It’s been said that statistics can be used to prove just about anything. Take, for example, one study that I recently read about, which examined the link between vegetarianism among pregnant women and an increased risk of drug and alcohol abuse among their children. The study examined over 5,000 women and their children, and finding that if their mothers ate little to no meat while pregnant, then the children were more likely to drink, smoke, and do drugs at 15. It’s an interesting study, but at the same time, it’s one that could be part of a phenomenon that’s tragically common in the field of science, and is often used to push an agenda at the cost of objectivity. I’m talking, of course, about “p-hacking”.
