Every day or more, one of the news aggregator robots gets both my attention and my goat. Here’s one of today’s missiles: “CDC: Most Teens Choose to Abstain,” at cbn.com. The first paragraph:

A recent study shows that most teenagers are virgins, contradicting claims from family planning groups that most young people do not abstain from sex and more sex ed should be taught in schools.

Image by Kelley Boone, some rights reserved (CC-BY-SA 2.0)

This kind of blabbery drives me nuts. They might has well have said, “A recent study shows that the earth is flat, contradicting claims from Unitarians that the planets revolve around the sun and astronomy should be taught in schools instead of the Bible,” when in fact a recent study showed no such thing, and even if it had, it wouldn’t contradict what the Unitarians supposedly said. Maybe if I’d been on the debate team I’d know how to respond more effectively.

If I were a fundamentalist Christian who wanted to justify abstinence education, I wouldn’t quote or misquote studies, nor would I attempt to use logic. I’d be honest: “According to my church, the world is flat, most young people abstain from sex, and abstinence should be taught in schools right after study hall and before creationism. That’s what I believe, because faith in the church is my guiding light.”

Studies be damned, science be damned, the church is the ultimate authority. I might have more respect if they put it that way more often. (I would still object if it got to the point of the Constitution be damned and laws be damned.) Why should fundamentalists care a whit about the fact that science is consistent, well-founded, and predictive? Why should they care about evidence from studies and measurements, if faith, not intelligence, is their life’s compass? I can disagree, disapprove, and be dismayed, but I have no appeal. We live on different planets; we grew up in different universes.

Anyway, for readers who might appreciate facts and figures, let me explain the CBN’s vulpigeration.

What is “sex,” anyway? For its study, the CDC defined “sex” to be heterosexual vaginal sexual intercourse¹ only (though the boy need not stay on top). Many English speakers would call a bunch of other things people do naked with others sex, but the CDC’s restrictive definition should suit the Christian Broadcasting Network in two ways. First, this definition doesn’t infringe on the way CBN might define another word, “sodomy.” They might prefer it for that bunch of other things people do naked with each other. Second, it yields higher virgin percentages. As far as the CDC and CBN.com are concerned, you’re a virgin if you haven’t been part of any penis-in-vagina hanky-panky, even if you’ve gotten plenty naked and nasty with one or more hims or hers.

Fact: Most young people do not abstain from sex. (Or “sex.”) Not during their entire youth, which is what CBN.com suggested. According to the CDC study, most (65% of) boys aged 18-19 and most (60% of) girls in the same age group have had heterosexual vaginal sexual intercourse. The CDC numbers suggest that most young people do abstain from sex “sex” until about age 17 or 18, but abstaining until you stop abstaining is not the same thing as abstaining. Using the CBN.com logic, you could say that all people abstain from sex, ’cuz they all do — until they stop, and most stop, as we know from all the babies being born and abortions being performed. Few babies (or aborted fetuses) are incarnate nowadays.

¹ Additional information available on the internet.

According to the abstract,

Our findings suggest that men experience a conflict between their relatively intrinsic preferences and gender norms and that they tend to forgo their intrinsic preferences to conform to a masculine gender identity (when they have sufficient resources to incorporate gender norm information in their choices). Women, on the other hand, appear to be less concerned with making gender-congruent choices.

The authors found that men, when asked to choose between two foods, one with a straight macho masculine description corresponding to American societal “norms” for guy food and the other that was gay sissy feminine more what Americans might think of as girly food, they picked the guy item almost two-thirds of the time. If, that is, they had plenty of time to ponder their choice. If they were rushed to decide, though, they picked girl food choices more often — about 55% of the time, on average. Women, on the other hand, choose girl food about two-thirds of the time, regardless of whether they’re rushed to decide.

The authors conclude (in more precise language than my paraphrase) that men, unlike women, are cognitively self-regulating their decisions according to societal norms of gender expression. In other words, while men like girly food as much as girls, they’ll decide not to order it (forgoing food they like in order to look like “real men”) if they have time to think things through.

It doesn’t surprise me that men put energy into “behaving like men,” even when it sometimes conflicts with their intrinsic desire. (I’m not so convinced that men are as unlike women as the authors say.¹)

The authors describe the effect they saw as “making gender-congruent choices,” but I might envision it another way: men put a lot of energy into avoiding anything they think will make them look gay. How different is what the authors call “threats associated with gender-norm transgression” from fear of being labeled a fag?

In any case, special thanks to the authors for their menu of “feminine” and “masculine” menu items, which was half the fun of the paper. Here are a few selections. I want all of them, but hold the shredded American cheese.

