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Neat way to say 60% Male...

duffelbagninja

May 12, 2020

8 upvotes

/r/MensRights

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Post Information

Title	Neat way to say 60% Male...
Author	duffelbagninja
Upvotes	8
Comments	7
Date	May 12, 2020 8:43 PM UTC (6 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/gijyjp/neat_way_to_say_60_male/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/neat-way-to-say-60-male.1198321 https://theredarchive.com/post/1198321

Comments

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points3 points 6 years ago (6 children) | Copy Link

Are you referring to this line in the results section? “A total of 5700 patients were included (median age, 63 years [interquartile range {IQR}, 52-75; range, 0-107 years]; 39.7% female) (Table 1).”

If so, the authors are probably not attempting to ignore or erase male patients. This is a normal way to convey results in articles published in peer-reviewed medical journals. If you divide a study sample into two groups (e.g., male and female; control group and intervention group; age under 65 and age 65+), you only need to report the percentage that’s in one of the groups. If you know the percentage that’s in one group, then you automatically know the percentage that’s in the other.

I haven’t read the entire report. I don’t know if there is anti-male biased language elsewhere.

[–]Fragosus3 points 6 years ago [recovered] (1 child) | Copy Link

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points3 points 6 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

[–]duffelbagninja[S] 1 point2 points3 points 6 years ago* (3 children) | Copy Link

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points3 points 6 years ago (2 children) | Copy Link

I read articles in journals like this as part of my job. In my professional opinion, the line I quoted isn’t biased. I am not saying that the authors are not sexist against men. I am saying that presenting sex percentages like this is not good evidence that the authors are sexist.

This line is a boring description of Table 1 in the results section. Most descriptions of Table 1 in articles like this are boring because Table 1 is often just demographic info. Trust me. I’ve read a shitload of them. In addition to the reason I described earlier, the authors may have only mentioned women in that line because of article length restrictions. JAMA is a medical journal that is still printed on paper in addition to being published online. All printed journals have strict length restrictions. Males are listed in Table 1, so they aren’t being erased from the data. Why did they mention women but not men? I don’t know. Maybe they flipped a coin. Maybe they are unapologetic sexists. I can’t tell from that one line, and I’m too tired (after hours of advising chart reviewers who are abstracting data from medical records for a retrospective study I helped design) to read the rest of this article right now.

I am only commenting on the line in the results section that I thought your title might be referring to. Because I haven’t read the article, I won’t comment on whether it contains biased language.

I have a question for you. It might sound arrogant, but I promise that I’m not asking this to be a dick. Are you coworkers epidemiologists with formal education, training, and experience in critiquing peer reviewed public health journal articles? If not, then their interpretations don’t mean much to me. If you haven’t been taught how to read articles like this, then you probably don’t know how. That goes for the general public, “science journalists” for popular magazines, and physicians. I’m not saying that your coworkers misinterpreted the article (because, again, I didn’t read it). I’m saying that their opinion of the article doesn’t really matter.

It’s possible that I did a piss poor job conveying why I originally commented on your post. Allow me to fix that now. There are plenty of ways that men are fucked over, disrespected, and dismissed these days. This isn’t one of them.

I hope this helps clarify things. I hope you don’t think I’m disrespecting you. I’m going to go back to winding down after a shit day.

[–]duffelbagninja[S] 1 point2 points3 points 6 years ago (1 child) | Copy Link

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point2 points 6 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

For what it’s worth, the example you just gave of “1 in 4 homeless are women” is a often sexist way to present data. The difference is that, in my experience, when an article for the general public says “1/4 homeless are women”, that’s the main point that they are emphasizing. That is not the same as the line in this article that I have been discussing. These two lines are presenting data in similar ways but they are doing it in very different contexts for differ audiences. I understand how someone can read them as being similarly sexist.

Again, I wasn’t being arrogant before. I went to grad school to learn how to do what I do. I was one of the smart kids growing up. It was fucking humbling to learn just how thoroughly my intelligence and “common sense” had failed me when it came to understanding the world. After grad school and a couple of years of professional training, I got a job in my field. I’m a hell of a lot better at this than I was, but I am regularly reminded of just how much there is to know and how much subtle differences matter when it comes to big problems.