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All Friday Fun Fact Marvelous Monday Messy Media News You Can Use Tuesday Talk
7/8/2019 The Mystery of Big ButtsThis one should go without saying.This is an oldie but a goodie that has somehow stayed off of our TPMH radar until recently. There have been article floating around since 2007 saying that women who have bigger backsides are smarter.
It seems that the media has been playing the game telephone because a more recent article claimed that women with big backsides have smarter children. One even claimed that both women with big backsides and their children are smarter. Of course, both claims are false. Let’s dig into where the media went wrong. What the media says: This is the study that we first came across and it is the one that we will dissect below. According to this study, women with big backsides have more intelligent children. There isn’t much more to the media article than that. Interestingly, this article links to another article that debunks it! Talk about messy. Note other similar headlines here and here and here and here and here and here. Let’s dig deeper: What makes the most recent article stand out, as we said before, is its claim that children of women with big backsides are smarter. This article is very brief and succinct. It claims that a recent University of Oxford study found that women with big backsides have smarter children. They say that this is due to high amount of Omega-3 fatty acids that are in fat cells and which help promote the brain development of a fetus in utero. The article also goes off on a bit of a tangent and discusses that this same Omega-3 fatty acid also makes its way into breastmilk. This creates a nutritious diet for babies who breastfeed. It’s unclear from this article what makes the child smarter, though. Is it the omega-3 fatty acids absorbed by the growing fetus or drunk by the baby in breastmilk? What the science actually says: We were unable to find the original “Oxford” article because none of the media articles linked to it! We searched endlessly and could not find it. There were a few potentials, though. It could be this article, or this one, or this one, or this one, or this one. Only one of these was done at Oxford. Take home point: None of these articles investigated anything remotely related to women, their backsides, their children, and intelligence. Why the media is messy: Unlike other Messy Media posts where it was possible to compare the media coverage to the scientific article, this Messy Media claim seems to be 100% fabricated. It is messy because it is a lie, not just an exaggeration of scientific claims. A few messy things to note, though:
Bottom line: Do not believe everything that you read. The size of women’s backsides have nothing to do with their intelligence or the intelligence of their children. Authors Jessica L. Bourdon, Ph.D. #tpmh #messymesia #sciencecommunication Comments are closed.
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