The scientific study has become a flawed manual for living

We're told women with partners may be less likely to die of heart disease, but how are we supposed to act on such findings?The Million Women Study is in the business of finding out unknown unknowns. Today, for example, we learn from it that women with partners are less likely to die of heart disease, even though they are just as likely to get it in the first place. The Oxford-based researchers have an astonishing database, the records of 1.3m middle aged women recruited in the late 1990s, originally in order to study hormone replacement therapy. But – and why not – nowadays the epidemiologists appear to come up with different ways of quarrying their extraordinary resource for answers that will look good in the headlines. The study is becoming a kind of manual for living.So they have found out the following: the more children you have the fatter you are, unless you breastfed them for at least six months, in which case you will be thinner. You can smoke until you're 30 with almost no impact on your life expectancy, but smoke after 40 and that's 10 years off it. They have also noticed that taller people get more cancer and are now considering if owning a cat influences your chance of getting brain cancer. I did not make the last one up. It is on the website.In other news, The Times reports that Dundee scientists have discovered that overweight girls are more likely to fail their GCSEs, while the Daily Mail has found a study showing that women talk three times as much as men,...
Source: Guardian Unlimited Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Comment theguardian.com Health Society Women Cancer Life and style Science Comment is free Source Type: news