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Lies, Damn Lies And Statistics ADAIR LARA |
Tuesday, January 25, 2000
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A NEW STUDY shows that mommy rats have better memories than childless rats. I chew my toast and stare at this news article. I wonder, what am I supposed to do with this information? Or with this: A group of female platypus fish in an experiment proved ``overwhelmingly'' more attracted to male fish with attractive bright yellow swords that scientists had sewn to their rumps than to males that kept the natural look. I read that and think, Huh. Or rather, I read that and cease to think. I feel as if I'm being bombarded with weird facts, like a goose being fattened for fois gras. Every day brings the results of new studies: The fat in grilled hamburgers may inhibit cancer in mice. Short people live longer than tall people. There are very few left-handed people in nursing homes. Hard-driving people survive as long after a heart attack as easygoing types. The smell of fresh coffee may prevent cancer. Thousands of people suffer from ``imagined ugliness,'' including a certain chalky- faced formerly black pop singer. I read the pieces. I get the facts, but no understanding, no wisdom, follows. Instead, I feel as if I am losing what I already know -- that my intuitive knowledge is being insidiously replaced by all this fitful information being pumped out of labs and psych departments all over the country. THE ARRIVAL OF information to fill a vacancy, in answer to an acutely felt need, is lovely. But what of a solid wall of information flooding your brain from all sides, in infinite variety and detail, answering thousands of questions you have yet to ask? It had not occurred to me to wonder how well rat mommies remember things. If this question had been keeping me up nights, I would be feeling vastly relieved about now. This just in: Eating at least five apples a week could help you breathe more easily, new research shows. The study, published this week in the British medical journal Thorax, found that men who ate nearly an apple a day had slightly stronger lung function than . . . My dad always said that for the alchemy of the mind to turn information into understanding, mere hints are best. Exhaustive information clogs the mind, which needs roominess to do its work. ``If you would control the minds of men,'' he said, ``either deny them information or set them afloat in information -- the end is the same.'' HOW DID WE get along before we had studies? We had to fall back on gut feelings, intuition, instinct -- in other words, hints -- tacit knowledge that we all have, buried below language. You picked up a crying baby because it felt right. You avoided the dripping fat from a chicken because it seemed really greasy. A recent study, for example, asserts that the mom who drinks martinis all day with the TV turned up loud will get exactly the same results as the mom who reads ``Goodnight Moon'' to her toddler every night for a year. I have no studies of my own to refute this. I have only that weird congested feeling I get in my chest when one of my bundles of genes walks into the room, that inconvenient feeling that what I do and say does matter. Our job may be to try to hang onto such feelings, despite the barrage of distracting information. Trying to see the personal relevance of a study requires first of all that I see myself not as the fitful bundle of individual quirks and memories and bad feet that I am, but as one-275 millionth of the population. I have to see myself as the mother of 2.5 children, one of whom is named Brittany. If I put together all the survey group results that concern me, will I find myself? Someone should do a study on this. |
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