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The Skeptical OB
Personal blog · skepticalob.comhealthscience
The Skeptical OB is a personal blog at skepticalob.com about health and science. Since 2013, 9 different Hacker News readers have linked it 24 times. The last post was in 2023, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (10) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
An obstetrician's blog on pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding and infant care that checks popular claims against medical studies. HN commenters cite it on homebirth safety, C-section rates, breastfeeding and skin-to-skin.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 10 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Dr. Amy
What Hacker News says?
An interesting reply (from someone who interacted with Hinde before writing it): http://www.skepticalob.com/2015/09/mothers-and-babies-commun... It would certainly be interesting to see how often the mother was producing antibodies for things that the father wasn't (more mundane infection vectors are one of the ideas presented at my link, if baby, mother and father are all sick, you don't have much evidence of the s…
Comment linking /2015/09/mothers-and-babies-communicate-through-breastmilk-at-the-moment-thats-wishful-thinking.html
on “Study Finds No Gender Gap in Tech Salaries”Submitted If correlation is not causation, what is? as a story · 1 points
HN discussionThe benefits of breastfeeding are massively oversold (to say the least): https://www.skepticalob.com/2018/07/what-breastfeeding-resea...
Comment linking /2018/07/what-breastfeeding-research-really-shows.html
on “An alternative argument for why women leave STEM”Submitted Social media has turned UK midwives into killers as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSkin-to-skin is totally BS nonsense. It was found to be beneficial for premature infants who need help regulating body temperature in low resource settings (where incubators are not available). So naturally, people started recommending it for term infants who don't need help regulating body temperature and it's risks completely ignored! https://www.skepticalob.com/2019/04/fisher-price-rock-n-play... https://www.skep…
Comment linking /2016/01/overselling-the-benefits-of-skin-to-skin-and-ignoring-the-risks.html
on “The unusual ways Western parents raise children”Hi, thanks again for your comments. I am trying to better understand the mindset behind the medical status quo, and you've given some good insights. > I am not a cardiologist so I don't know the full details on the statins, but I would be careful not to skip them. Cardiovascular mortality has decreased hugely the last decades and this one of the major treatments - they must be doing something right. Statins cause ma…
Comment linking /2009/06/doctor-listen-to-your-patient.html
on “To treat back pain, look to the brain not the spine”I don't know if any slavery-related impact would survive the dramatic change in breastfeeding rates in the U.S. over the 20th century. The chart of breastfeeding rates, for any race, looks like this: http://www.skepticalob.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/breast... . At about 60%, the breastfeeding rate among blacks in the U.S. is about what the national average was in 1995, and far above the 20-30% national average f…
Comment linking /wp-content/uploads/2013/08/breastfeeding-initiation-1910-2000.jpg
on “Show HN: SlaveryStories.org – Memoirs from American Slaves”More reason that the medical profession's highly misleading rhetoric about the benefits of breast feeding do a huge disservice to parents: http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-11-21/lifestyle/sc-h... http://www.skepticalob.com/2013/05/world-health-organization... . Life is enormously simpler when the baby can be fed by either the father or a daycare worker.
Comment linking /2013/05/world-health-organization-no-long-term-benefits-to-breastfeeding.html
on “What If You Combined Co-Working And Daycare?”We don’t have a great way of knowing the optimal c-section rate. But plotting national c-section rates against perinatal outcomes (an obviously imperfect approach) shows that increasing c-section rates are associated with significantly better outcomes until about 20% after which there is no real effect one way or another. http://www.skepticalob.com/2015/12/world-health-organization... I’m not sure why it would be “h…
Comment linking /2015/12/world-health-organizations-optimal-c-section-rate-officially-debunked.html
on “Doctors warn of alarming C-section 'epidemic'”Relevant counterpoint: http://www.skepticalob.com/2018/03/what-if-c-sections-are-be... . The article doesn’t actually say why C sections are bad, it presupposes that fact, and assumes that rising C section rates must indicate some sort of “epidemic.”
