Vice President Joe Biden at the Delaware Children's Museum Gala

The Delaware Children's Museum had a grand opening Gala and fund raiser this evening. We had a great time and got to finally meet Congressman Castle and also Vice President Joe Biden.

Here we are with the Vice President. I gave my camera to a woman and asked her to take our picture when we got a chance to say hello to the vice president.

She took more picture than that. There were other folks in line ahead of us, most noticeably a marine in dress uniform.

The very nice woman took pictures of us as we got to say hello and finally the great shot when we were posing. I never even got to thank her for the extra pictures. I told him he was doing a great job, I did not say it was a big f***ing deal, though I was tempted.

He gave a touching speech about how important it was to support the DCM. Being a parent and grandparent you could tell he was touched and of course as parents, Lynn and I were touched by his speech. Beau was the announced host of the Gala, so I was wondering if his dad would show up. When we had to go through metal detectors to get in, I knew something was up.

Sometimes the action is over at Childhood Antics

You may have missed some interesting news stories over at Childhood Antics, such as:

The Alien Baby Carrier:



Tub-o-babies:
Enjoy!

A new Honest Hypocrite - Welcome Linus!

Three weeks ago (on January 30th), Lynn and I welcomed Linus Richard Koehler into our lives. This new honest hypocrite was highly anticipated and we are so glad to meet him.

Readers are welcome to guess the origin of Linus' name. Is he named for...

A.) A relative
B.) Linus Torvalds, a programmer, the creator of the Linux kernel
C.) Pope Linus, the second Pope of the Catholic Church.
D.) Linus Pauling, a chemist, winner of two Nobel Prizes (chemistry and peace)
E.) Linus Yale, Jr., an American mechanical engineer and founder of the Yale Lock Manufacturing company.
F.) Linus (mythology), any of three sons of Apollo
G.) Linus van Pelt, a character in the comic strip Peanuts
H.) Linus Caldwell, a character from the films Ocean's Eleven, Ocean's Twelve and Ocean's Thirteen, played by Matt Damon

I will give you a hint. I am a chemical engineering and my parents once got this person's autograph for me at a convention where he discussed the merits of Vitamin C. Any one of these august personages would be a good role model for Linus, but for whom is he named?

To keep up to date on Linus' childhood antics you can follow along at Childhood Antics. Childhood Antics will focus on all things Linus, kids and parenting. Did you ever notice that when you get a new car it seems that when you are out driving, everyone else on the road has that car too. I don't think it is more cars, but a change in focus and attention. I suppose it is the same with babies, once you have one you start noticing all of the baby and parenting topics out on the internet that you might not have noticed before. The birth of Cory Doctorow's daughter and Mark Frauenfelder home life posts have seemingly increased the number of Boing Boing posts related to children, I have also noticed an increase in kids stuff at Neatorama. I will keep the kid stuff to Childhood Antics and the science, science fiction, general commentary, and honest hypocrisy to the Honest Hypocrite. Enjoy!

Calling bullshit on mobile phone use during pregnancy damaging babies

The headline reads - "Warning: Using a mobile phone while pregnant can seriously damage your baby" - when it should read - "Danish mother's self-reported use of cell phones during pregnancy (seven years ago) is associated with a possible increase of mother's self reported behavioral problems of 7 year olds as measured by the Strengths & Difficulties Questionnaire from 10% of total children to 14%-22% of total children." I guess that headline is a little too long and exacting to sell papers or get the links. I am not the only one that thinks this, there are others.

In reading this news report and looking into the study I have discovered some obvious facts:

• Newspaper headlines are written sensationally to increase sales and readers.
• Cell phones, pregnant women and babies are easy targets.
• I am way too cheap to pay $35 for one academic article in Epidemiology.
• In spite of that you can still find some analysis for free on the internet.

So first I will admit that I did not read the actual article in Epidemiology by Divan HA, KheifetsLeeka, Obel C, and Olsen J because I was too cheap to buy it. But I did find a good summary of the points at EMF-portal and I was able to read the abstract. Some observations about the study:

• The cell phone use during pregnancy was self-reported and it seems that it was self-reported seven years after the fact.
• 50% of the children in the study were never exposed to cell phone use. Only 11% were exposed during pregnancy and used a phone before they were 7.
• Behavioral problems in 7-year old children were assessed using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. That is also self-reporting, mothers filling it out about the children.
• 90% of the children in the study had no behavioral problems.
• The paper reports an odds ratio (ratio of the odds of disease in an exposed group over the odds of disease in an unexposed group) of 1.8 with 95% confidence interval from 1.45-2.23, which combined with the 10% abnormal data above suggests the increase from 10% with behavioral problems to ~14%-22% of children with behavioral problems as defined by the SDQ.

The SDQ data from the testing website itself supports the ~90% normal figure in the Kheifets paper. This is the same figure for 4 to 7 year olds in the US. (click below for larger, .pdf link to data, .pdf link to normal vs. abnormal scores)

The authors of the paper certainly do not present a conclusion like the sensational headline above. Prenatal and postnatal exposure to cell phones was associated with overall behavioral problems in children. The authors themselves concluded that these results should be interpreted with caution. The observed association is not necessarily causal and may be due to factors not investigated in this study.

I wish that reporters and the general public read the news and these studies with the healthy skepticism and critical thinking that is required to understand them and to modify their behaviors only in the face of actual understood risk. That also does not sell newspapers.

If someone sends me the article or the $35 for it I will happy to complete an analysis of the article.