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About a month ago a study (abstract) was published about how a father's age affects the psychiatric health of his children. Due to a misleading press release about the study's results, it was widely reported that children born to father over 45 years of age were 3.5 times more likely to have autism, 13 times more likely to have ADHD, 2 times more likely to have a psychotic disorder, 25 times more likely to have bipolar disorder, and 2.5 times more likely to have suicidal behavior or a substance abuse problem.
But statistical analysis is hard and non-intuitive, particularly for people who aren't expert statisticians. It turns out that the real-life rates of psychiatric problems are significantly less, putting this most recent study's results in line with those of previous related studies.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Theophrastus on Tuesday April 08 2014, @05:02PM
...greater responsibility to be cautious. particularly with clinicians looking to be published, (oh, the stories i could tell of working for a physician in a research setting, wherein they actually said: "subject 113 is an outlier, eh? well, give me her chart and I can find a reason she should've been left out of the study in the first place")
Here's one of the more germane later additions to the "Urban Dictionary": p-hacking [urbandictionary.com]
though this case of 'older fathers: more autism' is somewhat more subtle than yer basic p-hack job.
Someone really needs to write an updated version of Darrell Huff's classic 1954 "How to Lie with Statistics" to include software packages that can easily do N-dimensional factor elimination until a desired significance is attained.
(Score: 2) by ngarrang on Tuesday April 08 2014, @09:46PM
I blame the drastic reduction in pirates across the globe. There is a strong correlation with Obesity in America and the number of pirates.