to think that people who do not understand that an anecdote is not the same as a statistic are stupid?

[turningvioletviolet]

Listening to Jeremy Vine (for my sins). Topic is 'breastfed children are more clever than those who aren't' (which is neither here nor there), based on a Brazilian study.

But the amount of people who are texting in saying 'my child wasn't breastfed and is top of the top school in the country so therefore the study IS NOT TRUE' or conversely that they did breastfeed and their child is thick as pig s**t so the study IS NOT TRUE.

Your anecdote means NOTHING.

And so ends my daily rant at the Jeremy Vine show.

How is reporting statistical reality reducing womens choices?
The reality is there, your choices make not one bit of difference to that.

madreco it does reduce women's choices when health professionals, informed by the data, actively put pressure on women to breastfeed. When parenting classes will not even discuss formula feeding.

I hate this SO much. I really think people should be taught how to handle basics statistics in school. Every article showing correlation between A and B has a slew of comments saying "this can't be right I'm very A but not at all B" grrrrrr. Happens on mumsnet as well.

And no AliceMcGee statistics can't be manipulated to show anything you want, it's within most people's intellectual capabilities to interpret basic statistical data and make sensible assertions. The whole of medicine and science in general is based on statistics so if you "don't believe in statistics" you'd have a lot of trouble trusting your Dr!

capsium how you react to statistics is entirely different to plainly stating statistics. There is a correlation between IQ and breastfeeding, that is a fact. It should absolutely not follow that all women are coercerd to breastfeed against their will.

It's hard though. If your experience is contrary to the statistics then the are irrelevant to you and let's face it statistics can be extremely misleading. An example would be the recent study saying that intense running is worse for you than no exercise. In fact they only had a very small sample of people who ran intensively and only 2 died!

Are you saying that health professionals should NOT tell their patients the actual truth based on sound science then?
Telling people not to smoke reduces their choices. Telling people not to drink too much or take drugs reduces their choices. If the actual evidence shows us that BF does in fact have medical advantages over FF then medical professionals are ethically bound to tell people that.

I'm bemused as to why anyone should say otherwise, really. I find the idea that health professionals shouldn't tell me the truth in case it hurts my feelings to be quite offensive, in fact.

Interesting thread.

OP, you've only got yourself to blame, really, for listening to Jeremy Vine...;) (just typing his name makes me want to hunt him out and SHUT HIM UP)

There was an interesting take on the study in question on the Guardian's online Science section yesterday, talking about its variables and interpretation.

"What I don't like is reducing womens' choices, which this study seems to be designed to do"

Actually, no, that is not what the study is designed to do - that may be how some people choose to use the data but the study was designed to look at the differences between BF and FF in a cross-section of infants in Brazil. You could argue that the study could be used to improve women's choices - so, for example, extending maternity leave to make it easier for women to actually BFeed for 6 months rather than going back to work and opting to FF rather than spend every spare minute trying to pump enough milk to keep their baby going (USA, I'm looking at you ).

TwoOddSocks I agree. It does not necessarily lead to women being coerced against their will. However a lot of women do feel pressurised. I didn't as I wanted to breastfeed, however women are individuals and should be treated as such.

VelvetRuby

That is why people need to be able to interpret basic statistics. The problem is often reporting. If you read the publication you will find that whoever did that study will clearly state that the result is preliminary and is not yet statistically significant but an affect that warrants further investigation. However it'll appear in a news article as "study finds running is bad for you".

madreco yes, sort of they should not 'tell' but give them the facts and allow them to make their own choices (aslong as they are capable, which is, of course, moot).

Stress is also a big factor concerning poor health. Perhaps this could be thought about some more...

But what you decide to do with your baby, how supported you are, how educated in feeding choices you are, is separate from this data.

However it makes women feel the facts are the facts.

Individual experience/feelings is something else: more human for sure! But not relevant to this study which is certainly not designed to reduce womens' choices - it might inform them, but your choice remains the same.

capsium of course women should be treated as individuals, but intelligent individuals who should be able to make a well informed decision, based on the statistics. If I was having problems breastfeeding I'd want to know exactly what the likely benefit was going to be before I decided whether it was worth persisting.

A real life situation has all kinds of variables that need to be weighed up - and the final decision will be very individual but how can you possibly make a decision without all of the available information.

