New MSNBC article - Page 2

[DocsNemesis]

Ugh, we were just talking about this sort of thing in statistics class. Wow, that class has SERIOUSLY opened my eyes. I dont know that I will ever trust another stat again, regardless of which side its for. Its sad, but anyone can skew the statistics. This is exactly what happened with that stupid VBAC study that made all the docs stop wanting to do them. The study had the EXACT SAME NUMBERS as previous studies, but they did something like triple them to make the risk seem 3 times higher than they thought. Such BS. And you are totally right, questionaires, esp for something like STD's, are not reliable at all. Same thing goes for teens and drugs.
I feel the same way as PP's....my son is intact, but IF he ever chose to be circumcised as an adult, when he can concent to it, I would happily pay for it. I really cant imagine that happening anyway-most of the kids he knows are intact and he knows how we feel about circumcision-but if it did, I would pay for it and be there to support him in that decision. And I hope that he would still be thankful that I did leave the choice to him.
My MIL did the same thing with her younger boys that are intact. One is completely happy with his status, the other isnt sure (I've mentioned him before-he is gay and for some reason, a lot of the guys he has talked to think its gross-though he said he doesnt think he will get circ;d, hes afraid hed regret it), but both agree that they would not circ their sons and that it should absolutely be their sons choice. So my kids future cousins will be intact too

[Mountaingirl3]

I just posted all about this study on the thread that got locked. : Should have saved my post! I'll save this one:

Here were the (self-reported) total numbers of STDs in the study:

Chlamydia 22
Genital warts 13
Genital herpes 4
Gonorrhea 2
Non-specific urethral infection 5
Genital herpes plus warts 1

The assosiations between circ status and reported Chlamydia (which is curable, btw) "were not statistically significant due to the small number of cases of Chlamydia". That is a direct quote from the study.

Now, if there were not enough Chlamydia cases to show anything, and there were even fewer cases or no cases of everything else, how on earth is the conclusion of circ prevents STD possible?

The study's "conclusions" are ambiguous at best: "estimated"; "suggest"; "may have the potential"; "need for further research"; "appear to have"; "may be"; "may reduce" etc.

The study also directly addresses the pro-intact: "Over the last two decades there has been growing opposition the the practice of routine neonatal circumcision on the grounds that the procedure has some risk of severe complications and has relatively few long-term benefits. The results of this and other research suggest that this arguement may be more finely balanced than the critics of circumcision have implied."

Notice that:
1. There is no mention of the human rights/medical ethics based arguements opposing circumcision.
2. There is no mention of the "potential" benefits of a foreskin.
3. Apparently, the critics of circ are merely "implying" things.
4. Obviously, the pro-intact movement is getting somewhere and thus the defensive, ambiguous, not-statistically-significant, biased information.

Link to the actual study was posted by sandal in the locked thread. Thank you sandal! I'm going to show it to dh who is an MD getting his masters in statistics and great at debunking studies.

[phatchristy]

Originally Posted by DocsNemesis

Ugh, we were just talking about this sort of thing in statistics class. Wow, that class has SERIOUSLY opened my eyes. I dont know that I will ever trust another stat again, regardless of which side its for. Its sad, but anyone can skew the statistics.

If only everyone took a college stats class and understood how things can be easily manipulated. Correlation doesn't necessarily mean causation....

Sad thing is, the American public is poorly educated and likes to think of a "yes-no" convienient answer for everything.

What I find seriously most annoying is after quite a few studies are critiqued and debunked you NEVER see all the press for the "debunking of the article :" They just report the intial study like it's the final word : .

[13Sandals]

Originally Posted by phatchristy

What I find seriously most annoying is after quite a few studies are critiqued and debunked you NEVER see all the press for the "debunking of the article :" They just report the intial study like it's the final word : .

Exactly! The media takes ZERO responsibility for misinformation. like my dp says - 'news in the US is for entertainment purposes only."

[eepster]

Originally Posted by dnr3301

shouldn't matter, they look at percentages. but to get a fair representation, they should have used an approximately equal number in both groups, I agree.

Actually I'm a bit of a math nerd and it does make a very big difference.
It's hard to explain why.

[eepster]

Does anyone have a link to the raw data that was collected. I didn't keep the link from the locked thread and I can't find it through google (at least not while trying to keep an eye on DS who started crawling.)

[dnr3301]

Originally Posted by eepster

Actually I'm a bit of a math nerd and it does make a very big difference.
It's hard to explain why.

I'm a bit of a math nerd as well and would actually be interested in the why, if you have the time.

[eepster]

Originally Posted by dnr3301

I'm a bit of a math nerd as well and would actually be interested in the why, if you have the time.

I've given it some thought and I've come up with a story that I hope sheds light but I'm not great at explaining things so forgive me if it doesn't make sence.

Let's pretend there is this planet "Statisticonia." On Statisticonia there is a northern and souther hemisphere. Let's say scientist want to compare whether North Statisticonians (NS) are more likely to have bumps than Southern Statisticonians (SS). They gather together 100 NS and 200 SS and check them for bumps. The scientist happen to find bumps on 0.5% of SS and 0% of NS. They then declare that SS are 100% more likely to get bumps. If the reality is that all Statisticonians have a 0.5% chance of getting bumps the researchers were twice as likely to find bumps in a group of 200 than in a group of 100. If the researchers had looked at 10,000 NS and 10,000 SS they would be much more likely to have found that both groups had a 0.5% incedence of bumps

[TigerTail]

Oh, even I get that, & I am the least Math-y person there is (well, I did better than 86% of other people on tests, so maybe not; which is a truly terrifying thought. I call blessings on your heads, Math nerds, whenever I drive over a bridge. Praise your weird brains that understand such occultic knowledge!)

[dnr3301]

Originally Posted by eepster

I've given it some thought and I've come up with a story that I hope sheds light but I'm not great at explaining things so forgive me if it doesn't make sence.

Let's pretend there is this planet "Statisticonia." On Statisticonia there is a northern and souther hemisphere. Let's say scientist want to compare whether North Statisticonians (NS) are more likely to have bumps than Southern Statisticonians (SS). They gather together 100 NS and 200 SS and check them for bumps. The scientist happen to find bumps on 0.5% of SS and 0% of NS. They then declare that SS are 100% more likely to get bumps. If the reality is that all Statisticonians have a 0.5% chance of getting bumps the researchers were twice as likely to find bumps in a group of 200 than in a group of 100. If the researchers had looked at 10,000 NS and 10,000 SS they would be much more likely to have found that both groups had a 0.5% incedence of bumps

makes sense to me.

Oh, my math nerdiness comes from my dh, who majored in math in college, then talked me into taking calc as an elective my junior year. Well, I loved it, took calc 2 and TA'd calc 1 senior year. And I lettered in math in high school, but you didn't know you could do that, huh? I coulda had letter jacket made with my math letter.

[Mountaingirl3]

http://www.chmeds.ac.nz/research/chd...s/2006/289.pdf