A New Explanation For the Plight of Winter Babies

Ant passes along a Wall Street Journal report on research that turned up a new explanation for the lifelong challenges experienced by winter babies. "Children born in the winter months already have a few strikes against them. Study after study has shown that they test poorly, don't get as far in school, earn less, are less healthy, and don't live as long as children born at other times of year. Researchers have spent years documenting the effect and trying to understand it... A key assumption of much of that research is that the backgrounds of children born in the winter are the same as the backgrounds of children born at other times of the year. ... [Economist] Mr. Hungerman was doing research on sibling behavior when he noticed that children in the same families tend to be born at the same time of year. Meanwhile, Ms. Buckles was examining the economic factors that lead to multiple births, and coming across what looked like a relationship between mothers' education levels and when children were born." Here's a chart in which the effect — small but significant — jumps out unmistakeably.

Comments

Well now i dont feel so bad

[binaryseraph]

... and all this time I was pissed because my birthday wasn't on xmass and I didnt get twice the presents. Wish i knew the kids were doomed to being dumbasses. Now I wear my summer birthday(suit) with pride.

let me explain this to you.

[DragonTHC]

Babies born in winter are a result of springtime mating. This would suggest that their parents are fraught more with biological factors such as instinct than intelligence. Or, like my wife and I, both above 130 IQ, just had a lot of sex during spring break. That resulted in our beautiful, healthy, and intelligent boy being born in January of 2008.

Re:Born in December

[markov_chain]

yeah srsly, citing a Ph.D GPA? u r doing it wrong

Correllation is Not Causation

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

I'll tell you what else jumps out. The near immaculate periodic nature of the graphs. It's really regular. Something tell me this study has a lot more to do with the school cycle than it does with the season babies are born in. So I'm going to go ahead and guess that a lot of these births are nine months after proms or spring breaks or whatnot.

And how may I ask does the month your mother gave birth to you lead to a lifelong plight? If ever their was a classic junk study showing the usual correlation-causation woolly thinking, this is it. Apparently, a lot of unmarried, less educated mothers have more unprotected sex in May (or less in January). Why would this lead you to conclude that being born in winter disadvantages someone. I was born in winter and my mother was married, educated and employed. Has my life been deprived somehow? Do I need extra money or protection or something? Yeah sure, chuck me some money. I'll consider it an idiot tax; like the lottery.

Correlation is NOT Causation. Correlation proves nothing. Saturn is correlated to the S&P 500 with r=0.88. And don't think there a correlation so profoundly stupid that someone won't publish a "scientific" paper on it.

This research is junk. Correlation studies need to die.

Re:Correllation is Not Causation

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Sigh. Correlation means one of three things with regard to causation.

So you are telling me that Saturn is somehow connected to the S&P 500? Or that Sunspots are responsible for US GDP? How far are we allowed to take this? How different is this study to the two I've mentioned?

In other words, the study is saying, with actual data and without the childish, misunderstood slogans, the same thing you are - birth month does not cause increased risk of health and education problems.

That is not what the study is saying. The author's of the study claim that it simply means that relatively more winter babies are born to unmarried and less educated mothers. The Wall street journal claims the study has found an explanation for the "lifelong challenges" of winter babies, as did the Slashdot summary. You've claimed something else? What will the tabloid newspapers claim? "Winter babies unhealthy, uneducated, unemployed?" How far do you think they'll go with it? When were you born?

This study has not proved anything. It hasn't even suggested anything. It offers no reasoned explanation for its finding, with even the authors leaving such matters (proms and spring break) to the speculation of the reader. Is this how we do and accept research? Crunching two sets of numbers, finding a 1.2% overall spread in figures and then declaring that people born in winter suffer from a lifelong plight, without even bothering to provide genuine reasoning or enlightenment. Is that ethical? Is it scientific? Is this how we uncover the world?

Showing correlation is required for establishing a causative link between two observations

This is a position which I fundamentally reject. Stephen Hales and Thomas_Young established causative and quantitative links before statistics had even been invented. Correlation is neither a neccessary nor a sufficient condition to establish any relationship between two variables. We cannot understand the world by computing correlation coefficients between data sets. If we continue to rely on them in this way, our understanding of the world will be reduced to the tunnel vision seen in the Slashdot headline; "Winter babies weaker, sicker, poorer, less intelligent".

Theories are about more than finding linear relationships between variables. They are about obtaining a complete and comprehensive understanding of phenomena, on a qualitative and quantitative level. You do not need correlation studies to do this, and you certainly cannot present them as an end result in and of themselves. Yet that's what people do. Take a database, mix it all around, get r=0.2 and a range of 1% and just throw it out in a paper. Let people make whatever they want of it. And they do.

Correlation is not causation, and it is not the modern Oracle of Delphi, revealing great truths. It's more likely to mislead than inform. So why should we trust it now? Read up on Hill's criteria of causation and ask yourself; How many of these (minimal) conditions did the researchers in this study actually establish?

Re:Born in December

[SilverHatHacker]

grammer Nazi's:
'gra-mer nat-sees, n.
The kind of people who's goal in life are to point out you're mistakes.