Hopefully, then, if the data does not reduce women's choices, their choices will be accepted as their's to make.

It doesn't really work like that though, does it. We don't tell people the facts about smoking and let them work it out for themselves.
And lets face it, we can see just on this thread, a lot of people are totally unable to understand the facts and judge for themselves, they judge badly.

The job of HCP's is to tell you what the science tells us is best. Vaccinations are best (non-vaxxers are wrong), the right medicines are best (homeopathy is wrong) breast is best (formula is a perfectly valid choice if you prefer).

Facts, not feelings. Peoples opinions on cold hard facts are vastly over-rated. I don't see why we need to pander to them.

You can prove anything with facts.

madreco but unless the study shows 100% correlation in an infinite data group there will be exceptions. And pity the person who is the exception, knows it and is held to account over their exceptional status, repeatedly.

Stats are only as good as the study which collected them and the interpretation of the results. That's why things like the Cochrane Collaboration exist: to gather all the data on a topic, weed up the useless data (badly set-up studies etc), and carry out a meta-analysis of the rest.

A lot of the problem is that a lot of people are very bad at basic maths and find it confusing. For example, I was reading a book recently which told me that X happened to 500,000 people - 20% of the population, shock horror. At the time, the total population concerned was nearly 5 million, so the proportion to which X happened was half of what the author claimed. That was a book written by an academic which had gone through peer review and an editor, but obviously past no one who could do basic arithmetic - the author included.

So it's no wonder that people put their fingers in their ears and shout 'lalalala' every time numbers appear, especially if the numbers don't suit their own prejudices and opinions. But we need stats - as MrsTerry observed upthread, stats are why we don't have polio knocking around, and most of us still have teeth. Stats matter.

I write this as someone who loathed every stats course she ever had to take, and doesn't like maths much, either.

I still don't understand how studies like this work. Unless you study identical twins, one of whom is bf, the other ff, how can you know that differences aren't due to parental IQ or other variables?

Not sure if this is true but aren't wealthy people more likely to bf (am thinking for ex they have jobs with better maternity leave packages so less pressure to return to work and more time to get to grips with bf). If that's the case, they are at an advantage in other ways that will result in better outcomes for their children.

My sister was breast fed for 14 months. My sister completely stopped trying at school when she was 14, got poor grades, flunked out of two course when she went to college and now has a pretty menial job.

I was bottle fed from the start. I went to University and got a good degree.

I know mine and my sister's situation goes against the statistics about breast feeding and intelligence but I still know breast is best and that if research says it affects intelligence then I believe it.

YANBU OP

"I still don't understand how studies like this work. Unless you study identical twins, one of whom is bf, the other ff, how can you know that differences aren't due to parental IQ or other variables?"

The thing is, Fauxlivia, you generally cannot say that the differences are not due to these other things (often known as 'confounding factors'). What you can do is try to lessen the effects of these other things by including a range of people in your cohorts; so (making up numbers here!) 10 mothers who have a post-graduate qualification, 10 mothers who have a first degree, 10 mothers who have A-levels and so on. Even with identical twins, you cannot say that you do not have confounding factors, just that they are likely to have a lesser effect than in the general population.

With your other point, in this country it may well be the wealthier mothers who can stay at home long enough to bfeed for 6 months. However, in other, poorer, countries it may be that poorer mothers tend to bfeed for longer as they cannot afford to buy formula and breast is best cheaper!

Thanks poledra

Faux, these studies work by taking huge samples and trying to iron out as many of the confounding variables as possible. So if, as you say, wealthy people are more likely to BF, and those babies then get a better education and sundry other advantages, and would be expected to have a higher IQs as a result, the people running the study have to correct for that.

That means the researchers will have two sample populations: the BF and the FF, and they will make those two populations as alike as possible in every other respect - maternal age, family income, parents level of education, parental health, gestation of baby at birth (e.g., take out prem babies who had to be FF from the FF sample).

This study tried to correct for confounding variables and use two matched sample populations, that is, the FF and BF babies were as alike as possible in all other ways.

x-post - sorry. Must speed up both my typing and myy thinking!

Thanks Mehsmum. The study makes me uneasy because I'm not sure how you can correct for differences in parental IQ or wealth for example, in such a way as to not skew the results. I guess there must be a mathematical formula somewhere for adjustments