Data-centric view of birth control

Birth control is one of those topics often saved for private conversations, so people’s views are often anecdotal. Someone knows what their friend, family member, etc used, but not much else. Amber Thomas for The Pudding provides a wider view of birth control using data from the CDC’s ongoing National Survey of Family Growth.

You see what other people use, how the method changes with age, and side effects. There’s a Clippy-like character for added information on the different methods. So there’s a good amount of information there to make the choice that’s right for you.

Sidenote on the NSFG data: I looked at the data a few times. It’s a good, messy dataset to explore if you want some practice.

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Science for the People: Contraception

sftp-square-fistonly-whitebgThis week, Science for the People is taking a closer look at our current – and potential future – contraceptive methods. We’ll speak with Beth Sundstrom and Andrea DeMaria, Co-Directors of the Women’s Health Research Team at the College of Charleston, about why the pill is still our go-to birth control choice when we have long acting reversible contraception methods like the IUD and the implant available for women. And we’ll talk with Elaine Lissner, Executive Director of the Parsemus Foundation, about their continuing work to bring Vasalgel, a long acting, reversible, non-hormonal male contraceptive, to market.

Science for the People is now part of the Skepchick Network.

Don’t forget to support the Science for the People on Patreon to keep the sciencey goodness flowing toward your ear holes.

*Josh provides research help to Science for the People and is, therefore, completely biased.


Filed under: This Mortal Coil Tagged: Andrea DeMaria, Beth Sundstrom, birth control, College of Charleston, contraception, Elaine Lissner, IUD, Parsemus Foundation, Podcast, science for the people, the pill, vasalgel, Women's Health Research Team

Science for the People: The Birth of the Pill

sftpThis Science for the People is exploring the intersection of science, society, and sex with the origin story of the birth control pill. They speak to author Jonathan Eig about his book The Birth of the Pill: How Four Crusaders Reinvented Sex and Launched a Revolution. Writer Rose Eveleth also returns to talk about the history and design of the vaginal speculum.

*Josh provides research help to Science for the People and is, therefore, completely biased.


Filed under: This Mortal Coil Tagged: birth control, Jonathan Eig, Podcast, Rose Eveleth, science for the people, Sex, speculum, the pill, vagina

Population Explosion 2.0, perfect writing software, model organism sex, tardiness

  Son of The Population Explosion? It matters hardly at all what is done to control population growth. If Homo sap‘s birth and death rates remain more or less as they are, we will grow from 7 billion plus today … Continue reading »

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Probabilities of failing birth control methods

Birth control effectiveness

In high school health class, where I learned about contraceptives and the dangers of pre-marital sex, my teacher spouted rates to scare. He would say something like condoms are 98 percent effective but never explained what that meant. Do they break 2 percent of the time? Do couples get pregnant 2 percent of the time? STDs?

These charts from Gregor Aisch and Bill Marsh might help. They show the probability of an unplanned pregnancy, categorized by contraceptive and over a span of ten years. The top solid lines represent probabilities with "typical use" and the dashed lines on the bottom represent probabilities with "perfect use."

Maybe it's time for better instructions on how to use these things.

Update: The calculation of long-term probabilities is likely on the pessimistic side and makes too many assumptions about the data and population. Andrew Whitby critiques.

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Birth control, Hobby Lobby, and the war against women

Anything left to be said about the US Supreme Court’s latest decisions about women?

The US Supreme Court finished out its term with decisions that were terrible for women. This piece concentrates on only one of them, Burwell v. Hobby …

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