Can obesity spread through social ties?
Yuxi Ye
1 Introduction
Though The Spread of Obesity in a Large Social Network over 32 Years has received various critiques from the society since it first published, in which, the author Christakis and Fowler (C&F) claimed that obesity appears to spread through social ties, I think this article and the controversies it has brought still worth to discuss, as a good example of the possible misuse of social networks analysis and statistical analysis. In this paper, I will first introduce the major method, results and conclusion of C&F’s paper, then summarize some major controversies and shortcomings of this paper. The Spread of Evidence-Poor Medicine via Flawed Social-Network Analysis by Russell Lyons will be used as a representative opposite voice of C&F’s paper.
2 Method of C&F’s studies
In C&F’s research, they evaluated the social network of 12607 people from 1967 to 2003, using data from a long-running federal study, the Framingham Heart Study. They used longitudinal statistical models to examine several aspects of the spread of obesity, such as the occurrence of the clusters of obesity in the network, whether someone’s weight gain …show more content…
The closeness of friendship influences a person’s possibility of becoming obese directionally. For example, if Tom listed Jerry was his friend, the possibility of Tom becoming obese would increase by 57%, when Jerry became obese. If Tom and Jerry both listed each other as a friend, Tom would be 171% more likely to become obese when Jerry became obese. However, there was no significant relationship between obesity and the influence of friendship when only Jerry listed Tom as his friend. If Tom had a brother and his brother became obese, Tom will be 40% more likely to become obese. If Tom was married, the possibility of Tom becoming obese would increase by 37% when his spouse became
Yuxi Ye
1 Introduction
Though The Spread of Obesity in a Large Social Network over 32 Years has received various critiques from the society since it first published, in which, the author Christakis and Fowler (C&F) claimed that obesity appears to spread through social ties, I think this article and the controversies it has brought still worth to discuss, as a good example of the possible misuse of social networks analysis and statistical analysis. In this paper, I will first introduce the major method, results and conclusion of C&F’s paper, then summarize some major controversies and shortcomings of this paper. The Spread of Evidence-Poor Medicine via Flawed Social-Network Analysis by Russell Lyons will be used as a representative opposite voice of C&F’s paper.
2 Method of C&F’s studies
In C&F’s research, they evaluated the social network of 12607 people from 1967 to 2003, using data from a long-running federal study, the Framingham Heart Study. They used longitudinal statistical models to examine several aspects of the spread of obesity, such as the occurrence of the clusters of obesity in the network, whether someone’s weight gain …show more content…
The closeness of friendship influences a person’s possibility of becoming obese directionally. For example, if Tom listed Jerry was his friend, the possibility of Tom becoming obese would increase by 57%, when Jerry became obese. If Tom and Jerry both listed each other as a friend, Tom would be 171% more likely to become obese when Jerry became obese. However, there was no significant relationship between obesity and the influence of friendship when only Jerry listed Tom as his friend. If Tom had a brother and his brother became obese, Tom will be 40% more likely to become obese. If Tom was married, the possibility of Tom becoming obese would increase by 37% when his spouse became