• Martha’s Vineyard Salad Mixed baby greens and fresh spinach with toasted pine nuts, dried cranberries, cucumber, red onion, and a warm Vermont goat cheese crouton with a balsamic vinaigrette
• Chunky Fudge Cake Ice Cream Vanilla ice cream, smothered in hot fudge with chunks of chocolate fudge cake, whipped cream, and peanuts
• Vitello Carciofi and Asparagus Beef medallions sautéed with asparagus and artichoke in a light demi-glace sauce
• Damon’s Specialty Pizza Ground hamburger, red onions, roasted peppers, and mozzarella cheese
• Western Salad Chunks of barbequed chicken with shredded American cheese served on greens with a side of Ranch dressing

¹ The authors’ findings suggest that men do this, but women don’t (or do to a much smaller extent). But the authors only studied university undergraduates at (I assume from their affiliation) a largish private Midwestern university. For that population, it’s fairly reasonable to generalize, and perhaps for that population this in fact is a guy-only thing. I’d speculate, but with no support from the study, that the effect is present among men across most segments of the U.S. population. But it wouldn’t surprise me to find the “I better order something gender-appropriate” effect in women, too, in some places (richer white populations in the South?). Studies in populations other than undergraduates would be nice to see.

The danger in generalizing from undergraduates, who are readily available to university researchers, to the general population, has fortunately been getting some press lately. It’s a real danger.

There are plenty of other interesting angles to explore. To what extent this effect is expressed ought to depend on the environment. Do men (with time to think) pick guy foods more frequently when they’re dining with several guys as opposed to when dining with a single woman? (I’d put money on yes.) Are there differences between straight men and gay men? (I’m not sure I’d bet on this one.)

Also, here’s a suggestion to AT&T, who might want to replace the slogan “More Bars in More Places.”

  iPhone image © Patrick Hoesly (Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic)

Things that, according to a Google News Archives search on the exact phrase, were or might have been “better than previously thought” in 2010 to date, according to news reports:

• World energy demand
• David Hoffman and Cheryle Jackson, in the Illinois primary
• How well planes can cope with small amounts of ash in the air
• Canada’s labour market
• Consumer spending in Japan
• The outlook for global economic growth
• The UK economy
• The US economy
• The Barbados hockey team
• The Oregon Ducks
• How well patients tolerate cancer drugs blocking more than one target
• How well beta interferon works against MS, for patients who respond to it

Things that, according to a Google News Archives search on the exact phrase, were or might have been “worse than previously thought” in 2010 to date, according to news reports:

• The magnitude of the Gulf of Mexico oil leak
• The danger posed by the Gulf oil spill to the US food supply
• Greece’s debt crisis
• The side effects of statin drugs
• Total US job losses during the current recession
• Ireland’s fiscal crisis
• California budget numbers
• The European economy
• Job losses in Arizona
• The US economy
• Destruction from Yemen’s northern war
• The impact of climate change
• New York State’s budget hole
• Britain’s economic downturn
• The impact of childhood obesity on chronic diseases and life expectancy
• Eric Abidal’s torn leg muscle
• Canadian debt
• The danger from texting while driving [related link]
• The New Jersey budget crisis
• Soil and creek contamination from the Oeser Co. wood treatment plant

Before the 1970s, previous thought was rarely challenged. For most of the twentieth century, in fact, it was rarely reported that things were or might be “better than previously thought” or “worse than previously thought.”

On only three occasions between 1900 and 1970 [Source:Google News Archives] did news reports indicate an inaccuracy of previous thought about something in such precise terms. These things were the 1929 English water famine (worse, 1929), treasury conditions (better, 1937), and apple prospects in three Washington State counties after a spring freeze (better, 1965).

Beginning in the 1970s, however, “worse than previously thought” began to appear regularly in the press. By the 1990s, “better than previously thought” had also caught on, and by 2005, “better than previously thought” had become more frequent than “worse than previously thought,” prompting several researchers to project a long-lasting reversal in the direction of error of previous thought.

The study released today, however, shows that between 2005 and 2010, there was a complete reversal of the reversal. The preponderance of “worse than previously thought” over “better” is now the strongest in well over a decade. Adding to the importance of this result is the fact (apparent in the lists above) that less serious things are being noted as “better than previously thought,” while more serious things are noted as “worse.”

Today, researchers and others are expressing surprise that just-in real crash data doesn’t support what they don’t realize the earlier research didn’t show in the first place. For example:

• Results of Study on Cellphone Use Surprise Researchers
• Cell phone bans do little to reduce crashes, study finds

If researchers (or journalists) are surprised by today’s news, they probably didn’t examine the research very closely. They may have believed the misleading headlines instead.

