In a story suggesting that males' diets can harm the health of their offspring, Sheryl Ubelacker of The Canadian Press writes that while we've known a mothers' diet during pregnancy can affect the health of her baby, "research now suggests that a father’s diet prior to conception may also play a critical role in a newborn’s health."
She goes on in that vein for five paragraphs, writing, in the fifth graf, that "Guys need to pay attention to what they’re doing in terms of lifestyle choices prior to having a baby, just like the woman does."
It is not until the sixth graf that she reports that the study was done in mice. She writes that the researchers, led by Sarah Kimmins of McGill University in Montreal, "found that a low-folate diet in males was linked to an increased rate of birth defects among their pups, compared to the rate among pups whose fathers were fed a folate-sufficient diet."
The story is both less and more than what Ubelacker reports.
Less, because the work was done in mice. Maybe "guys" need to pay attention to their diets before having a baby, but maybe they don't. What happens in mice often parallels what happens in people; that's why researchers use mice, which are, among other things, cheaper to house and feed than human subjects. But sometimes what happens in mice doesn't happen in quite the same way in humans. Eating more vegetables is good advice, but will it help prevent birth defects? Maybe.
But the story is also more than what she reports, because in addition to finding a link between males' folate (or folic acid) levels and birth defects, the researchers also found that low folic acid in fathers was associated with such chronic diseases as cancer, diabetes, autism and schizophrenia. Ubelacker doesn't mention these.
Sarah Elizabeth Richards of TIME begins with premature diet advice. "Future fathers of the world, eat your spinach salads," she writes. "That's the message behind a new study in Nature Communications suggesting that what fathers eat before conceiving a baby might play an important role in whether their children suffer from birth defects."
The breezy spinach-salad lede suggests that we're dealing with a new bit of nutritional advice likely to be overturned by the next study that comes along, so we shouldn't take this study too seriously. That's misleading. What could be more serious than cancer, diabetes, autism, and schizophrenia?
Richards's story has some virtues. She mentions mice up high, and writes that it's "not clear how the findings from mice apply to humans." She links to other stories and studies related to male fertility and sperm quality. But she also misses this study's conclusions on cancer, diabetes, autism and schizophrenia.
At Fox News, Loren Grush also misses these serious diseases, and she doesn't mention mice until the 8th paragraph. The French news agency AFP mentions mice in the second graf, but doesn't mention cancer, diabetes, autism, and schizophrenia.
I began to wonder whether I'd made that up. Why was nobody reporting it? I went back to look at the study again. This is from the abstract:
Paternal folate deficiency is associated with increased birth defects in the offspring, which include craniofacial and musculoskeletal malformations. Genome-wide DNA methylation analysis and the subsequent functional analysis identify differential methylation in sperm of genes implicated in development, chronic diseases such as cancer, diabetes, autism and schizophrenia.
So I'm not crazy. There it is, in the first hundred words or so of the study. Here it is again, on the second page: "Remarkably, the sites of the sperm epigenome bearing changes in DNA methylation are associated to genes implicated in development and chronic disease." "Development" refers to birth defects, and "chronic disease" refers to the big four I've already mentioned. This shouldn't be a tough leap to make. How do we explain this mystery?
The game is afoot.
Donning my deerstalker and grabbing my briar pipe, I follow the trail to the press release. I quickly deduce that it has been put out by Katherine Gombay of McGill University.
"Elementary, my dear Watson. If you do not just see but also observe, you will find her name in the upper left corner."
While nothing in the release suggested this Gombay had been anywhere near Charing Cross Station of late, my analysis of the text also indicated this: Nothing in the release indicated that the study in question had anything to do with cancer, diabetes, autism, or schizophrenia.
"We can now conclude, Watson, that this case is closed. The evidence is clear: These writers produced their stories from the press release, not the study. I ask for no compensation in this case, Watson–merely that we limit ourselves to cold beef and a glass of beer tonight, and save the spinach salad for another one of our adventures, some of which you've been kind enough to write about."
The science here is a bit tricky, even for an intelligence as considerable as that of Mr. Holmes. It involves so-called epigenetic changes, modifications that affect whether or not genes are turned on. I've written about that, and it can be difficult to explain. But the study's conclusions are straightforward. The researchers themselves say it better than these stories. They write that the study "is the first to show that the folate status of the father, not just the mother, may be of equal importance in determining reproductive success in terms of healthy pregnancy outcomes."
This should have been an easy story to get right. The mistake, as Holmes concluded, was reliance on the press release.
We might say to these writers what Holmes said to Watson in A Case of Identity: "You have really done very well indeed. It is true that you have missed everything of importance, but you have hit upon the method, and you have a quick eye for colour. Never trust to general impressions, my boy, but concentrate yourself upon details."
Indeed. Concentrate yourself upon details.
-Paul Raeburn
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