This is no way to start a week: Study Links Teen Pregnancy to Sexy Shows
CHICAGO (Reuters) – Exposure to some forms of entertainment is a corrupting influence on children, leading teens who watch sexy programs into early pregnancies ...
Quoting further:
"Television is just one part of a teenager's media diet that helps to influence their behavior. We should also look at the roles that magazines, the Internet and music play in teens' reproductive health," Chandra said, acknowledging still other factors can influence teen sex habits.
Living in a two-parent family reduced the chances of a teen getting pregnant or causing a pregnancy. Black teenagers, and those with discipline problems, had higher risks.
The report suggested broadcasters provide more realistic portrayals of the consequences of sex and that parents limit their children's access to sexually explicit programing.
So let's sum up: factors that influence teen pregnancy are TV, magazines, the Internet, music, family configuration, race and discipline problems.
That must be everything - I can't imagine they left anything out. Oh - maybe education (but apparently that's now the responsibility of broadcasters). Maybe availability of contraceptives. It couldn't be that education and contraception would reduce teen pregnancy, or we'd be making those things available already, and talking about their significance in studies about teen pregnancy.
Not to mention that if you read the entire article, the opening paragraph is explicitly not what the study claimed. Quoting the researcher: "We're not saying we're establishing causation, but we are saying this is one factor ..." Quoting the lead: " ... leading teens who watch sexy programs into early pregnancies ..."
I'm continually amazed that the people writing these articles or doing these studies had parents smart enough to reproduce (sexy TV shows or not). You wouldn't think a trait like intelligence could decline so significantly in just a single generation.
This is on a par with a study demonstrating that reading ability correlates with foot size [1], and then suggesting that we need to increase the size of our children's feet to improve their reading skills, instead of teaching them to read and making books available.
[1] Foot size and reading skill both increase with age, on average; better readers have bigger feet because they're older.
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Hmm
This is just one data point, but I'm fairly sure that the inordinate amount of time I spent "watching sexy shows" *cough cough* in high school actually reduced my chances of impregnating anyone.
But I still believe
And I will rise up with fists!!
But I still believe
And I will rise up with fists!!
Seems like a valid conclusion to me
We had required and medically accurate sex ed in school. Planned Parenthood was accessible. We still had plenty of teen pregnancy, so there must be other factors, chief among them the fact that teenagers are unbelievably dumb.
Shows on the CW
and others tend to show very young people hooking up constantly without all the logistics of birth control. These shows influence what kids wear and listen to, so it isn't far-fetched to assume that they influence attitudes about sex. Also on television, pregnancy scares are generally followed by convenient miscarriages, or glamorous single motherhood. Rarely does anyone ask why they weren't using birth control.
the govt paid to insert "just say no" and anti-drug
messages inside shows. Maybe they've stopped? (i doubt it)
from 2000--- http://archive.salon.com/news/feature/20... -- Prime-time propaganda -- "... Few Americans, however, know of a hidden government effort to shoehorn anti-drug messages into the most pervasive and powerful billboard of all -- network television programming. ... With this deal in place, government officials and their contractors began approving, and in some cases altering, the scripts of shows before they were aired to conform with the government's anti-drug messages. "Script changes would be discussed between ONDCP and the show -- negotiated," says one participant.
Rick Mater, the WB network's senior vice president for broadcast standards, acknowledges: "The White House did view scripts. They did sign off on them -- they read scripts, yes."
The arrangement, uncovered by a six-month Salon News investigation, is known to only a few insiders in Hollywood, New York and Washington. Almost none of the producers and writers crafting the anti-drug episodes knew of the deal. And top officials from the five networks involved last season -- NBC, ABC, CBS, the WB and Fox -- for the most part refused to discuss it. ..."
"Seems like"
is a perfectly fine way to form an opinion. But set aside your opinion for a second, and your knowledge of your personal experience.
First, how you can you discuss teen pregnancy without discussing both education and contraception? You can draw whatever conclusion you want politically and ideologically, including that both are evil, but you can't ignore them when doing or discussing a scientific study, because they are important, relevant factors that influence the outcome.
Second, how were education and contraception controlled for in coming up with the results of this study? Not every teen who watched "sexy shows" got pregnant, so what was the difference between those who did and those who didn't? Some factors (family, race, etc) were included, but would the availability of education and contraception be factors too?
Third, consider this from an unbiased point of view: if there's a correlation between "sexy shows" and teen pregnancy, which way does it go? Does watching "sexy shows" make it more likely you'll become pregnant, or are those who indulge in risky behavior more likely to watch "sexy shows" too? How do you know or find out? Not "what do you think?" but "how do you know?" The fact that one proposition or the other might "seem" silly doesn't establish that it isn't really the case.
