New technology has that unique property of creating fascinating moral debates, which is especially so when it relates to new technology regarding life, death, or in this case: fertility. For a few years, technology has been available for the cryo-preservation of oocytes or ovarian tissue, which is used to help save the fertility of women [...]
Posts under ‘Blogging on Peer Review Research’
One outlier and you’re out: Influential data and racial prejudice
Currently preparing a presentation on analyzing influential data in mixed effects models myself, my eye fell on an article in which important claims on racial prejudice were refuted. An important aspect of the criticism on existing work, is that in one article the main correlation was completely due to a single observation. Solely based on [...]
The Giant’s Shoulders #11
Just as Rome wasn’t build in a single day, science progresses slowly but strongly as well, constantly searching for, suggesting or rejecting new fundamental theory, and ‘padding’ these with additional findings. Shoulder-padding that is, for we all stand on the shoulders, the strong fundaments of our predecessors. Why do I use such Big Words? Because I am very excited to announce that today I’m hosting the new edition of ‘The Giant’s Shoulders’, here on Curving Normality. Giant’s Shoulders is a monthly science blogging event, in which authors are invited to submit posts on “classic” scientific papers.
What’s in a name? Dennis the Dentist and Joe the Plumber
A few days ago, Andrew Gelman responded to a blog article by Ian Ayers, on the found relationship between peoples names and their profession. This relationship (amongst other similar relationship) was fund by Pelham, Mirenberg, and Jones (2002). It was found that many more dentists are called Dennis than would have been expected based on [...]
Unintended Consequences Catholicism and Abortion Attitudes
One of the elegances of sociology is found in the unintended consequences of our actions. In my studies of attitudes towards abortion, I found a nice example of such unintended consequences regarding the Catholic church. But, I doubt that the findings are warranted by the analyses.
Bad Science overestimates psychological consequences induced abortion
Can bad science lead us to draw wrong conclusions about the world we live in? “Of course it can“, we are inclined to think. And if so, can this have real-life consequences? Investigating these meta-questions is not as easy as it might seem, for it would require an exact manner to distinguish the good from the bad science, and it would require a subject that has been thoroughly investigated in both the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ ways to compare the outcomes.
One such subject would be the vast amount of research done on the psychological consequences of undergoing an induced abortion. This heavily researched (and heavily debated!) subject focusses primarily on the questions whether or not a women has a higher chance of suffering from anxiety, feeling of guilt, depression, or (other) mental disorders caused by undergoing an induced abortion. The conclusions drawn in the vast literature on this basic question vary form an abortion having no consequences, to an abortion having a negative impact on the psychological well-being of a woman.
Republican Schoolmaster and the Narcissism of the Minor Differences
Now that we all know who the new President of the United States will be, people are preparing for a new type of government, with a new and markedly different agenda than the previous one. Most people are very contend with this new agenda, but some will be disappointed. How does this influence the people’s opinion, one might ask? Will conflict be the result, or can one expect that in general the new agenda will be accepted and that those who voted McCain will change their opinions to generally accept the new policy?
In their classic article, Franklin and Kosaki studied something similar, although they focused on the impact of a Supreme Court ruling regarding induced abortion. Remember though, how Obama and MaCain differed on this issue, with Obama stating to protect the Roe v. Wade Court Ruling, and McCain trying to overthrow it. It is exactly the effect on public opinion of this Roe v. Wade Court Ruling that Franklin and Kosaki studied.
Immigrant Children’s Educational Achievement in Western Countries: Origin, Destination, and Community Effects on Mathematical Performance
How well do migrant’s children fare in the schooling systems of the receiving countries? That has been the main question of sociologists Levels, Dronkers, and Kraaykamp. Using advanced statistical techniques on newly available (survey) data, they were able to improve upon existing research in the field of educational sociology in exiting ways.
The authors of the article — recently published in American Sociological Review — were able to take into account influences from both (characteristics of) country of origin, country of destination, and the migrant community in the country of origin. The did so by estimating advanced Cross Classified hierarchical regression models on the newly available data from the 2003 wave of the Project for International Student Assessment (PISA). Student performance of migrant’s children was measured at the hand of their math test scores.
Abortion Activism in 1971 Science?
Science changes, as does the way scientists report on their work. Reading a 1971 article in Science, on attitudes towards induced abortion, I was truly amazed by the sheer amount of apparent activism that might have influenced the interpretation of the findings. Let’s have a look.
U.S. Presidential Abortion Debate
With the U.S. Presidential election campaigns gaining momentum, the important issues are becoming more and more clear. One such issue that might make or brake a candidate, is their stance on abortion. McCain and Palin strongly objecting against the possibility of women having an abortion, Obama and Biden take a pro-choice stance. More interestingly, though, Obama and Biden explicitly state on their site that it is their goal to protect the Roe vs. Wade ruling, whereas McCain-Palin explicitly state their goal to overrule Roe vs. Wade.
From a social science perspective, I think it is interesting to investigate these issues to a bit more depth, especially to see whether abortion has always been such a dividing line in American Politics.
Influence.ME: an R package providing tools for detecting influential data in mixed models.