Science just got street! There's a bit of a cat fight going on with both a mathematics professor and two top statisticians over a series of papers written by social scientists from equally prestigious universities. The said papers suggests that behaviors—particularly becoming obese—are contagious and spread like a virus amongst friends. For the whole Harvard versus Carnegie Mellon story, you're going to have to read The New York Times piece. (There's a lot to take in.) But here's the skinny: Two social scientists looked at a long-running federal study on heart health (they didn't run the study, they just mined the research for info), and found that a person had a 57 percent greater chance of becoming obese if someone they considered to be a friend was obese.

Critics say the scientists weighed too heavily on the contagion theory. Other possible explanations include homophily (the tendency to choose friends like yourself), and environmental causation, since friends usually live in the same or similar environments. The real thing sticking in the mathematician and statisticians craw is that they believe it's impossible to separate these three possibilities in an observational study, and therefore any statistics garnered are flawed.

It's fascinating to read about inter-science fighting, especially because better data could be born of all of this. But it makes me wonder, even if obesity is "contagious," what would determining this serve to do? Teach drug companies how to sell slimming products by word-of-mouth promotion? Isolate obese individuals from their own social circles?

What do you think of the conclusion that obesity is contagious?


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