Dev.SN ♥ developers
Sections
Dev.SN
from the some-correlation-is-still-better-than-none dept.
GungnirSniper writes:
"In the US State of Washington, the rare birth defect anencephaly has become slightly more common, worrying would-be parents and baffling epidemiologists. TechTimes.com reports that the health records of a single three-county area in Washington State 'revealed 23 cases of anencephaly in 36 months, between January 2010 and 2013. This translates to a rate of 8.4 births out of every 10,000. That is four times the normal occurrence for the rare disorder.'
A group of epidemiologists working for the state's Department of Health reported finding no clear cause for the exceptional prevalence of this fatal birth defect. But they are now accused of not looking hard enough for the cause. Dr. Beate Ritz, who has done several studies on birth defects, told CNN that the data quality on medical records, which were the primary source of data used in the study, 'is so low that it's not really research'.
Washington's Department of Health has admitted that 'Medical record reviews might not have captured all information, preventing a cause from being identified,' and says its officials will continue monitoring births, and look for possible causes.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by MrGuy on Monday March 03 2014, @09:13AM
...is the comments that the "investigators" never even interviewed the mothers (or even the families) to identify common patterns.
That's like trying to trace the outbreak of food poisoning without asking the patients where and what they ate.
Sure, there's at least some merit in thinking asking mothers about their children with birth defects might be upsetting. But if you're too squeamish about that to actually, y'know, RESEARCH, then you're an absolute fraud to claim you "investigated" anything.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by hubie on Monday March 03 2014, @12:42PM
Going back through medical records to find out the number of cases is the first step in the research. The more telling part is:
The article does not say whether the State funding is limited, and it doesn't put the numbers in context enough for us to know much at all. Certainly if you see 8.4 events when you expect to see 2.4 events, this is statistically significant (and that assumes the incidents are statistically independent, which goes against what is implied in the tone of this story), but that 2.4 is a national average. Is the number of incidences more or less the same nationally? Were those 8.4 cases uniform over the 3 years, or did they all clump? And if they did clump, it could be just plain old coincidence. This article [nbcnews.com] gives a better description of the situation than the one in the article summary. Given the resources of the State and what other priorities they have, 8.4 cases per 10,000 births might not be above the threshold for doing a full-out investigation.
Maybe there is something here, maybe not. Given only what is presented in the news article, I think calling them "absolute frauds" is rude and entirely unfair.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by MrGuy on Monday March 03 2014, @12:59PM
Disagree.
It's a reasonable position to take that "we don't have the resources to investigate every possible statistical anomaly in detail." I'd have no problem with such a statement.
A statement that "we've investigated and found no common factor" when you've done very little in terms of actual investigation is misleading at best and in my opinion is (as I said) fraudulent coming from someone who's a medical scientist who ought to know better. It's giving the public reassurance that "there's nothing to see here" when you don't know that at all.
(Score: 3, Informative) by frojack on Monday March 03 2014, @04:14PM
The study they did, amounted to a medical records pull, (and probably bent a few confidentiality laws in the process).
At best it was a cursory glance, and the numbers may not (yet) warrant much further.
HOWEVER: This gets much wider play because the the nurse who noticed this works in the Richland Kennewick Pasco area (commonly called the Tri-Cities area in Wa).
This area is just downstream from the Hanford nuclear site [google.com].
Hanford [wikipedia.org] has huge underground tanks, some of which are leaking radioactive waste quite badly and apparently have been for some time.
The three counties (not mentioned in national press, but common knowledge in Washington state) all border the Columbia River and may tap the same aquifers (or river water) being polluted by Hanford leaks.
State residents are more than a bit pissed off about the Federal Governments handling of the Hanford cleanup.
So you start to see the tie in here (rightly or wrongly) with resident rage over Handord.
This kind of cluster in Minot North Dakota might not not even be noticed.
Discussion should abhor vacuity, as space does a vacuum.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Monday March 03 2014, @05:13PM
Fuck the Feds. Free Cascadia.
(Score: 1) by demonlapin on Monday March 03 2014, @07:32PM
As long as the IRB approves it, not really. And dead babies don't have privacy interests.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday March 03 2014, @07:53PM
One does not research dead babies.
One researches living mothers.
Discussion should abhor vacuity, as space does a vacuum.
(Score: 1) by demonlapin on Monday March 03 2014, @11:25PM