What's wrong with this headline?

It baffled you and peaked your intertest. You read it and that was there purpose. They win!

It seems even the "news at eleven" commercials does the same thing. Makes you stick around and watch.

I'm not sure they won anything. They definitely lost a little credibility in my eyes, sure I clicked on the story this time but now I feel like Yahoo news might not be the place to skim headlines. Bad information is worse than no information. I'm thinking the Wall Street Journal or New York Times or Washington Post wouldn't make such an error.

I haven't watched the 11 o'clock news for decades. Which reminds me, I accidentally watched 10 minutes of the show 60 minutes the other day where a dolled up reporter was trying to shame a mattress refurbisher for selling mattresses that failed forensic examinations of cleanliness. In a world of wars, food riots, genocide, corporate fraud, and poverty. Watching this reporter berate this guy just trying to make a living (who was cleaning the mattresses and wasn't breaking any law or scamming anybody) was so surreal I couldn't turn it off fast enough.

Reminds me of the Chevy Chase anchorman on SNL "Nuclear missles heading for New York City - details at eleven!"

People forget how funny Chevy Chase was before he tried to do that talk show. He was pretty much the man on that snl first season. Lots of good skits.

They spent all this time and money to come up with 56%. Of the 740 how many had boys to begin with. Which if they told you would give you real numbers. The difference could be the number that where XX chromosome female

The headline meant precisely what you thought it meant. Let's face it, Roger...take away one hearty breakfast laced with sugar and you could have been a girl.

It doesn't matter what a woman eats during pregnancy, the gender won't change. The study was about a women's diet at the time of conception. That's what has an effect on gender. Once a woman is pregnant it doesn't matter what she eats, the gender isn't changing. In other words, Yahoo completely blew the headline but no one seems to notice.

Anyway this thread kind of lost its fun for me when I realized no one was catching the mistake. It hurts my head that so many people can read that headline and be ok with it. Why bother thinking at all?

Your point is about the explicit semantics of the headline.

You are correct. Yahoo blew the headline. I'll bet the headldine writer has no personal experience with pregnancy as a consequence of sexuality. yet. Too young. And you want clear headlines?

The idea about in utero conditions at time of conception biasing outcomes is startling to folks who were educated in the days of old school, "the nucleus is the brain of the cell" biology.

Those of us who have kept learning now realize that a denucleated cell can functions (and respond to environmental changes) just fine until the lack of ability to replace its proteins and inability to replicate cause it to fail.

This led to the revolutonary insight that it is the cell membranes that are the 'brain" or control at a cellular level. The membranes respond to conditions, including especially chemistry.

This is a real difficult concept for the DNA RULES crowd, when it is the conditions that catalyze, configure protein arrangements and unsheath or keep sheathed the active sites.

In nature (DNA ) vs Nurture (environment) You can bet on ENvironment to trump DNA...Thats why there is a difference between genotype and phenotype.

Darwin only shows us the gears, not the shifters.

LAmarcks claims were compelling, but lacked a tidy mechanism like Darwins.

It now seems that each had a key part of the puzzle: Darwin, the process for replication and population makeup, Lamarck suggesting Unknown (til now) environmental influences that influence DNA activity.

Great catch on the headline.

milo

No. Through testing, it has been determine "scientifically" that if you eat sugar, and spice, and everything nice the Y chromosome is suppressed and you get a girl. On the other hand, if you eat snips ans snails and (I think this happens more in Korea) and puppy dog tails, the Y chromosome is reinforced.

How can you argue with science!!!

My bad, I forgot about that.

Hold your shorts Roger, I don't think the article contradicts what ultimately determines what sex the child will be. The Y chromosome needed for male development does come from the sperm, but there's a lot that isn't known about how and when a fertilized egg becomes a "male or female". If you are interested, just type X-Y chromosome, into Google, there's a lot of reading out there! I can certainly believe that the biological conditions of the mother and egg (going back to the diet thing) could have a determination on whether the development of an XX pair is favored (female), or an XY pair (male) is favored. I'm probably pretending to know more than I do, but I think I have the basics right.

Tom

Okay, Roger, it should be prior to conception rather than while pregnant. I must admit that I missed that little detail. But even then, the evidence does not seem to be very convincing, does it? There are many areas of the world where the food is scarce and mothers are practically starving, yet there are approximately as many males born as females. Perhaps a larger sample should be taken.

The problem is, there are people out there that believe all kinds of old wives tales. "little details" such as these only reinforce these superstitions or misconceptions. Still, here on CR4 I'm sure that sort of thing couldn't happen......

As for the study itself, its just a study. Taken by itself it doesn't say anything really.

Maybe you read it incorrectly, or maybe Yahoo changed the headline, but the words in your SUBJECT are a little different:

The Yahoo headline, at least today, says: "Mother's diet can help determine sex of child: study", while yours inserts the important words "while pregnant". Not saying your fault, but for sure, at least today the headline reads differently than does your subject.

As it is stated now, and according to my read, the topic clearly attempts to relate the diet of women prior to pregnancy, not during pregnancy.

While the report does not give enough detail to be really conclusive (like most post-research reports to the general public), it is known that bio-chemical conditions within the body during copulation do effect the efficacy of XY versus XX sperm, and therefore cause one gender conception to have a higher probability than the other. There's real science here, but I doubt we are close to understanding all the nuances.

Bottom line, though ... I think the Yahoo report as I see it is credible, albeit not detailed.

