BOSTON, MA – A recent sociological study out of Harvard University has concluded that 83% percent of Irish people are alcoholic. The number, although appearing high, is lower than the research team expected.

The research team planned the release of the report to coincide with St Patrick’s Day, a day when the number of Irish-Americans unexplainably increases.

“(The research team) now have a really fascinating snapshot of the ‘Irish’ people,” said Thandra Clarke, Professor of Sociology at Harvard University. “I had to put Irish in quotes there because one of the interesting things we found is that 67% of Americans that identify themselves as Irish are not Irish. On St Patrick’s Day, that number jumps to a staggering 91%. When we look at just Boston on a normal day, we find that nearly 87% of those that say they are Irish are not Irish. But with regard to the alcohol numbers, yeah, we expected that to be much higher. Like 96%. In fact, if the number would have been 100% we wouldn’t have even bothered recounting.”

According to the study results, there seems to be no difference in gender, age or economic influence on Irish alcoholism.

“When we were setting the parameters of the survey, we initially were only going to pool men and women above the age of 18, but then we realized we were talking about the Irish, so we decided to include children as well,” said member of the research team, Kellan Eggerty. “What was really surprising is that about 60% of kids aged five to 17 are alcoholics. And of the remaining 40%, like 29% of those kids are only a few drinks away. It’s sobering, if you’ll pardon the pun.”

Although the rate of alcoholism among the Irish is high, the report also highlighted the fact that the alcoholism has very little impact on the day-to-day life of the average Irish citizen.

“Yes it appears the Irish are mostly all drunks but what is fascinating is that we are all extremely high functioning alcoholics,” said Naomi Long, Lord Mayor of Belfast. “That’s what makes the Irish people a proud people. If a British person tried to build anything drunk it would look like hell. If an Irishman built something drunk it would be perfectly fine. Unless that Irishman was Protestant… then it’d be shit!”

Clarke and her team will now begin looking over the results of the study to see if they can identify why only 83% of Irish people are alcoholics.

“We really want to find out why these people are more prone to being alcoholics than, say, you or I,” said Clarke. “The old excuse of ‘oh, they’re just Irish, of course they’re an alcoholic’ just doesn’t fly anymore. We want, no need, to know why this is. Mainly we need to know so we can tell people in Boston that being Irish isn’t as cool as they think it is. If we find out that there is some nasty genetic disorder that causes Irish people to be drunks, maybe all the Massholes will think twice about claiming heritage.”

With the results lower than initially expected, researchers are looking at the data to see if there is a chance that the results could be wrong.

“Right now we are going over the test cases and trying to figure out why that number is so low,” said Clarke. “It just doesn’t make much sense, because the numbers should be a lot higher. Stereotypes don’t come about for no reason. No. We need to figure this out. Maybe people lied. Drunks lie a lot. So maybe the responders were lying. Or it could be that they are just in denial. We all know that denial is the first stage in admitting you have a problem.”