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Why would randomly selected men in Boston not be a good enough surrogate for all men in the USA? Are you suggesting living specifically in Boston lowers testos

Why would randomly selected men in Boston not be a good enough surrogate for all men in the USA? Are you suggesting living specifically in Boston lowers testosterone?

campbel 5y ago
There could be a local environmental factor that is responsible for the result.
- JoeAltmaier 5y ago
  Like, they're largely of Irish descent. Or the harbor air. Or all that beer. Any number of things.
jonahx 5y ago
For example, if the cause was a pollutant in the local Boston environment, or anything else peculiar to that environment.
dragonwriter 5y ago
> Why would randomly selected men in Boston not be a good enough surrogate for all men in the USA? Because Boston isn't health-wise, demographically, behaviorally, environmentally, or in any other way representative of the US. > Are you suggesting living specifically in Boston lowers testosterone? Maybe. Or in urban areas. Or in coastal areas. Or the American Northeast. Or in places, America or not, near the Atlantic Ocean. Nothing in a study of men from Boston tells you that the scope of any effect is likely to be “the US”, unless it is clear enough to determine the actual source of the effect, and that source is known to be common throughout the US.
- true_religion 5y ago
  About 100 million people live on the East coast of the USA. That’s 1/3rd of the population. If these results are only generalizable to them, then it’s still a useful finding that deserves many follow up studies.
  - eurasiantiger 5y ago
    Boston resides at the mouth of several rivers. Studies have shown a correlation with such geographical location and a higher exposure to endocrine disruptors in the population.
    - true_religion 5y ago
      Cities being built next to rivers isn’t some kind of shocking exception, so it’s probably valuable to take the report seriously since at a minimum it can be generalized to NYC and the nations capital.
  - rapjr9 5y ago
    Boston is also one of the oldest cities in the USA, and has had much longer to build up a presence of toxins, especially from the early days when people dumped anything anywhere.
brightball 5y ago
Highly urban, climate specific, concentrated traffic exhaust, etc. In the US there are such a wide variety of climate trends that it’s impossible to claim a nationwide effect for such a localized sample.
jollybean 5y ago
It's not a random selection of Americans. There are so many things that differentiate Bostonians from others: ethnicity, weather, quality of air, work/life balance, sunlight, diet, activities, behaviours, stressors, flouride in the water, healthcare and access to it.
PaulRobinson 5y ago
You need to flip your question around - the person you're replying to is not suggesting there is data that living in Boston lowers testosterone, they are suggesting there is not enough data included in this study to extrapolate that this effect is anything other than local. For the same reason that a study conducted on Japanese men would not produce results sufficient to draw a conclusion about all men globally, you can't draw a conclusion about all men in the US from a result observed in men in Boston. Boston has a local environment, diet, culture and ethnography that could be causal in any result seen in any study. Taken at a very simple level, you couldn't run a poll in Boston alone about anything - politics, preferred beer brands, opinions about Saturday Night Live, whatever - and assume your results would be representative of the entirety of the United States. One hypothesis for the cause of the effect being described in this study is that contraceptive pill use in women is affecting hormone levels in drinking water. Can you see how the use of a particular type of contraceptive pill could change from town to town, state to state, and that the water filtration systems may differ from town to town, state to state? And that's a pretty simple environmental factor you'd need to control for, or you could investigate locally.
- JohnJamesRambo 5y ago
  Yeah I get all those things, I just don't think Boston is that different than the rest of the USA to account for the magnitude of change we see. A little change, sure. But we are talking a halving of bioavailable testosterone. Nevermind the fact that this isn't the only study showing declines in testosterone all over the world. https://www.forbes.com/sites/neilhowe/2017/10/02/youre-not-the-man-your-father-was/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/neilhowe/2017/10/02/youre-not-t... >Studies show that men’s testosterone levels have been declining for decades. The most prominent, a 2007 study in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, revealed a “substantial” drop in U.S. men’s testosterone levels since the 1980s, with average levels declining by about 1% per year. This means, for example, that a 60-year-old man in 2004 had testosterone levels 17% lower than those of a 60-year-old in 1987. Another study of Danish men produced similar findings, with double-digit declines among men born in the 1960s compared to those born in the 1920s.