Disclaimers: I haven’t read all the research, and some studies might have in fact shown an increased crash risk, unlike the one I mentioned. That might be reason for real surprise. In addition, today’s data doesn’t specifically show that less phone use means no fewer accidents, because laws don’t always change behavior. But some of the reports I read did suggest that there was less phone use, yet no lower crash rate, in places that instituted bans.

Ironically, the crash data out today could make things worse. If drivers think phone use while driving is not as unsafe as previously thought, they might be less careful when using a phone while driving, and phone-related crashes might increase. Common sense suggests that multitasking requires greater concentration. If you do use a phone while driving, drive with even more care than usual. In other words, this might be one situation where being wary might have benefits, even when its not warranted by the facts – especially because being somewhat over-cautious while driving has no serious down side, it seems to me. (It’s not like it infringes upon hundreds of millions of people’s civil rights, like acting on other unwarranted fears can and does…)

Shania Twain is in the news today. No, her new album still isn’t out, but her face is in the spotlight. It turns out someone “applied” the latest “research” to “determine” that she has the perfect face, “scientifically” speaking. The distance between her eyes and mouth are precisely 36% of the length of her face, and her interocular distance is exactly 46% of its width. These proportions, according to an article in press at Vision Research, are universally optimal (among low-resolution, mostly Photoshopped images of a few white women).

Garbage. Poppycock. Nonsense. Balderdash. Crap, crap, crap of a research paper, right from sentence 1: “Humans prefer attractive faces over unattractive ones.”

But you came here for the pictures. First, the 2009 Most Bogus Regression award winner, Figure 2A:

Forget about faces. I’m seeing a butt-ugly relationship between the residuals and the model variable. Not only that, but the choice of a quadratic model has no theoretical basis beyond an expectation of U-shapedness, yet I’m supposed to believe that the vertex of this parabola better represents some ideal ratio than, say, the actual ratio people tended to find most attractive? I don’t think so. The actual preferred ratio looks to be a bit smaller than Shania’s, by the way. The scatterdots aren’t hard to read. Apologies for not having picked a canonical celebrity to call out.

Here’s what I think. The authors, whether intentionally or not, used a sleazy trick to generate model-fitting data. They threw in extreme and unnatural faces on each end to add life to some uncorrelated data having to do with real human face ratios. Let’s put a face on the graph. Heck, let’s put three faces on the graph, including two with more extreme ratios than the authors included. The middle one is from Figure 1 of the paper. The others are modifications of faces from Figure 1.

Given two faces, one human-looking and one Photoshopped to look inhuman, what do you think people answer when asked which is “more attractive”? Whatever it means to say humans “prefer attractive faces,” I’m sure they also prefer human faces, or faces that could by some stretch of the imagination be a living human’s face. Most real human faces fall somewhere between the green lines I drew, where there’s nothing going on, data-model-wise.

To hide the insanity (and here it’s hard to buy a lack of intent), the published paper includes face images with ratios between 0.30 and 0.45 only.

Ladies, you look just fine the way you are.

References.

1. Pallett, P. M., et al. New ‘‘golden” ratios for facial beauty. Vision Research (2009), doi:10.1016/j.visres.2009/11/003.
2. “Perfect face dimensions measured,” BBC News.

Picture:

“Arizona schools are failing at [a] core academic mission,” concludes this Goldwater Institute policy brief.

“Oklahoma schools are failing at a core academic mission,” announces this Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs article.

When asked to name the first president of the United States, only 26.5% of the Arizona high school students surveyed answered correctly. Only 49.6% could correctly name the two major political parties in the United States. An even smaller percentage of Oklahoma high school students gave correct answers to these and other questions from the U.S. citizenship test study guide. None of the thousands of students surveyed in either state answered all ten questions correctly.

The shocking thing is that these are garbage studies. Made-up numbers, probably. The acme of vulpigeration. Evil. Makes me sick. (Glad I coined the word, though.)

No way these are real studies. Danny Tarlow over at This Number Crunching Life has taken a mathematical hammer to the Oklahoma “study” quite effectively. (The blatant similarity of the Arizona “study” blows away any shred of possibility that the Oklahoma study is legit. I’d love to see Danny’s face when he sees the Arizona report.)

What’s frightening is that this kind of snake oil has far too good a chance of surviving as fact (which it isn’t) and influencing public policy.

