Wed, 28 Mar 2007

Maternal beef diet could impact sperm counts, UR study suggests

Here's another Study in Stupidity - even though I believe that it's conclusions were probably correct, there's simply no way these folks can make such a sweeping claim after a study involving 387 men! This is analogous to me observing some 300 geeky engineers working in my building, and concluding that Battlestar Galactia must be the most popular show on television...

Additionally, they used data gathered from recollections of diet stretching back over 50 years! And a good deal of that time was before hormones were introduced into cattle feed!

I don't know why the media swallowed bullshit like this whole, but they do, day in and day out. This was all over the place, BBC, NYT, CNN and no one asked anything about the obvious issues I've raised here. Not one media outlet questioned the validity of claiming results for a population of 300 million plus based on a sample of 1/2,000,000. Unbelievable.

A mother's high beef consumption while pregnant was associated with lower sperm counts in her son, according to a study led by researchers at the University of Rochester.

(link) [EurekAlert! - Breaking News]

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