
Curvy moms have smarter kids - jcwentz
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/being-human/mg19626295.600-curvy-mothers-have-brainier-kids.html?feedId=online-news_rss20
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nostrademons
Title's a bit misleading. The study actually found that mothers with a _low_
waste-hip ratio had smarter kids. That translates to big hips (and narrow
waist), not the image of rolls of fat and a gigantic gut that normally come to
mind when you say "fat moms".

Also, I'm curious if they actually measured polyunsaturated fat levels and
correlated them. I've heard other studies that suggested big hips lead to
healthier, smarter children because they lead to easier childbirths and
inflict less trauma on the fetus during delivery. They could control for this
by testing a group of kids delivered by caesarean.

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jcwentz
I changed it.

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jsmcgd
Everyone post how curvy your mom/mum is to see if we can verify this

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jgrahamc
No one else took you up on this, but my mother is definitely curvy.

John.

OK, now I know why no one else replied. I feel weird about talking about my
mother that way.

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tlrobinson
Correlation != Causation

It drives me crazy when I hear stories about "Children who [play an instrument
/ listen to classical music / have a pet] are smarter than average".

While that itself may be true, the implication that one causes the other most
likely isn't. It's far more likely that a kid is smart AND plays an instrument
or listens to classical music because their _parents_ foster that sort of
environment.

If your kid is dumb, making him listen to classical music isn't going help.
There was a great Penn and Teller "Bullshit!" episode about this:
<http://www.sho.com/site/ptbs/prevepisodes.do?episodeid=s1/bb>

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mynameishere
Humans are born as physiological fetuses to allow further growth of the skull.
There is a natural limit to how early a child can be born, and therefore a
natural limit on the size of heads. Human females have adapted wide hips to
account mainly for the size of the brain, but there is a practical limit to
that as well. The cesarean section will perhaps allow further increase in
human intelligence.

If the hip-fat theory is correct, then other bodily fats should have a similar
effect. I am guessing I could find data that suggests large-assed females
actually have children with lower IQs, though I doubt I could get a grant for
that.

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te_platt
Or maybe smart men marry curvy women. At least that's what I did.

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kajecounterhack
evolution at its best. survival of the curvy-est.

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curi
Studies like this have a simple formula:

Find a correlation.

Make up a cause.

Pretend the correlation implies that cause, when in fact they have found
absolutely zero evidence whatsoever of their conclusion.

Get published.

~~~
amichail
Have you read their paper?

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curi
No. It requires registration and is unclear on whether I will have to pay to
read it.

I have read many other papers.

Have you read it? Is the linked article misleading and it's actually good?

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henning
Here's the abstract:

Upper-body fat has negative effects and lower-body fat has positive effects on
the supply of long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids that are essential for
neurodevelopment. Thus, waist-hip ratio (WHR), a useful proxy for the ratio of
upper-body fat to lower-body fat, should predict cognitive ability in women
and their offspring. Moreover, because teenage mothers and their children
compete for these resources, their cognitive development should be
compromised, but less so for mothers with lower WHRs. These predictions are
supported by data from the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination
Survey. Controlling for other correlates of cognitive ability, women with
lower WHRs and their children have significantly higher cognitive test scores,
and teenage mothers with lower WHRs and their children are protected from
cognitive decrements associated with teen births. These findings support the
idea that WHR reflects the availability of neurodevelopmental resources and
thus offer a new explanation for men's preference for low WHR.

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curi
Yeah I saw that. I don't think we can tell much from it. Do you think it's
revealing?

~~~
curi
This thread is a good example of why I don't usually comment on YC. People
don't take the discussions seriously enough. They ask a question and don't
followup. It's not worth explaining things carefully here.

~~~
akkartik
Web forums need better notification when someone responds to you. And each
site has to reinvent the wheel. I remember people asked for this for months on
reddit before it got the little envelope icon.

It's just too bad.

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mattmaroon
Who cares? I'll take the hot wife and the dumb baby.

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mwerty
Still trying for the record eh?

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mattmaroon
Yes, and failing miserably. I guess there's a rift between people who have a
sense of humor and those who don't. I need to find a way to get both to
downmod me.

~~~
kirse
I thought it was hilarious. Then again I don't even see where to downmod, so
my only choice was vote up.

~~~
mattmaroon
It was kinda the obvious joke there. But funny. And true.

