Sweden’s Dumb Science Was Still Better Than Our Dumb Opinions

In the late 1770s, King Gustav III of Sweden decided coffee was public enemy number one. Not famine. Not war. Coffee. Why? Who knows.

Maybe his mistress preferred a barista. Maybe he just needed to flex on something smaller than Denmark. Either way, the man had his pantaloons in a bunch over coffee. (For the history buffs, yes I know pantaloons are 1900s).

So, he came up with a scientific experiment: 18th-century style. Two identical twin prisoners were spared the death penalty and instead sentenced to life… of beverage testing.

• Twin #1: Three pots of Coffee a day till you croak
• Twin #2: Three pots of Tea a day until the crumpets call you home

Two royal doctors were appointed to watch them. Presumably, they took notes in between leeching people and sniffing powdered wigs.

But here’s the thing… The Coffee Won

Before a single participant dropped dead, Gustav was assassinated in 1792 – proving that the fastest way to die in Sweden wasn’t coffee, it was politics.

Then one doctor died. Then the other. The tea drinker finally passed away in his 80s.

The coffee drinker? No one knows when he died. Seriously. The guy just vanished from history, probably ran off to start the first Starbucks.

So in the end, the “deadly” coffee drinker outlived the king, the doctors, and his tea-drinking twin. Hell, at this point I wouldn’t be shocked if he’s still alive, running marathons with a cappuccino in each hand.

Here’s the Part That Stings, America

This was the 1770s. Sweden was a monarchy run by a guy in tights and eyeliner. And even they still managed to run a more structured, long-term experiment than most of our modern “fact-checking.”

They had:

• A hypothesis.
• Control groups.
• Consistent conditions.
• Decades of observation.

Meanwhile, in America today? We’ve got people shouting “Do your research!” while “their research” is a half-watched YouTube video made by a guy filming in his car between vape breaks.

Gustav’s coffee study may have been petty royal theater, but it was still more science than half the garbage floating through Facebook and cable news. Back then, bad science at least involved clipboards and notes. Now it’s just Wi-Fi and an opinion.

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Moral of the story? If your “research” can’t beat an 18th-century king’s caffeine grudge match, maybe keep it off the internet. Or at least drink a coffee first… it clearly works