I'd agree it could "seem like" a valid conclusion, on the level of casual opinion, but presumably this study was done to influence societal behavior (the author advocates broadcasters do certain things) and might be cited as "science" in an effort to establish public policy. I also don't know how much education and contraception would matter (although I have an opinion), and neither does anyone else unless it's factored into the study and discussion.
Do we want public policy established on the basis of "seems like", or might we want to apply a more rigorous standard that includes all of the relevant information. As far as what this article reports (and it might be the reporting that's lacking, not the study) - it's neither rigorous nor inclusive.
Because this is the kind of thing - and the level of validity - that pops up all the time in political discussion and political action. What we prefer to believe, or what our intuition tells us, is not always the best guide to implementing policies to achieve the goals we set. Do we prefer to retain our opinions in the light of contrary evidence, or do we want to choose the best methods to get where we want to go?
In other words, what does "reality-based" mean?
Have you looked at the Pediatrics study?
I confess that I have not.
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
No, I haven't looked at the actual study
so I also haven't criticized how the study was performed, beyond the scope of the author's comments in the news story. It could be the study included things that would satisfy my objections.
What I was more interested in discussing was how something like this is reported and discussed (and it applies to a broad range of disciplines - I could draw similar examples from environmental issues, for example) and how things like this become a part of "cultural" or "political" knowledge, as opposed to "scientific" knowledge.
In the end, it's really a media critique, because the article should have included some simple questions and answers that it didn't. It's difficult to have a responsible and informed electorate when the media is irresponsbile and uninformative. If some simple level of completeness requires that I read the original study, what purpose is the media serving in reporting on it, beyond the study title and authors' names?
probably the reporter[s?] didn't read it either
the publishing institution generally issues a press release, but the actual journal articles are almost always behind pay firewalls [although the abstracts are usually free]. this particular study costs $12 for 2 days of online access. that's cheap compared to a lot of them -- i mostly see them in the $20-$30 range for one day of online access. i'm guessing reporters' expense accounts rarely stretch to that.
not that it would matter much if they did have access, most of them wouldn't be competent to report on the science even then.
Journals are another problem
or at least the cost of journal articles. When I was doing some research on a medical problem, I found that even a lot of the abstracts weren't free for one major publisher, and while $20-$30 is about average for a single article, some were as high as $90.
I discussed it with my Dr. (it was a condition most docs aren't that familiar with the research on), and she has the same problem - there are just too many articles for even a clinic to subscribe to every publication or spend the money for single access.
That's a little scary.
I ran into the same problem, but much less frequently, with environmental issues.
That, press releases, and lack of relevant knowledge, turns some reporters into stenographers. Seems to be :) the case here.
$90?!
holy cow. i've run into a few that were maybe $38 or $39, and once i think i saw one that was $42, nothing more than that. ever. but then i've mostly been rooting around in the environmental stuff. oh well, i guess butterflies and tigers and ocean currents just aren't worth all that much.
meanwhile, i've taken to patronizing plos as often as possible.
so it's a media critique?
I wasn't getting that. Yes it would be nice if journalists didn't leave us with more questions than we started with.
It would be nice if journalists
had a clue how to cover scientific studies.
A nice project to incorporate in PB 2.X. It can't all be Ben Goldacre and Mark Liberman. It's got to be the bulk of us.
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We can't afford not to have single-payer!
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We can't afford not to have single-payer!
Sort of a media critique
From my point of view, it's an example of how a lot of issues with a scientific or otherwise "factual" components (economics?) are presented - usually incompletely or with faulty reasoning (in scientific or academic terms). The journalist in this case seemed to be playing the role of a naive stenographer, rather than someone presenting comprehensive information. It's typical of media (TV is usually even worse), or a lot of blogosphere presentation, or a lot of political discourse.
I thought your response, on the level of "here's my opinion", was just fine, and in blog discussion I tend to fall back a lot on personal experience too. Often because that's the extent of what I know about a subject.
But in terms of people who are supposed to provide accurate information which is supposed to help us form our opinions and exercise our civic responsibilities, I thought the article was sadly lacking. I don't think the "scientific facts" are the only thing that determines how you solve a problem - if there were no other moral and cultural and political constraints, you could solve teen pregnancy by murdering teens or sterilizing them. Those are obviously beyond the pale, and for some people, sex education and contraception are as well.
But I think you need a full disclosure of the obvious and well-know factors, as well as any scientific consensus that conflicts with the conventional wisdom or culturally accepted point of view. Information is power and omitting or ignoring significant and relevant information under the guise of objectivity or authority is abusing power.
I probably wasn't very clear myself.