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Parenting books are the worst. I read one of the pro "cry it out" books on the recommendation of friends and at one point the author had a chart of how the rise in juvenile delinquency corresponded to rise in attachment parenting.

The funny thing is that the friends who recommended it to me are both engineers but IME even a lot of smart people don't question "scientific" studies. Parenting books in particular rely on a whole lot of readers willing to take everything at face value.

Aside: I knew a women who had a PhD and studied sleep patterns. Her pediatrician told her she needed let her baby cry it out. When she asked for justification they handed her a study that she had participated in, it was about mama cats and their kitted - completely irrelevant to any sort of human behavior. She was pretty upset by the whole thing. How many parents had been convinced by doctors completely misinterpreting her research?

A lot of justified scorn was thrown at the anti-MMR vax crowd, particularly pre-covid, but I think it's hard to understand how many people just don't have the background to look at a bunch of charts and numbers with a skeptical eye. I don't know how we are going to manage it when these days everyone can find a chart somewhere justifying everything that they already believe.




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