It's a wonderful way to keep people complacent, docile.

It was a useful side effect of the theory, yes.

Shouldn't it be called a meta-analysis, if it was only a re-analysis of somebody else's data?

A meta-analysis is when you combine the results of many previous studies together. So, for instance, you find the correlation between x and y reported in each of 30 previous studies and then are able to conclude that this correlation is higher under some conditions (the conditions present in some studies) than under others. Meta-analysis is a good way to find out how variables like age or sex or race or socioeconomic status affect treatment, because no individual study will have enough variation on those characteristics to answer the question. But if you combine across studies you can ask new and interesting questions.

Both the original Virginity Pledge study and this fake one were based on the same publicly available data set. Any researcher can get the data and check the results, which is why this new 'study' provides such a good example of conservative propaganda.

Anyway, scientists have developed a vaccine for it.

I think it is cervical cancer.

Oh, I can't find a link right now... but there's this disease that condoms cannot prevent (I forget what). Anyway, scientists have developed a vaccine for it. Now some Christian groups are saying that the vaccine should not be released, because if it is then that's sending a message that it's OK to have sex....

I think it is cervical cancer.

HPV, which is a risk factor for some forms of cervical cancer.

I think it is cervical cancer.

Yeah, I think that's it.

Because they want the fear of cervical cancer to keep women all virginous until marriage....

My mother has played that game -- her argument (usually in connection with abortion) is that if you have sex, you should be prepared to accept the consequences.

I never had the nerve to ask her if she applies the same reasoning to other activities, oh, say, smoking. (FTR, her brother has suffered from smoking-related health problems.)

Autopsy: Schiavo Blind, Brain Damaged June 15 (AP) — An autopsy on Terri Schiavo backed her husband's contention that she was in a persistent vegetative state, finding that she had massive and irreversible brain damage and was blind, the medical examiner's office said Wednesday. It also found no evidence that she was strangled or otherwise abused.

[link]

Not that this is a surprise.

HPV, rather. Huma Papilloma Virus. Which is the chief culprit in cervical cancer, and a lot of infertility cases, and I don't know what else.

but there's this disease that condoms cannot prevent (I forget what). Anyway, scientists have developed a vaccine for it. Now some Christian groups are saying that the vaccine should not be released, because if it is then that's sending a message that it's OK to have sex....

The way this is phrased, of course, you could be talking about the flu. Of course, to some on this earth, they'd be happy to outlaw the flu vaccine too, on the off chance that being healthy and not sneezing might lead to sex.

One of the things I've always liked about formal public policy is that it is risk-factors and outcomes, that's all. Sex only matters to government because it is a risk-factor for a bunch of things that cost the government money and cause the government's boss (citizens) to suffer.

After that it becomes a question of Where in the relationship of risk factors to outcomes is it (a) realistic and (b) affordable to intervene? Intervening at the "human nature" stage strikes me as 100 kinds of silly, and is by the way a lot more ambitious than most government programs would ever attempt.

June 15 (AP) — An autopsy on Terri Schiavo backed her husband's contention that she was in a persistent vegetative state, finding that she had massive and irreversible brain damage and was blind, the medical examiner's office said Wednesday. It also found no evidence that she was strangled or otherwise abused.

Waits for the uproar over activist coroners.

Waits for the uproar over activist coroners.

Heh.

Stupid reality-based autopsies....