734
Rate of Young Women Getting Sterilized Doubled After ‘Roe’ Was Overturned
(kffhealthnews.org)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2024
734 points (99.1% liked)
News
21687 readers
4204 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
If anybody read the study, which I highly doubt, you'll see that this story is highly exaggerated. The actually study showed the sterilization in women went from 2.83 per 100k people per month before Dobbs to 5.31 per 100k people per month after Dobbs. For men, the increase went from 1.03 per 100k people per month to 1.18 per 100k people per month.
Here's the study for anybody who wants to see it:
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama-health-forum/fullarticle/2817438
There is a visible increase, but the actual rate is a lot smaller than what this article is attempting to suggest.
I didn't read this article, so idk how they spun things, but given the title and the information you shared from the actual study, they sensationalized, not exaggerated. 5.31 is an 87% increase from 2.31, which is a rounding error off 2x. Honestly, in medical/psychological/anthropological/sociological studies the sigmas are never high enough for my comfort as a probabilist anyway.
Usually rates that involve small raw numbers get swayed pretty significantly by relatively small changes. For example, Malta had a 3 murders last year, if that number doubled to 6, the homicide rate would increase by 100%. That's a very significant increase, but does it imply that Malta has turned into a dangerous country? Not really, no. The increase would make it's rate go from 0.561 per 100k to 1.122 per 100k, that's around the same as New Zealand which is another very safe country. It should still be noted and discussed because there's value in that, but my point is that these trends and swings in statistics can be pretty misleading if not put into proper context.
Oh, I get that. I actually have a BS in Applied Mathematics and specialize in Statistics, Probability Theory, and Data Science professionally. I am well aware of how unstable thses numbers are, which is why I made the jab at the "soft sciences" and their acceptable sigma analysis points.
What I was more noting was the linguistic tic of OP saying that they 'exaggerated'. I freely admit that I did not actually read the article and do not know what the author did in it, but the click-bait title was accurate given the data shared. So what was done is to 'sensationalize' the results. If we are ever going to get better and teach society how to understand when statistics are being used to manipulate, we need to be sure to describe it in a way that people can recognize one manipulation from another.
I would see an example of manipulation through exaggeration being "cops kill more white people per year than black people". Yes, this is true, but it is inflating one piece of the statistics that ignores a lot of relevant factors, like the per capita rate, the proportion of stops and actions by police which result in violence, etc.
Sensationalizing is what we have here. Intentionally choosing words that fell the full picture of the statistic in a way which causes knee jerk reactions. There isn't anything left out per se, the time frame is described, the change in the statistic is mentioned, and a potential causal relationship is proffered. Would "The overturning of Roe has caused a statistically significant increase in the number of voluntary sterilizations among young US Citizens' haave been more genuine, yes. Is it catchy or emotional, no.