The headline that was wrong was the headline/link on Yahoo's homepage, not the headline of the article. That link is no longer on Yahoo's homepage since there are new news stories now.

The writer who did the article was fine, it was whoever determined what the headline in the link (to catch peoples attention) should be who messed up. They didn't use the writer's headline (what you're referring to), they used the phrase I copied in the original post, which was wrong. I certainly have no opinion on the study itself, but the link was not credible. Some guy or gal read the story, partially understood it, then created a linked headline on their homepage to it that was incorrect.

"So am I being too hard on Yahoo? Is there a technicality that I'm missing that justifies their original headline? Do you guys have any other examples of impossible headlines?"

Most likely the result of flawed or inadequate studies. Next year if ever they will come up with some new attempt for publicity with OOPS we GOOFED.

If it flies in the face of prior science and experience it requires carefully controlled studies and the elimination of ivestigators' bias.

I'm sorry, I wasn't referring to the study as the problem, I was referring to the link text on their homepage that drives people to that article. The link text was wrong. That may seem trivial, but many people only read headlines and this being on Yahoos webpage incorrectly summarized the article and created a perception that somehow a women could control the gender of a child by what she ate during pregnancy, which is not what the study said at all.

i always thought that temperature had something to do with it like with alligators.

and haw about drag? males sperm has Xchromosom and female sperm y making the female sperm slightly faster? or is it reversed, it been a while since biologie 1-on-1

Having spent 20 in the newspaper business, what jumps out at me is: Whoever wrote the headline did not read the article.

Such are the consequences of a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants, sound-bite society we are creating where children have a 10-second attention span because that's how long the toy commercials last during cartoons.

(No, Barack, I'm not bitter! Jaded, yes, bitter, no.)

I agree, and people with 10 second facts that they mistake for knowledge.

I enjoy reading the classics and studying greek and roman and persian and.....history, so one of my single worst movie experiences was the movie "Troy". Basically some stupid studio executive took the most famous poem ever written, a story that has stood the test of time for 3000 years and said "good story, we just need to change a few things".

I didn't think it could get any worse but then I saw 300. Again, take what was arguably one of the greatest military stands in history and change it up, as if the original story wasn't good enough.

As a rule, any knowledge obtained from T.V. or a movie should be discarded, but that doesn't happen, so we have a generation who believes spartans would break ranks to rush ahead to fight which in reality would have been one of the most shameful things a spartan could do, to seek glory or revenge at the expense of the group.

"The same goes for the Spartans. One-against-one, they are as good as anyone in the world. But when they fight in a body, they are the best of all. For though they are free men, they are not entirely free. They accept Law as their master. And they respect this master more than your subjects respect you. Whatever he commands, they do. And his command never changes: It forbids them to flee in battle, whatever the number of their foes. He requires them to stand firm -- to conquer or die." -Demaratus to Xerxes

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demaratus

like that documentary where the usa found an enigma machine, cracked the codes and won the war without the brits?

The brits helped in the war?

Just joking.

milo

Haven't we made this clear by now, the US won WWII. Sure, we may have showed up late, and yes, we didn't lose millions resisting the Nazis like the Russians did, and sure, the only reason there was a D-Day anyway is because England held out and resisted Hitler's overtures and then subsequent attacks, and yes we suppose Monty was there, but I think we've made it clear by now in our movies and documentaries that he was a prima donna and his victories in Northern Africa were just luck whereas our guy Patton was a eccentric genius.

As for cracking the enigma machine, well, ok, we may have exaggerated that too, but you have to admit that the story flows better when we leave you guys out. For us at least.

The most recent (that I have seen) screwed up/distorted facts/no facts based on real history story from Hollywood is U571.......

That is so far from the real truth that actually the film is complete fiction from front to back!!!! Just like a good James Bond film is, but of course most people (not all!) realize that James Bond is fiction!!

There are many who truly believe that U571 is NOT fiction.....can you believe that?

Check out the following link for the real story (that actually happened even before the USA joined in the 2nd World War!!!):-

U-571 (film)

...an increasingly common, sad fact of life that I've noticed, particularly but not exclusively, on television "news" casting—after all, what is online news if not mere emulation of television and/or printed media news?—as "news" has:

• Become increasingly locally sourced and locally distributed
• Become increasingly (if not exclusively) an entertainment and personality venue
• Become increasingly (if not exclusively) a product marketing venue...even of itself
• Had to rely ever increasingly on an ever diminishing pool of capable "human resource".

In introductory collegiate telecom coursework it was once de rigueur, at least, that no copy was published (broadcast) without first being (off-air) read/studied/rehearsed (and presumably understood at least to an adequate degree so as to sound and look convincingly authoritative to anyone with a clue...). Judging by on-screen "copy" reading I see today (both at local and, increasingly, at wider network levels, including the "Internetwork") I'm inclined to doubt that is any longer the case. The need in training centers today is to churn them out, literate or not, informed or not, self-disciplined or not. Just because an employed body is warm, that doesn't mean it's informed.

Plus they have to be good looking!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080423/od_nm/witchcraft_dc;_ylt=AnYbYzR7C1cjLd6GqzrfdYis0NUE

Headlines were "penis theft panic hits city"

I'm sure that would grab your attention!

The information you read was what you believed and most of us understand. It may have been a mistake by the person writing the headline, or they may have intentionally made the mistake to actually, as I originally stated, grab your attention and make you read it.