I've essentially stopped reading Slate except for Christopher Hitchens because I can't trust any of these writers any farther than I can throw them, and I can't throw them very far. To my regret, I made an exception this morning, and here I am wasting time on a response.

A typical example of the utter bullshit that masquerades as "science journalism" or something on this site:

"Aigner-Clarke's act of heroism had been to get rich marketing "educational" DVDs for an age group (zero to 2) that, pediatricians agreed, shouldn't be watching TV at all."

The embedded link about what "pediatricians agreed" does not support Noah's claim at all. To be more precise: the "recommended guideline" at the bottom does not in fact say that children under 2 "shouldn't be watching TV at all," and in any case, even if it did say that, the guideline does not even remotely begin to follow from any of the data (or any conceivable way of combining aspects of the data) in the statement that precedes it, which is itself a notable instance of pseudo-science. Instead of embedding this idiotic "statement" as though it were somehow uncontroversial "evidence" for something that doesn't follow from it, why not try to explain why any sane adult should take this study seriously?

The supposedly relevant guideline says this:

"Discourage television viewing for children younger than 2 years, and encourage more interactive activities that will promote proper brain development, such as talking, playing, singing, and reading together."

In the English language "discourage" does not necessarily involve a categorical proscription (in fact, it rarely does). "Discourage" is compatible with "minimize." So strictly speaking, the guideline is not saying that 0-2 infants should not be watching TV "at all." It is saying: "keep it to a minimum." But keeping Baby Einstein watching to a minimum is surely compatible with buying a Baby Einstein DVD.

But even if the guideline had said "don't let not watch any TV at all," that recommendation is a blatant non-sequitur not only from the "data" provided by the statement, but from the wording of the guideline itself. If you let your 1 year old watch 30 minutes of Baby Einstein while you give him a bottle, what exactly stops you from talking, playing, singing, and reading together on other occasions, where the other occasions are sufficient to promote brain development? There are 24 hours in a day. Are these pediatricians telling us that 23.5 hours are insufficient? OK, factor in sleep and work, and do the relevant subtractions. Where is the "data" that says that what remains must be insufficient for everyone, always? To offer a recommendation of the preceding sort and not address such bird-brainedly obvious questions is to confess one's scientific incompetence.

It would be a waste of my time to explain why the "data" in the statement has almost nothing to do with the "discourage watching" recommendation. Just read the damn thing and use some common sense, something that Chatterbox seems incapable of doing.

The real questions here are about the "brain development" of the pediatricians involved in this study, and of the journalists who quote them. Someone should do a study of them.

If pediatricians are discouraging a particular activity, this does suggest the kids are better off not participating in the the activity at all. Perhaps they are avoiding the word "forbid" because they know this is virtually impossible--mom, dad and older siblings are bound to have the TV sometimes when the baby is around. This seems more a concession to reality rather than equivalent to saying go ahead and buy your baby a DVD. Sure, you can still do more interactive stuff with your kids when they're not watching Baby Einstein, but Baby Einstein is still a waste of time, which is the main point here.

The linked article asks parents to discourage TV viewing because of the content (eg. violence and sexuality). None of those are present in Baby Einstein so the article is irrelevant to the point that Noah made.

Usus:

The linked article asks parents to discourage TV viewing because of the content (eg. violence and sexuality). None of those are present in Baby Einstein so the article is irrelevant to the point that Noah made.

The objections to the content was aimed at older children, not the 0-2 range. Under "recommendations" it says this:

American Academy of Pediatrics:

Discourage television viewing for children younger than 2 years, and encourage more interactive activities that will promote proper brain development, such as talking, playing, singing, and reading together.

You can't have meaningful interactions with a television, even with Baby Einstein (and similar), and the article is thus germane to Noah's point.

The very research program that Aigner Clark claims she based her work on finds Baby Einstein's techniques to be detrimental to children's learning of language, because 1. the phonemes are only heard, no face is there making the sounds, and babies need to see the words being formed. 2. The videos are not interactive, and one of the most important things babies need in order to learn language is feedback. They don't need to hear you talk, or listen to videos, they need to have you respond.

A recent study by the same program showed that kids who watched the Little Mermaid and hung out with siblings and parents developed language skills faster than kids who watched Baby Einstein. (Zimmerman and Christakis, U of Washington, from the Journal of Pediatrics, 2007).

Under Da Sea is pretty catchy

But Irfan - serious research by Slate might have made it harder to dream up another pointless and adolescent dig at Bush.

I'm using a new account because I'm at a different computer and forgot my password to the other one.

