Name: いいえ、電話は子供に角を与えていない、真剣に (No, Phones Aren't Giving Kids Horns, Seriously)
Uploaded: 2021-01-14T10:32:06.000Z
Duration: 7 min 25 s
Description: VoiceTubeの動画で発音を聞きながら英語表現を覚えよう！学べる英語：

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Go to CuriosityStream.com/SciShow to learn more.

This week in science news, we are required to inform you that despite what you

might have heard, kids these days are not growing literal horns on the back of

their heads because of their cell phones.

Yes. I am also somewhat amazed that this is something that needs to be said,

You may have seen this making the rounds on social media or even reported by

But… it's pretty much garbage from beginning to end.

The only good news about this horn hullaballoo is that it's an excellent

opportunity to marvel at, and even learn from,

what can happen when both peer review and science journalism go… awry.

In case you missed it, which, apparently lots of the people in this room did,

last week the Washington Post published a story based on a BBC story

which in turn was based in part on a 2018 study that claimed that cell phone use

is causing increasing numbers of young people to grow protrusions of bone

The Post and some Australian media outlets

very responsibly called these protrusions “horns,”

and so of course, the story was quickly picked up around the world.

It was debunked almost as quickly by experts on other science news websites

Although, of course, it would've been better if we hadn't ended up being written

The study did find little spurs of bone at the base of the skull,

known as external occipital protuberances or EOPs,

Not, like, devil horns growing out of your forehead.

Just tiny little nubbins near where your skull meets your spine.

These nubbins, by the way, aren't unheard of.

They're a well-documented phenomenon throughout human history,

and archaeologists say that they've never seen any reason to believe having

enlarged EOPs was associated with any habitual activity.

Anyway, the researchers in this study described enlarged EOPs,

defined as at least ten millimeters long,

in some x-rayed patients in a sample of 1200 18-to-86-year-olds.

If you're thinking this is super vague, it's because it was.

Unfortunately, some is the best number we can give you.

Because the paper literally doesn't report the actual number.

We don't know how many of those 1200 people had these weird bony skull growths.

There is a figure in the paper that theoretically shows how many people

but that figure doesn't match the findings as they were written in the paper.

The text says that males had over five times as many enlarged EOPs as females,

but the figure actually suggests that in the youngest horn-growing group,

Look, we're not in the scientific publishing business,

but there are a few steps that this paper should have gone through

before it reached our eyeballs, or those of the press.

Specifically, it would have been read by other scientists in the field.

This paper appeared in the journal Scientific Reports,

which is published by the same group that's behind the leading journal Nature.

And it's a peer-reviewed journal, meaning that papers in it have to be sent out

for other scientists to look over and evaluate before they are accepted and published.

But something clearly went wrong, because,

in the opinions of experts who've written about this paper,

there were some pretty glaring omissions and oversights.

Like the results in the figures not matching what the paper's text says about them!

The other problem, though, was how the paper was reported in the media.

Of course there was the stuff about calling the protrusions “horns,”

which plays on fears about “kids these days” by making us imagine their

newfangled, already-demonized tech turning them into... literal demons.

But there was also the fact that many of the headlines referenced the

cell phone-horn link as if that connection had actually been shown

The researchers didn't even look at phone use at all!

They only looked at x-rays showing neck posture and the spurs.

Then, they cited previous research showing that men use handheld devices

and used that as a springboard for speculation.

They suggested a connection between cell phone use, bad posture,

and the greater changes to the skeletons of male subjects

than female ones that they supposedly saw.

But their data showed nothing of the sort.

The peer reviewers might have had opinions to offer on this sort of unfounded speculation.

But even if they didn't consider it worth flagging, science journalists

probably should've known better than to report on the scientists' speculation

on what the findings might mean as if it were fact.

As we point out all the time, correlation is not causation.

Just because two things follow a similar trend doesn't mean that one is causing the other.

Just because young men might use phones more often

and also have more enlarged EOPs, doesn't mean phones are causing bone growths.

And in this case, even the correlation is up for debate,

since there were flaws in the figures reporting the data.

All of this to say, those of us who consume science news, as well those of us who

write and make it, should have a good sense of what sketchy science looks like.

“Correlation does not equal causation” is a great rule to live by, but it's just

item on a much longer list of pretty easy things to look for, for example...

How many participants were there, and was there a control group?

Was the study done in mice or other research animals,

and if so, are the potential implications for human beings overstated?

Where was the study published, and has anyone been able to reproduce its results?

Do the authors have any conflicts of interest

that might cause them to draw conclusions that aren't entirely accurate?

Is the story about what the researchers actually found,

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いいえ、電話は子供に角を与えていない、真剣に (No, Phones Aren't Giving Kids Horns, Seriously)

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