whether violence begets television.

For the experiment, 43 teenagers were randomly selected to undergo a 14 minute beating with baseball bats, canes and medieval cudgels.

“We’ve long known that certain television programs trigger violent behaviors in children,” said Carl Manheim, a professor of the university’s science department and the study’s principal investigator. “We wanted to see if the reverse was true.”

Following the violence, the teens were placed, unconscious, before three big screen televisions.

Lab technicians offered various programs for the subjects to watch, including Martha Stewart and MTV’s “Real World.”

“So far, our results have proved inconclusive,” Manheim said. “A more extensive investigation is currently underway.”

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