Experiment shows most people don’t recognize Barry Manilow

Dear Barry Manilow and “fanilows,” please do not read the following article, because it’s possibly the worst thing anyone has ever said about him, so turn back now!

OK, so Barry is coming back to Vegas on April 10 to perform his “One Last Tour” at the MGM Grand Garden ($27-$266).

Manilow has been the butt of comedians’ jokes for four decades. But a landmark scientific experiment proves people can’t even recognize Manilow’s giant face on a T-shirt.

Here’s the story from Shane Mauss’ “Hear We Are” show, as told by science guy Nicolas Epley, a professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

Epley said social science volunteers at Cornell University were told to wear T-shirts emblazoned with big photos of Manilow.

Mauss, laughing, summed up the premise of this Barry Manilow experiment thus:

“’We used your face in a scientific experiment that if someone associated themselves with you conspicuously, they would obviously be horrifically embarrassed.’ ”

It gets worse for Barry.

After observers looked at these Barry Manilow T-shirts, they were given a multiple choice of four names of who might be on the T-shirts, and only one out of four correctly answered, “Barry Manilow.”

“That’s what you’d get if you were totally guessing, if nobody had any idea at all who was on your shirt,” Epley said.

In other words, not only was Manilow used as the most embarrassing face possible, but people didn’t even know who he was.

Scientists said the takeaway of this experiment is to relax about your bad tastes.

Nobody cares what awful thing is on your shirt — even if it’s Barry Manilow’s face.

Poor Barry.

Scientists made other groups of subjects wear T-shirts bearing the faces of Vanilla Ice and John Tesh.