The guilty parties? The Goldwater Institute, which as you might guess is a conservative “think” tank. The OCPA, which describes itself as “the flagship of the conservative movement in Oklahoma.” Matthew Ladner, the author of both reports, who is vice president of research for the Goldwater Institute. And last but not least, Strategic Vision, LLC, which Ladner says “conducted” the studies. In my opinion, the word is concocted. Read about them yourself.

[Updated with correct business name: Strategic Vision, LLC.]

New research makes the case for hard tests, and suggests an unusual technique that anyone can use to learn

I may be a bit thick, because neither the article nor the research paper it mentioned suggested any unusual technique to me. But this was better than my last wild goose chase reading episode, when I vainly sought a footnote on a cereal box (there was a dagger: †, but no footnote. Can you believe that?).

Henry Roediger and Bridgid Finn, the Scientific American article’s authors, write that researchers Kornell, Hays, and Bjork found that “learning becomes better if conditions are arranged so that students make errors.” There’s that pesky word “better.” Better than what? The eternal unanswered question. My guess is that Scientific American is reporting that Kornell et al. have found that learning under a) conditions arranged so that students make errors is better than learning under b) conditions arranged so that students do not make errors. In other words, that the researchers found errorful learning to be better than errorless learning. Not that it’s a bad article, but it would be nice if Roediger and Finn had stated what they’re reporting a bit more clearly. (This is why I give writing assignments to my statistics students. By the end of the semester, they better learn not to use adjectives like better without answering “Better than what?”.)

Anyway, Kornell et al. do mention errorless learning in their paper, recently published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition® (yes, the name of the journal is a registered trademark), but they don’t study it. The abstract notes that they examine the question of “what happens when one cannot answer a test question—does an unsuccessful retrieval attempt impede future learning or enhance it?” Kornell et al. didn’t exactly examine this question either, because they didn’t (and possibly couldn’t) isolate what part of the learning in their scenario was “future” learning. In addition, they only studied learning after wrong answers, so one must be careful not to assume their research sheds light on getting test questions wrong vs. getting them right. (Suppose a researcher reported that “Student learning among African-Americans is enhanced when they are given test questions they cannot answer.” If the researcher only studied African-Americans and made no comparison to other populations, the reported finding might easily be misinterpreted.)

What Kornell et al. did was compare two scenarios for learning previously unknown information. One scenario was unsuccessful retrieval attempts (the students were asked to provide the not-yet-learned information as answers to test questions, and they answered incorrectly). In this scenario, the retrieval attempt was followed by feedback that included a brief presentation of the new information (i.e., the correct test question answer). The second scenario was a longer-lasting presentation of the new information with no retrieval attempt (the students were not asked to answer a test question, and it’s unclear in some of the experiments whether the students knew what kind of test question they would later be asked). Not surprisingly, unsuccessful retrieval attempts enhanced learning (as measured by scores on a test containing questions like those in the retrieval attempt), when compared to presentation of new information with no retrieval attempts. Despite the Scientific American article’s subheadline, this research makes no case that “hard tests” are better for learning than non-hard tests. They may be, but this research doesn’t help us figure it out. The research does support the value of tests, hard or not-hard, so long as there’s feedback with the right answer.

It’s AOL data week in one of my classes now. This morning, I proposed several nontrivial questions about the data that could be answered with SQL queries. We looked at the results and discussed what they might say about the unwitting study subjects. Then I asked my students to suggest some questions of their own. What are the typical time-of-day and day-of-week patterns of an individual AOL customer’s searches? Are there identifiable differences in the patterns (and by extension in the sleep, social, and perhaps employment or school behavior) of people whose searches included, say, “britney”? For what kinds of searches do users most often click through several pages of results? And so on.

One of my students suggested an excellent simple question. What are the most common searches of the form “how to …”? Out of millions of queries in the AOL data, there were many thousands of “how to … ?” searches. The most frequent was “how to tie a tie,” requested 92 times by a total of 47 distinct users. The rest of the top ten (in terms of most distinct users asking the question) were how to write a resume, gain weight, have sex, get pregnant, write a book, write a bibliography, start a business, lose weight, and make money, each sought by a dozen or more different people. AOL converted the queries to lower case and removed much of the punctuation, but they didn’t correct spelling. Consequently, how to masterbate and how to masturbate appear separately at ranks 49 and 51 respectively. The question would have nearly hit the top 10 without the misspellings.

Here’s a PDF file of the top 1000 “how to” queries submitted through AOL explorer by a sample of AOL users in the spring of 2006. You can probably guess that it’s not safe for work. Although there are no pictures, plenty of sex, drugs, and gambling is spelled out, and there are more than a few questions likely to offend in one way or another. Have a look.

What the Daily News says.