Here is the lede on a teaser I just spotted on Scientific American's website, in front of the magazine's pay wall:
Many pregnant women indulge in an occasional...
Category: pregnancy
Here is the lede on a teaser I just spotted on Scientific American's website, in front of the magazine's pay wall:
Many pregnant women indulge in an occasional—or even regular—glass of wine and then worry that it might put their baby at a mental disadvantage. A new study of more than 1,600 Danish five-year-old children shows that these non-teetotaler moms can breathe a sigh of relief.
That's a startling conclusion. The article by Stephani Sutherland--which I can't read, because it's behind the pay wall--might be more nuanced than that. It might include the limitations of the study, along with the opinions of other researchers. But this 240-word teaser isn't nuanced at all and, as a result, is seriously misleading. The headline is "A daily glass of wine is okay...
A lot of ink and pixels were spilled this week on a study that found "that maternal influenza infection was associated with a twofold increased risk of infantile autism," and "prolonged episodes of fever...
A lot of ink and pixels were spilled this week on a study that found "that maternal influenza infection was associated with a twofold increased risk of infantile autism," and "prolonged episodes of fever caused a threefold increased risk of infantile autism."
I can hear some readers howling already: The study did not find that fever "caused" an increased risk of autism, they're shouting. This is an association, not a finding of cause-and-effect. But "caused" comes directly from the "results" section of the abstract. To confuse things even further, the researchers report the following in the "conclusions" portion of the abstract:
Our results do not suggest that mild infections, febrile episodes, or use of...
I admit, I have no evidence of an imminent Zombie attack. Maybe Invasion of the Body Snatchers would have been a better sociocultural reference. In any case, here's the news: Researchers have found male DNA in the brains of women that appears to have come from male fetuses they carried when...
I admit, I have no evidence of an imminent Zombie attack. Maybe Invasion of the Body Snatchers would have been a better sociocultural reference. In any case, here's the news: Researchers have found male DNA in the brains of women that appears to have come from male fetuses they carried when pregnant.
Melissa Healy in the Booster Shots blog at The Los Angeles Times calls the story "astonishing," and I agree. Here is her nice, evocative lede:
For decades after a woman has carried a male child in her womb or shared her mother's womb with a brother, she carries a faint but unmistakable echo of that intimate bond: male fetal DNA that lodges itself in the far recesses of her brain.
Note the mention of an...
One of the pleasures of working for the Tracker is that it's a perfect excuse to sit down in the morning and "read in," sampling the morning's stories, without that voice in your ear that says "Stop fooling around and get to work!"
Here are a few things I noted this morning:
...One of the pleasures of working for the Tracker is that it's a perfect excuse to sit down in the morning and "read in," sampling the morning's stories, without that voice in your ear that says "Stop fooling around and get to work!"
Here are a few things I noted this morning:
Insurance woes
We've read plenty about the difficulties of jousting with insurance companies to get reimbursement for medical care, but I liked a story in Science Times by a Suleika Jaouad, a young woman who was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia at 22. She's now 24, and she talks about her dealings with insurance companies with a wide-eyed innocence that reminds us, once again, how much financial burden serious illness puts on families who have insurance. "...
Women who are depressed while pregnant are more likely than others to have kids who are physically aggressive as teenagers.
Women who are depressed while pregnant are more likely than others to have kids who are physically aggressive as teenagers.
What wonderful news for parents. A mother is depressed during her pregnancy, and she and the child's father have 13 years to worry about whether the child she's carrying will turn out to be a thug as a teenager.
But here at the Tracker, we don't let sentimental concerns about parents' worries interfere with our search for the truth. If the bad news is true, we suck it up.
But is it true?
Live Science, by way of msnbc.com, reports the association without qualification in its lede, as I did above.
...
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