Did Jane skip a lot of breakfests in her youth?

December 26, 2008 7:23 AM

From the Annals of Dubious Scientific Research MMVIII: teens that skip breakfest tend to have sex at an earlier age.

It's still, however, unclear if skipping breakfest as an adult living on your own is an indicator that you're a slut.

posted by Foci for Analysis (23 comments total)

Curse you, Pop Tarts!!!
posted by Horace Rumpole at 7:34 AM on December 26, 2008 [2 favorites]

Why is that "dubious scientific research?"
posted by grouse at 7:42 AM on December 26, 2008

This makes sense. The researchers are not implying any sort of causal relationship between these items, but instead implying that there is a common cause, which is the family environment.

There is no dubious research here, at least not what I can tell from the short news article.
posted by demiurge at 7:46 AM on December 26, 2008

As a mother, I would like to say that I always knew that Cheerios were wholesome, and would lead my children down the right path. Froot Loops, on the other hand....
posted by nax at 7:49 AM on December 26, 2008

Correlation...or causation?!?
posted by voltairemodern at 7:56 AM on December 26, 2008

I'd skip breakfast for sex too.
posted by cjorgensen at 8:04 AM on December 26, 2008

so the early bird gets the sperm?
posted by pyramid termite at 8:09 AM on December 26, 2008

Not only that, but refrigerated hash browns can be used as an emergency contraceptive in a pinch.
posted by Uppity Pigeon #2 at 8:13 AM on December 26, 2008 [1 favorite]

This is going to be one of those threads where we learn that a lot of people don't understand how (or why) social science works, isn't it?

Listen people, here's the secret: Social science is about tiny steps.

Tiny Step #1: Somebody decided "We don't understand teenage girls."

Tiny Step #2: Somebody did a survey. They asked teenage girls lots and lots of questions about their lives. Questions about their home lives. Questions about their diets. Questions about their health. Questions about their sex lives. Anything that seemed important and was surveyable.

Tiny Step #3: Lots of researchers with different specialities grabs the resulting data and analyze the parts that are relevant to their specialities.

Tiny Step #4: They produce tiny, odd-sounding conclusions like this.

Tiny Step #5: Somebody puts tiny conclusions together to produce something useful.

What's going to be useful about this conclusion? I'm not sure, but off the top of my head, I see it being useful as a neutral-sounding indicator for social service workers.

Asking a teenager "How is your homelife?" is generally not a real useful question. Teenagers don't always know what's normal and not, and even if they do, they're often unwilling to answer in ways that might 'look bad' to an interviewer. (Also, teenagers kind of suck with open-ended questions.) On the other hand, "Do you eat breakfast every day?" is a 'safe' question that teenagers will likely answer honestly.

This is what social workers need: Innocuous-sounding questions whose answers correlate to social problems. Put this question together with similarly safe-but-correlative questions, and you've got a survey that can help social workers screen for kids who need help, without the kids being aware of what they're being screened for.

So "dubious scientific research" like this is just one of the tiny steps towards producing tools that can actually help kids get help. Criticizing the tiny steps of science for being dubious or irrelevant out of context is no more valid that criticizing the tiny steps of biological evolution as useless -- all the critics are doing is demonstrating their inability to comprehend a larger process.
posted by faster than a speeding bulette at 8:14 AM on December 26, 2008 [13 favorites]

It looks like perfectly fine research to me. The fact that the difference between breakfast and no breakfast turned out that large is an indicator of an important underlying difference.
posted by parudox at 8:14 AM on December 26, 2008

Sounds like outlawing breakfast is in order then.
posted by cashman at 8:14 AM on December 26, 2008

The study specifically mentions Japanese teenagers, so I expect to soon see an outright ban on breakfast in Japan.


cashman!!
posted by boo_radley at 8:28 AM on December 26, 2008

This is actually very useful research. We have the family values crowd crowing for abstinence pledges and wanting to impose strict moral codes based entirely on historical mores without any empirical basis showing that these things have any impact or cause. We know from development studies that age of first intercourse amoung teenage girls is a big indicator of womens educational level and overall economic development for a group. It is also a big determinant of population growth rates.
posted by humanfont at 8:31 AM on December 26, 2008

Tiny Step #3: Lots of researchers with different specialities grabs the resulting data and analyze the parts that are relevant to their specialities.


Ooh! Ooh! Don't leave out Tiny Step #3.5: Those researchers simultaneously forget their first statistics class ever and ignore the Data Dredging statistical fallacy:"Given that data dredging efforts typically examine large datasets with many variables, and hence even larger numbers of pairs of variables, spurious but apparently statistically significant results are almost certain to be found by any such study."
posted by one_bean at 8:33 AM on December 26, 2008 [1 favorite]

That's what replications are for.
posted by parudox at 8:37 AM on December 26, 2008

It makes sense, these poor teens who miss eating breakfast make it up by eating something else...
posted by sixcolors at 8:43 AM on December 26, 2008 [1 favorite]

Teens that skip breakfast, lunch and dinner tend to become super-models.
posted by qvantamon at 8:45 AM on December 26, 2008

I guess if eating breakfast means you are going to get a lot less then I for one say SCREW BREAKFAST! I'll eat brunch. The meal orgies are made of.....
posted by Mastercheddaar at 8:45 AM on December 26, 2008

Ooh! Ooh! Don't leave out Tiny Step #3.5: Those researchers simultaneously forget their first statistics class ever and ignore the Data Dredging statistical fallacy

It doesn't look like we have the actual research report, so are we just assuming that the researchers failed to correct for this?
posted by thrako at 8:50 AM on December 26, 2008

Welcome to the Anals of Dubious One-Link News Posts.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 8:54 AM on December 26, 2008 [1 favorite]

Those researchers simultaneously forget their first statistics class ever and ignore the Data Dredging statistical fallacy

Unless you have actually read the research report, you have no way of knowing this. It is possible to get useful conclusions through data mining, as long as you are using the proper statistical tools, which are more stringent than the ones used for testing prior hypotheses.

Of course the research report isn't linked here. Coupling that with the excessive editorializing, it seems like this post shouldn't be tagged badScience, but instead badPost.
posted by grouse at 8:56 AM on December 26, 2008

Debbie doesn't do breakfast?
posted by Vindaloo at 9:01 AM on December 26, 2008

This is going to be one of those threads where we learn that a lot of people don't understand how (or why) social science works, isn't it?

Or maybe a thread with confusing levels of sensitivity and condescension.


Listen people, here's the secret: Social science is about tiny steps.

I believe this obvious fact to be true of pretty much every single scientific field/enterprise.


Criticizing the tiny steps of science for being dubious or irrelevant out of context is no more valid that criticizing the tiny steps of biological evolution as useless -- all the critics are doing is demonstrating their inability to comprehend a larger process.

Heh, you're playing with straw men and making some unneccesary bold claims there about the "critics".

I was going to write a long reply explaining why I found this research dubious (I should have chosen a less controversial word, I know), bash out at the poor state of science journalism for a bit and conclude by saying that iz r not a social science hater, but then it struck me that its Christmas and instead of having a flame-out with complete strangers over trivialities, I could enjoy my julmust and just be merry.

Happy holidays you lovable bastards!
posted by Foci for Analysis at 9:02 AM on December 26, 2008