The concept of six degrees of separation - the notion that anyone can be connected to anyone else through six steps of acquaintance - has been proven true. Or maybe it has not. Or maybe all we can learn from the first large-scale study intended to test the veracity of the 1967 experiment that first spawned the notion is that most people find email spam very tiresome.

Researchers from Columbia University in New York have just announced the results of a study in which more than 60,000 email users tried to contact one of 18 people in 13 countries. They claimed it proved most people could be reached within five to seven steps. Unsurprisingly, it is not quite that simple.

The study actually shows that only 384 out of 24,613 email chains were completed - a 98% failure rate. And of those completed chains, nearly half, 169, went to one US-based academic who happened to be extraordinarily easy to reach. That did not stop the research team coming to the conclusion that more chains could have been completed had those participating in the study not been so disinclined to pass on the study's emails. Quite.

However, the researchers failed to address the veracity or otherwise of one of the generally accepted principles of communication: that those whom one most wishes to contact are uncontactable, while those whose existence one has no desire to acknowledge - especially bosses and double-glazing coldcallers - can always get in touch at any time of the day or night.

Even so, the solitary among us can take comfort from the Columbia experiment. Those who recoil from John Donne's aphorism that no man is an island - and given the conditions this summer, there must be many who crave nothing more than a quiet, empty, darkened room with no telephone - can rest assured about one thing: even if the world is trying to build a bridge to them, the builders are too lazy to put it up.