#2175 - Male Scare Tactics

Females have been fed the scare tactics of how tubal ligations, abortions, and remaining childfree-by-choice leads up to horrible illnesses like breast or cervical cancer and mental maladies. More women are avoiding those babies. Now, the focus is to scare men who have chosen a non-childed life. It does not surprise me that a woman wrote this trip that was posted on the Rant side of the House of how snipped men are prone to dementia. I heard this shit last night on the telly. Please...give me a fucking break!!!!

"FUCK WORK"

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't 47 too low a sample for any piece of research to be considered statistically reliable? And why not survey men who have vasectomies and see if they have developed any unusual health disorders.

Urgh.. "Lies, damn lies, and statistics".

My first real job out of college was as a programmer for a physician who did medical research. What that taught me about how researchers can manipulate data to suppport a claim has led me to take most publicised health reports - especially the sensational ones - with a grain of salt.

It is a small sample size; also, what other factors do these men have in common? Are they from a similar ethnic or geographic group? These factors - genetic, environmental - need to be considered as well as the antibody explanation.

Based on the reasoning that sperm in the blood may lead to antibodies being developed that cause the damage, does this mean that anyone who has ever had sperm/blood contact - be they male or female - is also at risk?

I think they need to get back to the lab on this one.

Good GAWD. I'm a Scorpio, and we're skeptical of everyone and everything. Therefore, I think they are full of shit. LOL

But seriously, there's always some piece of manipulated data or someone's ulterior motives at work. Trying to scare people into breeding. Look at the tobacco industry, talk about scare tactics, yet people are still smoking like chimneys.

My dad's sister was a raging breeder having had 7 kids yet she's had lung cancer and is withering away from osteoporosis. She also has multiple myeloma now and has a few months to live.

As a trained epidemiologist, 47 subjects (or n=47 in epidemiology-speak) is far too low to draw any conclusions or even to speculate on any purported pathophysiology. Once again, you have morons in the media drawing conclusions based on a small research study. These types of studies are notoriously bad for drawing inane conclusions.

Dr. Dan's Laws of Biomedical Research:

1) The plural of "anecdote" is NOT "evidence"
2) Correlation or association is NOT causality
3) Small "n's" mean big disasters if taken seriously
4) Study populations are not generalizable to the entire population
5) Reporters don't understand studies--they are scientific morons
6) Every hysterical junk science study gets more publicity
7) Only believe a study that can be replicated