A team of sociology researchers at the University of Toronto has recently published the findings of their extensive international study, asserting that, contrary to popular belief, “bros” do not in fact take prece- dence over “hos”.

Dr. Chad Hardman, the project’s lead researcher, admitted that their results were rather startling. “Yeah, man. You know, starting out, me and my boys in the lab were like, ‘Yeah’, you know? But we did all this research and we were just like, ‘Brah?’ like, all the time.”

Across a sample of thousands of observed social interactions between young men and women in seven different countries, Hardman’s team concluded that most men now only rarely refrained from romantically pursuing a woman on account of a male friend. In certain data sets, adherence to the conventional wisdom “bros before hos” was lower than 2%. Hardman does view these sets as outliers, offering the qualifier that “those specific ladies were pretty choice.”

When asked about his research team’s methodology, Hardman emphasized the importance of personal fitness. “I mean, there’s bench, curls, and you’ve got to lift, bro. But leg day is key. Every. Day. Like, you’ve got to rest too, and protein up. You’ve got to let your body rebuild. But if you want to get jacked (and I mean, like, jacked), my motto is, ‘Just do it.’ That’s how we make gains in our research. My boy Assman, he was, like, 205 at the start of this and now, he’s like 240. Results!”

Asked again about the study’s research methodology, Hard- man did offer some clarification. “Oh, right. Yeah, we had like a hotness to bro-ness quotient, and we worked out a metric for bro-ness. It’s like, a scale from, you know, zero to bro, but logarithmic. There were also contextual factors like, are the bros just chilling or are they lookin’ to pull?”

Dr. Gordon ‘Assman’ Fischer, the team’s chief field researcher, elaborated on the difficulties of collecting the data. “I mean, you know, you’re there in a club and some dude’s with this girl. If you go up to him, he’s gonna be like, ‘Hey, brah’. So yeah, it was, like, hard and stuff. But then again, 240, am I right? Scientific method, bitches.”

The study’s evidence of a marked decline in bro-to-bro relations may prompt stronger calls for emphasis on the importance of bro ethics in schools and universities. Asked whether the study also might have implications for the similar principle among women, “Chicks before dicks”, Hardman replied, “Naw, man, I’m not into dudes.” The study will be published in next month’s issue of Men’s Health.