Circumcision is just plain stupid :(

I'm not really protesting the results: they may or may not be true. I don't really care either way, and I don't have the 5 years it would take to examine the methods of all the studies that these articles are based on (look at the reference section at the bottom). Aside from that, it doesn't appear that a lot of info on the actual methods is given in many cases. Examining these things is extremely time consuming and difficult...which is why it's mostly done by medical pros, not hacks like all of us. LOL

My only point is really this: you can't trust everything you read or are told or what is called 'science'. Actual science is very laborious and difficult, and it usually takes decades or longer to actually PROVE anything. Most things in medicine and science are up for debate...and even things that we have been told for years are good often go on to be tested again and again, and guess what? A lot of them are found to be just the opposite of what the original studies and science thought, or to have no relevance whatsoever. Today's fact might be tomorrow's fiction. Remember how they used to tell us that salt was so horrible? More recent studies have debunked a lot of that theory.

Let me just take one bit from one of the method sections. Mind you, this study was done in 1960, but I find this particular bit hilarious.

METHOD

The study has been carried out in Los Angeles, Calif,, and in New York, N.Y. One hundred male and 100 female clinic and ward patients, all more than 30 years of age, were interviewed in each locality. In Los Angeles, the patients were interviewed at the White memorial Hospital; in New York, at Memorial Hospital and Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan and at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Brooklyn. In the case of the male patients, the patient was first asked as to his circumcision status and then carefully examined by a physician.

RESULTS

Among the female patients in Los Angeles, 36% did not understand the term circumcision or did not know the circumcision status of their husbands (Table 1). Twenty-four per cent stated that their husbands were circumcised, and 40% of the patients stated that they thought their husbands were not circumcised. Eighteen per cent of the patients were Negroes. Three per cent had a college education, 15% had attended high school, and the remainder had attended only grammar school.

Among the female patients in New York, 38% did not understand the term circumcision or did not know the circumcision status of their husbands, 22% thought their husbands were circumcised, and 40% believed that their husbands were not circumcised. The patients included 13% Negroes. Six percent had a college education, 21% had attended high school and the remainded had attended only grammar school.

OK, I know this isn't exact data, i.e. numbers and specs of exact procedures and questions asked, etc. But notice that over 35% of women didn't understand the term circumcision and didn't know if their husband was circumsized or not. ??? How could you not know that, if you'd ever had sex with your hubby? If you're asking for data and information that requires that the subjects be somewhat intelligent, then this is not your crowd. Obviously there were other more certain tests that were performed to determine other types of data...but a lot of the info in many of these things is obtained by asking questions of the subjects. This assumes that 1) the subjects are honest about the info asked (and we know a lot of people will lie about sex even in blind surveys) and 2) the subjects are intelligent and insightful enough to give meaningful answers and 3) that they actually know what the questioner is asking. (Just a few factors) This particular example is admittedly superficial in that it doesn't address the more technical parts of a study, but when a lot of a study depends on asking people questions, can you really trust a group that doesn't even know if their guy is circumcised?

Another example from a completely different subject:

There have been studies done on brain structure to determine if a difference could be seen between heterosexual and homosexual men. The particular researcher dissected a bunch of brains of guys that he was pretty sure were either str8 or gay (though we could argue the fluidity of these things forever). He found some differences between them, and published a book discussing what he found, along with the more 'study' part of it. Though this might make little difference, the only gay men that he used all had AIDS. Apparently this was the best source of dead gay guys that he could get his hands on. However, since that was the case, he didn't have any data on gay men without it, and so there has been a fair amount of debate about whether parts of what he found might have been a result of the disease, and not original genetics. Since he had no control specimens, he couldn't really prove or disprove many parts of his theory. Now, personally I agree with the guy...I think there probably are differences in brain structure between these two groups. However, the research left a lot of places for others to shoot holes in it, and so it hasn't been as influental as maybe it might have been. Aside from that, the tone of his book is that he's proved this thing almost for certain, when there needs to be a lot more research to really prove the thing entirely. And there were a few other scientific points that punched some possible holes in the theory, besides.

The point is simply that if you can't analyze the methods for research and studies, then it's hard to feel totally secure that the 'published findings' are correct. Maybe they are, maybe they aren't, but a lot of where we can determine that, or determine the next step in the scientific process, is in the specific methods used. This takes a horrible amount of time and effort, which is probably why most people aren't scientists. But unless you go through this process, you can't know for certain if a thing is true or not. And in a lot of cases, even when you think something is proven, new evidence comes up and casts doubt on the finding.

We tend to have this view of science in our culture that tells us that everything we see published is indisputible. It isn't. A lot of stuff that gets put on the internet and even in medical journals is crap. To me it's just silly that people run around and vehemently denounce or pronouce things that a lot of the scientific community is