Sorry, pukka, but your argument doesn't fly--or begin to get off the ground. "If pediatricians are discouraging a particular activity, this does suggest kids are better off not participating..." Why? On what evidence? No evidence was presented in the cited article for that conclusion, and if pediatricians or anyone else would like to suggest something, I would suggest that they say what they mean rather than engage in circumlocutions that leave their readers guessing. As for "perhaps they are avoiding," it's just a speculation based on nothing, and as a suggestion it makes no sense anyway. We're talking about infant humans, not infant rhinos. Just to remind you, a baby infant is a relatively small entity, and pretty easy to control. It's not only not "virtually impossible" to keep an infant away from the TV, it's one of the easiest things in the world. If others are "bound to have the TV on," and it's such a big deal in your universe that the child not be exposed to a TV, then either make the others stop watching TV in the baby's presence, put the TV elsewhere, or put the baby elsewhere than where the TV is. I find it hard to imagine a mentality that finds so trivial a task "impossible."

As for "main points," you've missed my main point, which was not terribly difficult to grasp. If you put your kid in front of Baby Einstein for a little while, you can do everything you're supposed to do to sustain their cognitive development. In that case, why do the pediatricians' recommendations make any sense? And sorry, but no evidence whatsoever has been presented so far to show that Baby Einstein retards infant development; the pediatricians' statement does nothing to support the guideline regarding 0-2 year olds. Finally, if Noah's main point was that Baby Einstein was a waste of time, why try to bluff his readership with this pseudo-scientific garbage link that does precisely nothing to bolster that claim? I guess we can rule out one answer: we can't say that Baby Einstein made him do it.

Irfan Khawaja

If the objections to content were aimed at older children, they obviously do not pertain to the children in the 0-2 range. If so, how were the claims pertaining to the older children supposed to substantiate a prescription for children in the 0-2 range? How, in other words, do "findings" that do not pertain to a certain age substantiate guidelines intended for that age group? The supposition seems to be that if a bunch of pediatricians releases hackneyed and pseudo-scientific findings about TV watching, we're supposed to credit their harebrained ideas just because they've rushed into print--never mind the total lack of evidence for a given claim.

Who says you can't have meaningful interactions with a TV? On whose definition of "meaningful" And on what basis? Lots of people have lots of meaningful interactions with TVs, and anyone who says otherwise ought to provide some actual evidence for the claim. There are days when I think that no one can have meaningful interactions with Slate journalists or readers, but this is a subjective and sporadic thought, and I don't claim scientific validity for it, however compelling it often seems.

The issue is not whether the article was "germane" to Noah's point. "Germane" is so loose a term that it would be hard to fail at linking to an article that was somehow "germane" to some point. The issue is Noah's misuse of scientific studies, and total incompetence at their proper use.

The "videos are not interactive" is what logicians call an amphiboly: an equivocation buried in a misleading phrase. In one sense, no video is literally interactive: no video can make anyone act. But in another sense, if a parent watches Baby Einstein with a child, the parent can interact with the child while the child is watching Baby Einstein. So the activity of watching the video can be interactive even if the "video" by itself is not.

Anyway, the efficacy of Baby Einstein is a red herring. I was objecting to Noah's use of the pediatric study, and nothing you've said addresses anything I said. The issue is not whether Baby Einstein is the most efficacious method of cognitive development or language acquisition. It's whether there is any scientific legitimacy to the claim that no child 0-2 should be watching TV "at all." How would Zimmerman and Christakis 2007 respond to my query: what if a child watches Baby Einstein for 30 minute a day while being bottle-fed but engages in non-TV-based cognitive development activities to a sufficient degree in other contexts? Do they predict cognitive disfunction for such a child? Cognitive impairment? Lower SAT scores? Lower IQ?

True. All the more reason to stop reading this crap. As I said, someone should do a study on the cognitive impairment or disfunction engendered by reading Slate for hours on end. I'll take Baby Einstein over Slate any day.

An interaction is when two (or more) objects have an effect on each other. So, no, you can't interact with a Slate author simply by reading an article, or with a television which has a DVD playing.

A baby can watch a video, and coo and caw at the various cues, but the response is going to be the same regardless of what actually happens. Compare this to a parent who can respond affirmatively or negatively depending on what the child actually does.

The fact that 0-2 year olds are going to be affected differently than older children to most stimuli should stand on its own. If you read the article, it was objecting to music videos portraying sex and violence in a glamorous manner. A 1-12 month old (the target audience for Baby Einstein) simply lacks the capacity to understand that kind of imagery. And, like I quoted above, it says in unmistakable terms, that TV should be avoided for 0-2 year olds. So what exactly is he misusing?

(And really? You're trying to dispute my use of 'germane'? I was responding to someone saying that his citing the study was "irrelevant." Maybe you should be watching Baby Einstein instead of reading Slate)