You might think the ethnographic research that makes up 'Barroom Aggression in Hoboken, New Jersey: Don't Blame the Bouncers!' an academic article by James C. Roberts of the University of Scranton, falls into the category of Nice Work if You Can Get It. After all, to do that 2007 study on bar security and another from the same research being published now ('Accessories to the Crime: 'Secondary Servers' and Alcohol Sales to Obviously Intoxicated Barroom Patrons'), he and an associate had to spend 444 hours 'collecting data' in 25 Hoboken drinking establishments. That is a quest that many thousands of 20-somethings regularly embark on for nonresearch purposes in this city famous for many things: for sort-of-but-not-really-inventing baseball, for being the home of the first Blimpie outlet, for 'On the Waterfront,' for Frank Sinatra and for its mind-numbingly profuse bar scene. The revelry hit a peak or nadir, depending on your point of view, here during the St. Patrick's Day Parade on March 6, but with the official holiday coming Wednesday, Roberts' research is timely elsewhere as well. Roberts, an associate professor of sociology and criminal justice, could easily find his 25 bars within a few blocks of the Hoboken PATH station. You would be half right to be skeptical about his chosen field of research. Only half right because while we're appropriately interested in understanding alcohol issues like driving while intoxicated, we don't spend nearly as much energy making sense of the places where the intoxication takes place. And Roberts, 34, who says he did not drink alcohol when he did the research in 2001, adds that, alas, this is another area where we're falling behind the rest of the world. 'It's really an underresearched area, especially in the United States,' Roberts said. 'I'm one of the few researchers who do this.' Most of the best research on subjects like barroom aggression, he added, is coming out of the United Kingdom, and in other places with vibrant night life, like Vancouver, Canada, and Queensland, Australia. 'We're kind of lagging behind what other countries are doing.' Still, the language of academia and the atmosphere of the tavern are not a perfect match. His findings about 'bivariate correlations' and the rest probably make for better academic research than great bar talk at McSwiggan's Pub. On the other hand, Roberts has strong cred as a former Jersey Shore bartender, and as someone who teaches at a place where bar research can be taken seriously, as opposed to a snob-appeal campus. On this one, Scranton, yes. MIT, no. For the record, his two main findings were that in curbing aggression, any bouncer is better than no bouncer (almost every good-size bar in Hoboken has at least one), and the biggest contributor to serving drinks to already drunk patrons who shouldn't be served are the so-called secondary servers, like shot girls and tub girls who prowl the floors. The first dispense shots, the second beer out of tubs, but this seems more of a Shore phenomenon than a Hoboken one, anyway. As for his laboratory, it's hard to argue against Hoboken as promising turf. Indeed a brief tour of Hoboken bars and clubs from Lana Lounge, sort of the Xanadu of the crop, to the many Irish bars, sports bars, gay bars, Tiki bars and the rest, suggests an almost infinite number of potential topics: 'The Buddha Head as Hoboken Bar Totem: Celebratory or Transgressive Iconography?' 'The 'Jersey Shore' Shout-Out in the Barroom Milieu: A Study in Pop Culture Transference.' 'The Urban Tiki Bar: Threat or Menace?' 'From Barbary Coast to Yuppie Mecca: A Historical Survey of the Bar as Cultural Signifier.' 'Sizeism in the Urban Labor Market: Bar Security as Full Employment Program for Oversized Males.' Roberts is currently doing his bar research in Scranton rather than in Hoboken, and spent more than a year interviewing members of hard-rock, heavy-metal cover bands, researching the link between loud, aggressive music and bar violence. He is also interested in the efficacy of female bouncers. 'I could go on and on about holes in bar research,' he wrote in an e-mail message. 'There are endless possibilities for new research.' 