A Reasoned Response, Irresponsible Pseudoscience, and Canadian Sex

Today, I read a wired.com article that drove me instantly all "frothy-at-the-mouth" with complete and utter disbelief.

Go and read the article. I'll wait here.

Back?


Splendid.

First, a caveat: I have NOT read the full PNAS article as it is really, really expensive, but I read the abstract and the supporting documents (link ibid) and a couple of so-called analysis spread around the intarwebz.

While you are there, be sure to click on the "Author Affiliations" link.

First, let me say that i am not a knee-jerk hater of all that is Quebecois(e). I'm not. I like that they keep jazz and gravy-covered french fries alive. Everything else...<Ironic Gallic shrug here>. Be that as it may, my eyebrow is slightly raised in noting that all of the "scientists" here appear to be from Quebec.

As you know from clicking on my links, the meat of the subject is that on this small island in the Gulf of St Laurence, women's age of successful first parturition has gone from 26 to 22. And they have tails. (one of these is not exactly true)

Seriously, really?

Let's talk for a minute about a man named Occam. 'Ole Billy O was a monk during the 14th century. After pissing off the Pope at Avignon, fleeing to Germany, getting excommunicated, mixing with pinko commie dissenter bastards (He was in favor of clerical poverty), and refuting the long-held Platonic ideal of forms, he wrote on a subject about simplicities in proof. This later became "Ockham's Razor" (they didn't invent spelling for several hundred years after his death). This principle, in Latin, is called Lex Parsimoniae, or "Law of frugality".

Most people screw up the concept of Occam's Razor. They get the general idea, but fail to see the whole, beautiful structure. Essentially, Ockham argued that in dialectic proof (arguments) one should tend to ward simplicity and then, only if needed, add complexity. This doesn't mean that the simplest solution is the answer. Not at all. Well, it can...never mind. What it means is that to FIND the solution, start by asking simple questions. This is somewhat simplified, but accurate enough for the conversation at hand. In popular writing, Sherlock Holmes' method was the embodiment of this ideal.

Back to the point:

So four or five French-ish scientists decided that because women were popping out their first kid at slightly earlier ages over a huge period in time (we are ignoring that the age differential is well within the margin of error for the statistics) that they are somehow evolving (differentiating) from the genestock surrounding them.

And no one bothered to think about several simpler explanations:

1) Socioeconomic factors, including valid reporting of birthdays.

• Most people don't realize that basic vital statistics weren't taken even remotely seriously by governments until fairly recently. This used to be the purview of the community's church(es). Which brings me to the next sub-point -
• The Catholic Church's position on married sex has changed wildly in the last hundred years or so - It used to be "avoid it, even if married. If you can't avoid it you can avoid having kids, just be cool about it" and has changed to "off you go then. You ARE married to each other right? super. NO CONDOMS!"
• Society's views on extramarital sex have changed dramatically. More humping = more kids. no ifs, ands, or buts. (If they used butts there'd be less kids. just saying)

2) Statistical error -

The study took samples of eight "birth cohorts" (groups of women of roughly the same age to average against each other) from 1800 to 1970. Taking point one into consideration, we see that as they are not-so-much at history/sociology, they are probably only so-so at math.

Also, the difference of four years, noting that record-keeping was a more of a  "She's about 20 or something, eh" style of thing, is well within what I would accept as margin of error.  

3) Medical Advances -

The report makes it abundantly clear that this was only taking into account SUCCESSFUL parturition, NOT primigravidate status. (primigravida = Latin for first pregnancy). Before modern medicine, childbirth was dodgy, at best. looking over the cited references on wikipedia's page on maternal mortality, we see that you could expect, in the context of a real hospital (Dublin Maternity Hospital) a deathrate approaching 40%. And this was an a city renowned throughout the world for its doctors in this period. They hardly ever leached someone to death. Like almost never.

going back to point one, it appears that in the 20th century, unsuccessful birth (stillbirth, abortion, maternal death, etc) is extremely under reported. So that's throwing off numbers as well.

These are just a few examples - if someone were to buy me the actual full paper, I could probably come up with more.

So the simplest, reasoned argument is, as always - "You're doing it wrong, you tit".



And that's just my problems with the actual scientists. The sporting press seems to have taken this ball and run with it. Well, I for one say "Well shit".

Here's why -

Science and reason in this country are under direct assault from the superstitions and willful ignorance of the religious right. This article, due to sloppy reporting or science is so easy to pick apart that this will only add to the godbotherers ammo pile.

My solution? simple - If you are a large publication (> 5000 readers) and you wish to report on scientific news/concepts/etc - you have to hire a real scientist with an actual degree from a real university (Sorry, University of Phoenix, you'll just not do) to explain the principles, techniques, results, and implications of the research.

The problem and its solution annoy me. According to my usual position, the article is perfect. The reporter simply reported, no analysis, no opinion. But now I am beginning to understand why this position may have logical flaws.....

More on this later.