You can’t believe everything that you read

An article in the LA Times reports that the journal Cognition has a study on the credulity of children. To no one’s surprise, it turns out that kids tend to believe what they read, even when the information is false. (But, as the LA Times writer indicates, don’t adults do the same?)

In the study, graduate student Lisa Fazio and Elizabeth Marsh, professor of psychology at Duke University, tested the effects of storytelling on children ages 5 to 7. The researchers recorded different versions of several stories so that half of a set of “facts” were wrong in each tale.

Fifty-two children listened to stories over headphones while looking at illustrations. They were then asked a series of questions (such as, “what’s another word for autumn? Is it spring or fall?”). In some cases, but not all, these questions pertained to information that had come up in the stories. The results showed that children answered these questions correctly most often when they had heard a true version of the story, less often when the story hadn’t discussed the topic, and least often when it gave wrong information.

The advice of the study’s authors that “parents and teachers should use care in choosing books for their kids,” however, seems silly. Should publishers start putting warning stickers on books like Alice in Wonderland, stating that much of what is contained within is not to be taken as factual? It is probably a good thing for little kids to find out for themselves that you can’t believe everything you read; otherwise, how will they develop the necessary skepticism to combat the misinformation and lies they will confront as adults?

“What is this stuff doing in households when we have soaps?”

My refusal to buy antibacterial cleaners and soaps has been vindicated in this article in Scientific American. It notes that

antibacterial products leave surface residues, creating conditions that may foster the development of resistant bacteria, Levy notes. For example, after spraying and wiping an antibacterial cleaner over a kitchen counter, active chemicals linger behind and continue to kill bacteria, but not necessarily all of them.

When a bacterial population is placed under a stressor—such as an antibacterial chemical—a small subpopulation armed with special defense mechanisms can develop. These lineages survive and reproduce as their weaker relatives perish. “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” is the governing maxim here, as antibacterial chemicals select for bacteria that endure their presence.

As bacteria develop a tolerance for these compounds there is potential for also developing a tolerance for certain antibiotics. This phenomenon, called cross-resistance, has already been demonstrated in several laboratory studies using triclosan, one of the most common chemicals found in antibacterial hand cleaners, dishwashing liquids and other wash products.

In addition, “Triclosan has also been found in human breast milk, although not in concentrations considered dangerous to babies, as well as in human blood plasma.” Yeah, but just wait.

Why I’m overweight

For Father’s Day, Slate.com had an article on how fatherhood alters the male body and brain. One of the studies showed that

male marmosets and cotton-top tamarins—primates that, like humans, split child-rearing duties between the mother and father—gain as much as 20 percent of their body weight while waiting for the birth of their offspring. The finding suggests that couvade ["sympathetic pregnancy"] is biologically adaptive rather than psychologically neurotic: The hypothesis about the marmosets and tamarins is that the pregnancy paunch prepares a dad for the extra energy he’ll expend in helping to rear his baby.

More directly applicable to the human father,

dads-to-be have elevated levels of cortisol and prolactin, hormones that are also present in high levels among mothers who are attached and responsive to their children. A father’s testosterone level also drops by about a third, on average, in the first three weeks after his child is born. These hormonal shifts, which are likely sparked by exposure to the pregnant woman’s hormones (there is correlational evidence that dads who spend time with moms experience the changes), mirror those experienced by mothers and may similarly prepare men for parenthood. Men who have relatively little testosterone have been shown, for instance, to hold baby dolls longer than men who are flooded with the sex hormone. High levels of testosterone, on the other hand, are associated with “incompatible non-nurturing behaviors,” as one researcher put it. If dads roared along on their usual levels of the hormone, the theory goes, they’d be too busy fighting other men and seducing other women to do much diaper-changing.

What you pay for or what you’re selling

As we enter the high season for weddings, Slate has devoted an entire issue to weddings. One article examines the tradition of the engagement ring. Most accounts of the popularity of the diamond engagement ring attribute the rise to the De Beers advertising campaign begun in the 1930s, which culminated in 1947 with the ubiquitous line, “Diamonds are forever.” But a legal scholar argues that there are other, more socio-economically determined factors that contributed to the increased popularity of the engagement diamond ring.

Until the 1930s, a woman jilted by her fiance could sue for financial compensation for “damage” to her reputation under what was known as the “Breach of Promise to Marry” action. As courts began to abolish such actions, diamond ring sales rose in response to a need for a symbol of financial commitment from the groom, argues the legal scholar Margaret Brinig—noting, crucially, that ring sales began to rise a few years before the De Beers campaign. To be marriageable at the time you needed to be a virgin, but, Brinig points out, a large percentage of women lost their virginity while engaged. So some structure of commitment was necessary to assure betrothed women that men weren’t just trying to get them into bed. The “Breach of Promise” action had helped prevent what society feared would be rampant seduce-and-abandon scenarios; in its lieu, the pricey engagement ring would do the same. (Implicitly, it would seem, a woman’s virginity was worth the price of a ring, and varied according to the status of her groom-to-be.)