Re:Men age faster 'because of Stone Age sex'
by mechanical_fish on Wednesday October 24, 2007 @04:36PM
(#72200)
Who knows what this study says, let alone how valid it is? Like just about every newspaper article about science, this Telegraph article absolutely sucks.
Here's what was the original journal article was supposedly about:
"...the difference in life span between males and females... grows in direct proportion to the degree to which an animal's society is polygynous."
Great! These folks have apparently plotted a graph, where X is an animal society's "degree of ploygyny" and Y is the lifespan difference. The shape of that graph is the entire point of this study. It would be interesting to see it.
How many of the data points from that graph made it into the newspaper? Half of one data point. We learn that the male-female lifespan difference among modern humans is 5 years out of 80. (This is, of course, probably the least useful piece of data in the entire dataset, because modern humans live a lifestyle utterly different from that of all previous humans, let alone most other animals.)
The scientists might well have data about polygyny in humans, but it's not shown here. They certainly have data about polygyny and lifespans in other creatures -- but it's not shown here. If the damned reporter had just given us the numbers for one creature -- dare I suggest the chimpanzee? -- we would know a lot more about the original study and how much it applies to humans.
But no! Instead the article tells me that women live longer than men (duh!) and that modern human societies tend more toward polygyny than toward polyandry. (Double duh.) Gee, thanks.
Sorry about the rant, but this sort of thing is intensely frustrating to me. People wonder why the public doesn't understand how science works. Perhaps one reason is that the average person never sees any actual data.
Here's what was the original journal article was supposedly about:
"...the difference in life span between males and females... grows in direct proportion to the degree to which an animal's society is polygynous."
Great! These folks have apparently plotted a graph, where X is an animal society's "degree of ploygyny" and Y is the lifespan difference. The shape of that graph is the entire point of this study. It would be interesting to see it.
How many of the data points from that graph made it into the newspaper? Half of one data point. We learn that the male-female lifespan difference among modern humans is 5 years out of 80. (This is, of course, probably the least useful piece of data in the entire dataset, because modern humans live a lifestyle utterly different from that of all previous humans, let alone most other animals.)
The scientists might well have data about polygyny in humans, but it's not shown here. They certainly have data about polygyny and lifespans in other creatures -- but it's not shown here. If the damned reporter had just given us the numbers for one creature -- dare I suggest the chimpanzee? -- we would know a lot more about the original study and how much it applies to humans.
But no! Instead the article tells me that women live longer than men (duh!) and that modern human societies tend more toward polygyny than toward polyandry. (Double duh.) Gee, thanks.
Sorry about the rant, but this sort of thing is intensely frustrating to me. People wonder why the public doesn't understand how science works. Perhaps one reason is that the average person never sees any actual data.