Not too long ago, a startling finding was published in the prestigious _Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences_ . Translated from boring science-speak into attention-grabbing journalistese, it claimed that to make boys, eat cereal. The press went crazy.
(e.g. see http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23589385-1702,00.html ) The Kellogg bros who invented breakfast cereal (and who thought it was only good for good health and possibly to cure masturbation) would be delighted. But just as hordes of boy-preferring parents were girding their loins to produce boys by having potential mommies chow down on corn flakes (plus sex, of course, which the Kelloggs weren't so keen on), there came a sober second thought from elsewhere. The party-pooping thought was to check the statistics in the article. Sure enough, our favourite boogy-man, multiple uncorrected comparisons, makes an appearance (264 of them, to be exact). Conclusion: not cereal but chance was most likely responsible for the slight excess of male births, and for lack of a Bonferroni, the conclusion was lost. See: Study Refutes Notion That Eating A Certain Cereal Will Result In More Male Babies http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090114075759.htm The published article is: Cereal-induced gender selection? Most likely a multiple testing false positive. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. Authors: S. Stanley Young, Heejung Bang and Kutluk Oktay Published online Jan 13/09. You can get a peek at the first page at: http://tinyurl.com/9afxrb Stephen ----------------------------------------------------------------- Stephen L. Black, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology, Emeritus Bishop's University e-mail: [email protected] 2600 College St. Sherbrooke QC J1M 1Z7 Canada Subscribe to discussion list (TIPS) for the teaching of psychology at http://flightline.highline.edu/sfrantz/tips/ ----------------------------------------------------------------------- --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([email protected])