Why would randomly selected men in Boston not be a good enough surrogate for all men in the USA? Are you suggesting living specifically in Boston lowers testosterone?

campbel 5y ago

There could be a local environmental factor that is responsible for the result.

JoeAltmaier 5y ago
Like, they're largely of Irish descent. Or the harbor air. Or all that beer. Any number of things.

jonahx 5y ago

For example, if the cause was a pollutant in the local Boston environment, or anything else peculiar to that environment.

dragonwriter 5y ago

> Why would randomly selected men in Boston not be a good enough surrogate for all men in the USA? Because Boston isn't health-wise, demographically, behaviorally, environmentally, or in any other way representative of the US. > Are you suggesting living specifically in Boston lowers testosterone? Maybe. Or in urban areas. Or in coastal areas. Or the American Northeast. Or in places, America or not, near the Atlantic Ocean. Nothing in a study of men from Boston tells you that the scope of any effect is likely to be “the US”, unless it is clear enough to determine the actual source of the effect, and that source is known to be common throughout the US.

true_religion 5y ago
About 100 million people live on the East coast of the USA. That’s 1/3rd of the population. If these results are only generalizable to them, then it’s still a useful finding that deserves many follow up studies.
- eurasiantiger 5y ago
  Boston resides at the mouth of several rivers. Studies have shown a correlation with such geographical location and a higher exposure to endocrine disruptors in the population.
  - true_religion 5y ago
    Cities being built next to rivers isn’t some kind of shocking exception, so it’s probably valuable to take the report seriously since at a minimum it can be generalized to NYC and the nations capital.
- rapjr9 5y ago
  Boston is also one of the oldest cities in the USA, and has had much longer to build up a presence of toxins, especially from the early days when people dumped anything anywhere.

brightball 5y ago

Highly urban, climate specific, concentrated traffic exhaust, etc. In the US there are such a wide variety of climate trends that it’s impossible to claim a nationwide effect for such a localized sample.

jollybean 5y ago

It's not a random selection of Americans. There are so many things that differentiate Bostonians from others: ethnicity, weather, quality of air, work/life balance, sunlight, diet, activities, behaviours, stressors, flouride in the water, healthcare and access to it.

PaulRobinson 5y ago

You need to flip your question around - the person you're replying to is not suggesting there is data that living in Boston lowers testosterone, they are suggesting there is not enough data included in this study to extrapolate that this effect is anything other than local. For the same reason that a study conducted on Japanese men would not produce results sufficient to draw a conclusion about all men globally, you can't draw a conclusion about all men in the US from a result observed in men in Boston. Boston has a local environment, diet, culture and ethnography that could be causal in any result seen in any study. Taken at a very simple level, you couldn't run a poll in Boston alone about anything - politics, preferred beer brands, opinions about Saturday Night Live, whatever - and assume your results would be representative of the entirety of the United States. One hypothesis for the cause of the effect being described in this study is that contraceptive pill use in women is affecting hormone levels in drinking water. Can you see how the use of a particular type of contraceptive pill could change from town to town, state to state, and that the water filtration systems may differ from town to town, state to state? And that's a pretty simple environmental factor you'd need to control for, or you could investigate locally.

JohnJamesRambo 5y ago
Yeah I get all those things, I just don't think Boston is that different than the rest of the USA to account for the magnitude of change we see. A little change, sure. But we are talking a halving of bioavailable testosterone. Nevermind the fact that this isn't the only study showing declines in testosterone all over the world. https://www.forbes.com/sites/neilhowe/2017/10/02/youre-not-the-man-your-father-was/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/neilhowe/2017/10/02/youre-not-t... >Studies show that men’s testosterone levels have been declining for decades. The most prominent, a 2007 study in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, revealed a “substantial” drop in U.S. men’s testosterone levels since the 1980s, with average levels declining by about 1% per year. This means, for example, that a 60-year-old man in 2004 had testosterone levels 17% lower than those of a 60-year-old in 1987. Another study of Danish men produced similar findings, with double-digit declines among men born in the 1960s compared to those born in the 1920s.