Researchers link music tastes to HIV risks

[Jamastiene]

by Michel Comte Thu Aug 17, 2:47 PM ET

TORONTO (AFP) - US boys hooked on gospel, techno and pop are more at risk of
HIV infection than devotees of other musical styles, including "bling, bling" hip hop, according to a new study.

Musical tastes may offer clues to rates of HIV infection, said researchers who tried to decipher the complex behaviors and attitudes of young men in the United States, at a global
AIDS conference.

The music industry often says there is no connection between music and sexual behavior, but hundreds of young men interviewed in New York this year fiercely disagreed, said lead researcher Miguel Munoz-Laboy of Columbia University.

They said images of scantily-clad women in submissive roles in hip hop music videos, for example, had a "real impact on their lives," he said.

"There is a connection. You see it in the way people dance, dress and it has an impact on their sexuality," said Munoz-Laboy.

<snip>

Here is the link:
http://www.yahoo.com/s/371162

Just thought these were interesting findings.

[Deja Q]

1. And according to a book I've read, a person is 30x more likely to get

heart disease than AIDS.

And that book dealt with physiological factors. Not fluff like "musical interests".

I listen to techno, amongst others, and I am disease free.

[Jamastiene]

4. It's just amazing that this "research" passes for

genuine science these days. How could they put techno in the same category as gospel anyhow? That is screwed up if you think about it. I still think its interesting that they actually did a screwed up study like this when the real culprit for almost any rise in new HIV cases would have to be the abstinence only "education" programs (translated: the keep 'em ignorant campaign.)

[billyskank]

33. I am thinking the world is probably ready for some hardcore techno gospel

:7

[Jamastiene]

35. Oh shit.

Don't give them any ideas. They have already attempted Christian punk and more recently the Christian alternative stuff that spawned Creed on us. :puke:

I'M DEFINITELY not ready for any hardcore techno gospel. :scared:

*Jama cringes and begs, "Protect me billyskank, please." *

[Random_Australian]

2. Correlation causation ya fuckers. (eom)

[Jamastiene]

5. Curious findings, aren't they?

Leaves one wondering :wtf:

[Random_Australian]

11. They aren't fucking curious at all. The music is associated with certain

cultural groups, and all this is saying is that certain cultural (and I use that term in the broadest sense) have different HIV rates. Eg. young people get it more than elderly people. I hate it when crap like like this is represented like this.

[Jamastiene]

17. It's like saying that what music you listen to

has a direct correlation to how you vote. I see the evidence on DU that would suggest the opposite.

I thought the article was kind of out of place on Yahoo. They tend to be a little less openly full of shit.

[Hissyspit]

32. I listen to everything. So does that mean

I am most likely to get HIV AND least likely to HIV?

What a ridiculous study.

[Jamastiene]

34. Maybe that means you stand a chance

of maybe 25% or whatever persentage their fucked up math decides.

Is IS a really ridiculous study, isn't it? It's almost as if they are doing any study they can to keep from educating people about the real facts. More evidence of their squirming with the abstinence only education (or really lack of) failures.

[redqueen]

23. ...

:loveya:

[asthmaticeog]

12. Leaves one wondering WTF they were thinking...

Some subcultures are more prone to promiscuity and a disregard for condom use than others.

Every subculture is at least partly defined by its preferences in music and social milieu.

So *of course* there'll be a noticable correlation between music taste and infection rates. That still doesn't actually MEAN anything, or advance anyone's knowledge of HIV's spread.

By way of comparison: some subcultures in lower economic strata noticably tend to favor classic hard rock and heavy metal. This doesn't mean we should start looking for the posession of a Foghat record as a poverty indicator. It's not relevant to the causes, effects or social pathologies typically linked to poverty.

Likewise, HIV is spread by unprotected sex with an infected partner, not by exposure to Erasure. This study is really useless in any diagnostic or preventative sense.

This would be more useful, and nobody needs a friggin' study to figure it out:

Young people tend, on the whole, to be hornier than older people.

Some young people socialize by going out dancing, drinking and using drugs.

Intoxicated people tend to be less mindful of whom they pair off with, or of safe sex precautions.

Note how the specifics of the style of music involved don't enter into that. It would be true if the preferred music were bluegrass, the dancing was clog-dancing and the intoxicant was moonshine. If HIV is present in that population, it will spread.

Again, this study was preposterously dumb, and a waste of funding.

[Magrittes Pipe]

13. I have a Foghat record, and I'm poor.

:tinfoilhat:

[asthmaticeog]

15. Get rid of it and you'll find material comfort.

:freak:

[Jamastiene]

16. Might wanna keep an extra box of

condoms ready and don't forget to use them.

[izzybeans]

3. Storks bring babies.

[Jamastiene]

6. ROFLMAO.

:rofl:

Rather simplistic and off base, aren't they?

[izzybeans]

7. Yeah I'm sure the correlation is there. But what it adds

to what we already now about the social aspects of HIV transmission is unclear to me.

