What's a Few IQ Points Between Sisters?

Just because you can measure that something is different doesn't necessarily mean that you've learned anything meaningful. That's my take on the latest study that purports to show that, as a group, first-born children tend to have a slightly higher IQ or intelligence quotient than their younger siblings. The IQ difference, reported in the research journal Science, was only 2.3 points (where 100 points is the average) in a study of male Norwegian military recruits.

The decision by the editors of the New York Times to showcase Benedict Carey's reporting about the Norwegian IQ study on the newspaper's front page guaranteed that the report would get picked up by many other news venues and bloggers--me included.

Let's take the study at face value for a moment and assume that there's nothing wrong with the methodology or conclusions. Such a modest difference may be statistically significant--meaning that the possibility that this result is due to random chance is low--but that doesn't necessarily mean it makes a difference to individuals or even society at large. Can you really tell the difference between someone with an IQ of 100 or 103? 120 or 123?

Furthermore, even if true, a slightly higher IQ doesn't necessarily mean that firstborns will excel in business, succeed in starting their own company, create great music or advocate for social change. Nor will a slightly higher IQ necessarily protect them against racism, sexism or the heartbreak of psoriasis.

Science is full of examples of finding differences that turned out to be unimportant. Taking estrogen for years after menopause increases an older woman's good cholesterol levels and lowers her bad ones. Turns out, as the Women's Health Initiative Study showed, that does not to make one bit of difference in whether she'll have a heart attack--in fact, in some cases, it actually increases her risk slightly.

So, I don't set much store in the Norwegian IQ study--even though I am a firstborn myself. The history of IQ studies is so flawed, the purported difference is so slight, that it just doesn't mean much to the real world in which most of us live.

Source: Kristensen and Bjerkedal. "Explaining the Relation Between Birth Order and Intelligence." Science 22 June 2007: Vol. 316. no. 5832, p. 1717

Drug-Resistant Bugs Much More Common

Antibiotic-resistant infections are ten times more common than previously thought, according to a new study from the Association for Professionals in Infection Control & Epidemiology (Chicago Tribune). And you don't have to be an inmate in a jail or a hospital patient to be at risk. Although jails and hospitals have been hot spots in the past, dangerous super bugs like methicillin-resistant staph aureus are now much more common in the general community as well, as I wrote in TIME Magazine last summer.

In any case, poor infection control and improper use of antibiotics are the immediate cause of the growing epidemic of drug-resistant bacteria. But there's also a larger cause: our unwillingness to spend much money or devote much people power to public health measures that, in the long run, benefit all of us--rich and poor, jailed or free--alike.

More Sloppy Headlines on Parkinson's Disease

What's wrong with these headlines--one from HealthDay News and the other from ABC News Radio?

First Gene Therapy Trial Effective Against Parkinson's and New Parkinson's Treatment

A reasonable person would conclude that there's a new treatment involving gene therapy for Parkinson's disease. In fact, the study in question, which was just published in the research journal Lancet, was not even designed to show whether this alleged treatment is effective or not. It is merely a safety study of 12 people designed to show whether the experiment will clearly kill or otherwise injure potential subjects of future experiments.

Now, everybody repeat after me, a safety study (technically called a Phase I clinical trial) is not a dosage study (phase II) or an efficacy trial (phase III). Phase I studies are the first baby steps of figuring out whether to even pursue this line of research in humans. Unfortunately, this gets glossed over time and again in general press reports.

It's entirely possible that whatever suggestive hints of efficacy showed up in this incredibly limited trial were the results of the surgery used to implant the viruses that carried the target genes--and not the genes themselves. The implanting operation uses many of the same techniques as deep brain stimulation, which has already shown some benefits with respect to Parkinson's.

I know, I know. Journalists typically don't get to write their own headlines. But this is playing with the hopes and fears of folks with Parkinson's disease and it's wrong.

In addition, as the AP's Malcolm Ritter reported, the lead investigator of the Parkinson's study Dr. Michael Kaplitt has a financial interest in the company that is developing this so-called treatment. Clearly that's another potential source of bias and a further reason to remain wary about all the enthusiastic press.

