This much I can tell you:
(1.) There is no trace on the internet of a Swedish sociologist named Thure Dahlquist.
(2.) There is no trace on the internet of this study.
(3.) I find it significant that there is not one single specific reference in the article. They don't tell what university this Thure Dahlquist teaches at in Sweden, and they don't name a single one of his "Harvard colleagues." They don't give the name of the "conference here," though presumably "here" means New York City. Far and away the most damning omission is the refereed scholarly journal in which these purported findings were published.
(4.) We're told that Thure Dahlquist is a sociologist. Sociologists do not study physiological properties of individuals. Psychologists do, since psychology includes physiological components (which is why you have to know the parts of the brain and the endocrine glands in your Psych 101 classes), but sociologists don't.
(5.) A serious researcher would not take a handful of historic examples and say that this "bears out our theory." How do you measure how ticklish Socrates, da Vinci, and Einstein were, and even if you could, what would it show besides nothing? A serious researcher would know this.
In sum, I can say with confidence that every word of that article comes from the sheer imagination of its author Joe Berger--and that name is probably just as made-up as the rest of it.
Fun thought, though.
