Think the violence on TV is bad? Well, what about nursery rhymes? Those poor kids, they're going to the well, and next thing you know Jack's got a major traumatic head injury and who knows what Jill's fall will do to her. And it's best not even to think about "Rock-a-Bye Baby." Researchers in England went through nursery rhymes counting up all the violence.

What the researchers wanted to know: What are the rates of violent episodes in nursery rhymes, and how does that compare with television?

What they did: The researchers got the lyrics to the 25 nursery rhymes on the bestselling nursery rhyme compilation CD on June 24, 2003, on amazon.co.uk. Three of the researchers went through the nursery rhymes tabulating accidental, aggressive, and intentional violent episodes. Then. . .well, in their words: "The nursery rhymes were then recited, in turn, to the fourth researcher, and his response to them was noted. Nonverbal communication was the subject's preferred means of communication. A relatively limited repertoire of facial expressions allowed responses to be classified as positive (smiling, flapping arms, clapping hands), neutral (inattention, monotone babbling, nose picking, straining at stool), or negative (crawling away, crying)." They also dug up some data on violence on TV in the United Kingdom.

What they found: There are violent episodes in about 51 percent of the shows in the TV data and 45 percent of the nursery rhymes on the CD. Considering the nursery rhymes took only 23 minutes to recite, they had many more violent episodes per hour than the TV shows. The fourth researcher didn't seem to care if the rhymes were violent or not, and was influenced by "the presence of other small children, biscuits, and musical purple dinosaurs."

What the study means to you: The researchers are making a point that childhood violence is nothing new—and, they say, while television violence is obviously more graphic, imagination is also potent.

Find out more: Nursery rhyme lyrics: www.zelo.com

Read the article (which is much more entertaining than the average medical journal article): Davies, P., Lee, L, Fox, A., and E. Fox. "Could Nursery Rhymes Cause Violent Behavior?" Archives of Disease in Childhood. December 2004, Vol. 89, pp. 1103-1105.