Comment linking /2018/03/what-if-c-sections-are-better-and-safer-than-vaginal-birth.html
on “Doctors warn of alarming C-section 'epidemic'”> My wife is a doula and apparently the injury and mortality rates for mother and child are much higher than through natural childbirth. That is of course true, because C sections are primarily used in high-risk pregnancies and in emergencies. But what you actually care about is the counter-factual: if a given set of deliveries were "natural" rather than a C section, would mortality go up or down? It's hard to devel…
Comment linking /2018/03/what-if-c-sections-are-better-and-safer-than-vaginal-birth.html
on “A Fear of Lawsuits Really Does Seem to Result in Extra Medical Tests”There are few long-term (for first-world babies) once you adjust for socioeconomic and socioenvironmental factors: http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/sibbreast.htm; http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_exa... http://www.ntnu.edu/news/breastfeeding; http://www.skepticalob.com/2014/02/hold-the-guil-new-study-f... http://time.com/99746/its-time-to-end-the-breast-is-best-myt... . I would put "huge b…
Comment linking /2014/02/hold-the-guil-new-study-finds-benefits-of-breastfeeding-dramatically-overstated.html;
on “Breastfeeding 'linked to higher IQ'”No. Are you willfully ignoring the statistics? The death rate for low risk births is 320% higher. http://www.skepticalob.com/2014/01/homebirth-midwives-reveal...
Comment linking /2014/01/homebirth-midwives-reveal-death-rate-450-higher-than-hospital-birth-announce-that-it-shows-homebirth-is-safe.html
on “Kate Middleton’s ‘luxury’ birth cost less than the average U.S. birth”Home birth is not safe. In the Netherlands, as elsewhere, it causes deaths: http://www.skepticalob.com/2010/07/netherlands-homebirth-and... And the majority of Dutch births are not home births. Due to the safety issues, the rate has fallen to only 13%: http://www.skepticalob.com/2017/02/dutch-homebirth-rate-cont...
Comment linking /2017/02/dutch-homebirth-rate-continues-to-plummet-now-only-13.html
on “Kate Middleton’s ‘luxury’ birth cost less than the average U.S. birth”No, one wasn't safe. One was risky, but luckily happened to end all right. Just like driving drunk is unsafe even if you make it home in one piece. Safety is statistical, not anecdotal. Here are the statistics: http://www.skepticalob.com/2014/01/homebirth-midwives-reveal...
Comment linking /2014/01/homebirth-midwives-reveal-death-rate-450-higher-than-hospital-birth-announce-that-it-shows-homebirth-is-safe.html
on “Kate Middleton’s ‘luxury’ birth cost less than the average U.S. birth”What about formula milk? The long term benefits of breast feeding are so tenuous that I can't imagine there's a practical significance to the difference between breast milk produced for girls versus boys in human babies: http://www.skepticalob.com/2013/05/world-health-organization... . Studies like these are valuable, but it's tempting to jump from interesting observation to policy recommendation without keeping in…
Comment linking /2013/06/two-crappy-new-breastfeeding-studies-make-irresponsible-claims-of-benefits.html
on “Boys and Girls may get different breast milk”My dad spent much of his career in public health trying to figure out how to get women in places like Bangladesh to go visit hospitals instead of midwives. He does not find the midwife trend in America amusing. Relevant: http://www.skepticalob.com/2014/09/awesome-dutch-midwives-ki... .
Comment linking /2014/09/awesome-dutch-midwives-kill-just-as-many-babies-in-the-hospital-as-at-home.html
on “Why are so many new and expectant mothers dying in the US?”Indeed, here is her take on the report referenced in the NY Times article that is the OP: http://www.skepticalob.com/2014/12/new-uk-homebirth-guidelin... Clearly she has virtually the opposite perspective from the one in the NYT, and one that seems hard to dismiss. (My kid was delivered in a hospital, and I tell myself that I'm being impartial, but who knows.)
Comment linking /2014/12/new-uk-homebirth-guidelines-midwives-win-babies-lose.html
on “British Regulator Urges Home Births Over Hospitals for Uncomplicated Pregnancies”The state of Oregon did a study of the relative risk, and the results aren't pretty: http://www.skepticalob.com/2013/03/oregon-releases-official-... .
Comment linking /2013/03/oregon-releases-official-homebirth-death-rates-and-they-are-hideous.html
on “British Regulator Urges Home Births Over Hospitals for Uncomplicated Pregnancies”Not a "mom blog," but covers pregnancy and childbirth from a scientific viewpoint plus some parenting topics - The Skeptical OB - https://www.skepticalob.com/ the author was a practicing obstetrician, professor at Harvard Medical School, and mom of 4.
Comment linking /
on “A journey into the shaken baby syndrome/abusive head trauma controversy”
