One Australian ophthalmologist believes that haircuts with long bangs, like the style popularized by Justin Bieber, could cause lazy eye due to the eye’s vision being obstructed.

Here’s a link in case you don’t believe us.

Personally, we are not convinced, and believe that the doctor will have to answer and supply proof for several questions before the theory would hold any weight. Here are some of those questions:

Does Hair Obstruct Vision Totally?

For the claim that hair in your eyes causes vision problems to hold much water, it would have to be demonstrable that the presence of hair over one’s eye obscures vision from that eye just as much as would wearing an eye patch. We suppose that this is theoretically possible, but would require a particularly thick volume of hair over that eye. Such a thick lock would probably not be kept over the eye, however, as it would rob the person of their ability to see depth effectively. If the wearer of such a hairstyle were involved in any sports, they would quickly see the need for keeping this amount of hair out of their eyes. This leads directly into our next question:

What is the Minimum Duration of Obstruction before Losing Vision?

Since we can surmise that an athlete would always keep their theoretically single-eye-blinding hair out of their eyes during a sporting event, we’ll pretend this is a non-athlete. We know that patching is used as part of lazy eye treatments, and is particularly effective against refractive amblyopia. However, even the best-case treatment requires patching for at least 2 – 8 hours per day for 3 months or longer, and this period of patching should be consecutive for best results.

We also know that the vision in the non-lazy eye tends to recover quickly after patching. Thus, for hair obstruction of vision to work the other way and cause vision loss would require more consecutive obstruction for a longer period of time. Let’s pretend that this would happen at 10 hours per day over the course of one year. Now we have to ask just one more question.

What is the Likelihood of a “Hair Flip” Occurring During those 10 Hours?

Think about it. Better yet, look at the picture on the link above. Justin Bieber’s hair is out of his eyes for that picture. How frequently does one specifically move their hair out of their eyes, either for pictures or because their hair is annoying them in its present position? It is highly unlikely that someone would willingly leave their hair in their eyes for 10 hours at one time. In fact, it would take a rather conscious effort by them to not move their hair (or do any activity which might move their hair) for their hair to, in fact, stay put for 10 hours on end.

Remember, this is assuming that the hair caused a perfect obstruction akin to an eye patch. Anything which did not cause this obstruction would most certainly not cause the vision of an eye to become blurry (though it certainly might obstruct vision). Perhaps the Australian ophthalmologist will someday develop some research which demonstrates by what mechanism thick bangs can cause vision loss, but with what we currently know about the eye, vision and vision disorders, this hardly seems plausible.