[Jamastiene]

18. It adds nothing.

Like I said in another post on this thread. Saying that there is a correlation between what music you listen to and you chances of getting infected with HIV is like saying there is a correlation between the music you listen to and how you vote. It just doesn't hold water.

[ContraBass Black]

8. Bad practice built on wrong assumptions.

"Kids would be appalled that we grouped them this way, but this is how they mapped out in the mathematical analysis," Munoz-Laboy said.



What mathematical analysis was that? The groupings put hip-hop into two incomplete categories, then assume that listening to each of those or going to church and listening to gospel is exclusive. The sample was only three neighborhoods in one city. This without those massive and unsupported assumptions, the results could go a different way completely.

[Jamastiene]

19. Precisely.

And to think, I probably couldn't get a grant to study the effects of music on a person's stress levels, yet these people can do a study that concludes nothing. I wonder how much money was spent on this stupid pointless research?

[xchrom]

9. this reminds me of the ''rock is the devils'' music

from back in the day.

there is no way this ''study could prove any kind of accuracy -- you can make all kinds of ''mathematical'' blanket statements -- that doesn't make them so.

"There is a connection. You see it in the way people dance, dress and it has an impact on their sexuality," said Munoz-Laboy.''

the above statement is just bizarre -- and the fact that they were allowed to give this research at the toronto aids conference is just too strange for words.

[Jamastiene]

20. This has GOT to be

more of the right wing supported psychobabble. It can't possibly be real scientific research.

Another question I have is: Since when can you lump rock and hip hop together like that? Usually people like either one or the other. In SOME cases people like both, but it tends to go the other way on that one.

[xchrom]

27. oh who knows?

i'm mystified by this whole article and how did they get to publish at the aids conference.

[Jamastiene]

36. Another subtle right wing arm of

influence got them credibility when they shouldn't have it, no doubt.

[LaurenG]

10. Yes and listening to AC/DC turns one into a "night stalker"

I do think some researchers have waaay to much time on their hands.

[Jamastiene]

22. Not to mention overactive imaginations. n/t

[ProfessorGAC]

14. Somebody Please PEER REVIEW THIS STUDY!

This is so stupid i can't believe it has any academic merit, and i can't believe it's peer reviewed. There is so much autocorrelation potential that it's highly unlikely this is true.
The Professor

[Jamastiene]

24. I can't believe it was on Yahoo

as a major story. Normally, you can find some real news hidden on Yahoo's main news page, but this story just blew my mind.

[dolo amber]

21. I think having unprotected sex with someone infected with HIV

leads to increased risks of contracting HIV.

Wonder if I can get a research grant... :freak:

[Jamastiene]

25. Bingo. You nailed it.

No, people like you and I, who would actually do something productive with grant money, are often left out of the grant money loop. Instead they give it to idiots who compare apples to oranges. :eyes:

[nickgutierrez]

26. No way.

That's falsifiable - or, as those science-types would call it, real science. We can't have that, now can we?

[Jamastiene]

37. Heaven forbid they should simply

educate people as young as possible about the virus that causes AIDS and how it is spread. Heaven forbid they should allow any truth to be widely told that many people now contracting HIV are straight. Could you imagine how much power that would take from them? They wouldn't be able to go around making up their ridiculous anti-gay slogans and chastising the GLBT community nearly as much.

[Tenseiga]

28. Gospel?

:wtf:

[NMMNG]

29. That actually makes a bit of sense

They're most likely to be fed that "condoms don't work and actually spread rather than prevent disease" BS. Therefore they're less likely to use them than others when they have sex (which they do just as frequently as any other teen despite the "abstinence only" sex-ed they get and any "abstinence pledges" they take.

[Jamastiene]

39. Yeah, I saw many take those stupid pledges

back in high school. Many of them ended up being the "pregnant teenagers who had to drop out of high school." At one time, I did some reasearch and I believe I saw a lot of correlations between the abstinence only areas having higher teen pregnancy rates as well.

And yes, we did have abstinence only sex ed here. They actually separated the girls and the boys. They told us that condoms cause yeast infections in women and that it was better not to try sex at all than use a condom without emphasizing that that was more a misleading choice of words on their part rather than a load of shit they were feeding us. Who knows what they told the boys?

[Jamastiene]

38. Well yeah.

They would never tell you this, but many deeply religious types believe in Abstinence Only sex ed, which means they honestly believe that those kids will never have sex until they are married. :eyes: This means they don't teach them about condoms or any other preventative measures. So when the kids/teens do what nature is telling them it is time to do, they don't protect themselves. Some do, inevitably, contract HIV.

Therefore, when Lisa "Left Eye" Lopez wore the condom over her left eye in that TLC video and TLC and many other rap/hip hop and other artists starting making damn sure they mentioned condom use, it helped teens learn the difference.

The poor Absintence Only bunch are going on the wing and a prayer that their parents are right. Unfortunately, their parents are dead wrong and so the teens will be too, because of that.

[ForrestGump]

30. Sociologists are sooooo cute...

:hide:


Actually, I have no problem accepting sociology as a science, but studies like this don't do much to help advance that impression. The lead investigator on this unmitigated piece of crap is an Assistant Professor (for those unfamiliar with US university hierarchies, that's an entry-level prof) in the Department of Sociomedical Sciences at Columbia and should know better, as should every idiot on every funding committee and elsewhere who saw this bogus piece of pseudoscience-in-the-making coming down the line. I mean, I'm sure he's happy with the fundinghe got and the resultant publication(s) and presentations at conferences -- all very valuable line son the CV that'll help him get more funding and look betetr at tenure-review time -- but...come on....

I am no big fan of statistics -- my own scientific field developed a bad case of physics envy back in the '80s or so and now good observational stuff can't get published unless it's statisiticized up the wazoo (and, in my opinion, we therefore lose a lot of valuable tidbits that used to help form the basis of hypotheses) -- but if you're going to use stats do it for the right reasons and do it right, don't just randomly throw sh** in and see what comes out...not with these kinds of studies, anyway, that are survey-based ones already loaded with bias and more controlled than natural experiments and random observation and the like.

I'm kinda peeved that junk like this gets funded when NSF (Non-Sufficient Funds) turned down some of my ideas that I thought were, with all appropriate humility, fairly brilliant and now seem on a par with the Theory of Relativity in comparison to what they're coming up with the Department of Sociomedical Pseudosciences at Columbia University...

[Jamastiene]

40. It is sad, isn't it?

This country seems to flip from the right to the left and back again so often that nothing is getting done as a result. That is a hypothesis of mine that I would love to see someone prove right or wrong, one way or the other. In my lifetime (1970 - the present), there have been more conservative presidents than liberal presidents. I have seen this extreme right wing shift to the more moderate wing in power to the extreme right so many times that it has made me see that there is a "big picture" in politics.

Back in the 80s, I saw Ronald Reagan either say nothing at all (while hemophiliacs and gay people did all the educating on the issue of AIDS/HIV) or say something that was totally off base and only served to spread more bigotry. He ignored the facts even when he finally had to talk to his Surgeon General about the issue. Meanwhile, the number of new HIV cases continued to rise while Abstinence Only was the sex ed of choice and no funding was allowed to any organization that advocated any needle exchange program for IV drug users, because that administration believed it would "advocate" drug use.

I saw gas prices go up in the late 70's and the Republican got elected over it. At least in my area, many people voted for Reagan in 1980 because they believed he could lower the gas prices. Granted Jimmy Carter made a few mistakes while he was president, he still didn't deserve the kind of antagonism he had directed toward him and still has directed toward him in people's memories. Now gas prices are high again and the now Republican president is doing nothing to lower them. Oh, so NOW, people are finally starting to see that electric or hybrid cars are the way to go. It took people 25+ years to get that through their heads and only some people seem to have gotten it as it stands now.

This right/left/right shift back and forth also causes many programs that worked to get scrapped when the new presidents come into power while money is wasted on different methods that, quite frankly, do not work. Let's not forget Kyoto either. I could do research on this topic if I had the time and money to do it. Think I'd get a grant to prove that the extreme right wing slant this country has taken causes delays in progress with the current bunch in power? No, probably not.

I would imagine any long term research gets scrapped with the latest political see-saw effect in our country. Sometimes, the only way to make an advance in science is to have long term research. That gets lost in the shuffle. It is truly our loss too.

[ForrestGump]

31. Sociologists are sooooo cute...

:hide:


Actually, I have no problem accepting sociology as a science, but studies like this don't do much to help advance that impression. The lead investigator on this unmitigated piece of crap is an Assistant Professor (for those unfamiliar with US university hierarchies, that's an entry-level prof) in the Department of Sociomedical Sciences at Columbia and should know better, as should every idiot on every funding committee and elsewhere who saw this bogus piece of pseudoscience-in-the-making coming down the line. I mean, I'm sure he's happy with the fundinghe got and the resultant publication(s) and presentations at conferences -- all very valuable line son the CV that'll help him get more funding and look betetr at tenure-review time -- but...come on....

I am no big fan of statistics -- my own scientific field developed a bad case of physics envy back in the '80s or so and now good observational stuff can't get published unless it's statisiticized up the wazoo (and, in my opinion, we therefore lose a lot of valuable tidbits that used to help form the basis of hypotheses) -- but if you're going to use stats do it for the right reasons and do it right, don't just randomly throw sh** in and see what comes out...not with these kinds of studies, anyway, that are survey-based ones already loaded with bias and more controlled than natural experiments and random observation and the like.

I'm kinda peeved that junk like this gets funded when NSF (Non-Sufficient Funds) turned down some of my ideas that I thought were, with all appropriate humility, fairly brilliant and now seem on a par with the Theory of Relativity in comparison to what they're coming up with the Department of Sociomedical Pseudosciences at Columbia University...

[retread]

41. These ass-wipes have been riding this "negro music" scare crap for many

decades. Their success illustrates the endemic racism in this country.