Source: MG Kaplitt et al. "Safety and tolerability of gene therapy with an adeno-associated virus (AAV) borne GAD gene for Parkinson's disease: an open label, phase I trial." The Lancet 2007; 369:2097-2105

Incarcerex Spoof Parodies Drug Ads

Nothing like a parody to highlight the very stylized way pharmaceutical advertising evokes our anxieties. Whatever you think of the war on drugs, this video spoof touting the made-up drug Incarcerex nails the images and tones commonly used to hook consumers.



Want more? Check out last year's video on "motivational deficiency disorder" from Australia. A clever spoof that's almost too subtle about its major point--which is the creeping medicalization of many challenging, if otherwise normal, parts of life.

Consider the Source

Why do scientists hate journalists so much? They're counting the ways over at Tara Smith's Aetiology blog. She definitely struck a nerve with her post asking fellow academics how they handle press requests. Lots of vitriol in the responses, especially about being misquoted (understandable) and a strong belief that journalists mostly stand in the way of good communications.

I have a quibble or two about the broader diatribes. But they serve as a useful reminder that most of what we read about health or science whether in the mainstream media or online is mediated by someone, even if he or she is quote unquote an expert. That's why I pay a lot of attention to the byline of whoever has written an article or post that I'm reading and I try, whenever possible, to check out the original sources for an article--whether it's a scientific paper or an interview. Is the author trying to be objective? (And that doesn't necessarily mean every argument has two sides.) If you drop all the adjectives and adverbs, what are you left with?

You get a feel for certain writers and their credibility. You learn to trust certain journalists/outlets more or less than others.

We all need to be doing a lot more weeding and evaluating of sources in coming days. One of the truisms of the Information Age was that information is not the same thing as knowledge, or wisdom. Nowadays in the post-Information Age in which Opinion (the more provocative the better) is King, we need to realize that neither is all content the same as information.

Condom Ads Don't Fly at CBS, Fox

Check out trojanevolve.com for the condom commercial that Fox and CBS think is too unseemly for your innocent eyes and ears. Although both networks had previously accepted ads that highlighted a condom's ability to prevent the transmission of the AIDS virus, according to The New York Times, they balked at airing a commercial that focused on a condom's ability to prevent pregnancy.

Okay, so the pigs are a little over the top. But they're certainly memorable. And, based on the 5 bajillion ads we've all seen over the years promoting Viagra and the like, that does seem to be the point.

Vaccines, Autism and Conflicts of Interest

The Boston Globe was far too subtle in disclosing Paul Offit's conflict of interest in a recent op-ed piece about vaccines, according to Ed Silverman, a New Jersey journalist who blogs about the pharmaceutical industry at Pharmalot. The Globe described Offit as the inventor of a particular vaccine but didn't make it crystal clear that as such, he would stand to lose financially if an upcoming lawsuit that claims a link between vaccines and autism is successful.

Fair enough. But the anti-vaccine crowd have their own conflicts of interest, which typically are never even touched on by the press. After all, if claimants think they can get their hands on some of the money in the federal vaccine compensation fund, doesn't that represent a conflict?

I'm sure there are plenty of other people besides Offit who could have argued in favor of vaccines. Trouble is, sources with financial conflicts are often also in the best position to know something about a particular topic. At any rate, the potential conflict should be made clear.

Meanwhile, the most rigorous scientific studies to date have shown no causative link between vaccines and autism.

Indeed, one of the most careful studies of all, published in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine in 2005, showed that most of the increase in autism cases from the late 1980s onward in the U.S. at least, occurred as a result of a change in the definition of autism. Earlier, doctors tended to say that children exhibiting similar symptoms were "developmentally delayed" rather than suffering from autism.

For the record, I own no pharmaceutical stock and have never invented a vaccine.

Sources:

KM Madsen et al, "A Population-Based Study of Measles, Mumps, and Rubella Vaccination and Autism." New England Journal of Medicine. Volume 347:1477-1482; November 7, 2002.

WJ Barbaresi et al, "The Incidence of Autism in Olmsted County, Minnesota, 1976-1997." Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 2005;159:37-44.