More genetic misrepresentation
The Daily Mail strikes again, in today’s Herald story headlined “Gene explains why girls like sweet stuff more than boys”
The actual research did an experiment to look at differences in what snacks children chose. The difference they found was in fat consumption, not sugar, and, overall, girls actually ate a bit less than boys, not more. Here’s the graph from the paper
The potentially interesting finding was that the difference between kids with two versions of the gene was larger for girls than boys, suggesting that the gene may act differently in boys and girls.
Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »