Re: Big ears and noses

From: Joseph (js_at_mixmix.com)
Date: 06/30/04 

Date: Wed, 30 Jun 2004 10:55:21 -0400

Sir, we know that ears and noses get bigger between 20 years old and 80
years old. Do you really think that the senior gentlemen with such elephant
ears walked around like that 20?

"Bob" <bbruner@uclink4.berkeley.edu> wrote in message
news:o8f4e0tbimekanoomb5mo36mpv62nofuvg@4ax.com...
> On Tue, 29 Jun 2004 20:25:08 -0400, "Joseph" <js@mixmix.com> wrote:
>
> > In July 1993, 19 members of the south east Thames faculty of the Royal
> >College of General Practitioners gathered at Bore Place, in Kent, to
> >consider how best to encourage ordinary general practitioners to carry
out
> >research. Someone said, "Why do old men have big ears? Some members
thought
> >that this was obviously true--indeed some old men have very big ears--but
> >others doubted it, and so we set out to answer the question "As you get
> >older do your ears get bigger?" 206 patients were studied (mean age
53.75,
> >range 30-93, median age 53 years). The length of the left external ear
was
> >measured from the top to the lowest part with a transparent ruler; the
> >result (in millimetres), together with the patient's age, was recorded.
The
> >mean ear length was 675 mm (range 520-840 mm)
>
>
> presumably you meant 67.5 etc.
>
>
> >, and the linear regression
> >equation was: ear length=55.9+(0.22 x patient's age) (95% confidence
> >intervals 0.17 to 0.27). It seems therefore that as we get older our ears
> >get bigger (on average by 0.22 mm a year). (James A Heathcote BMJ
> >1995;311:1668, 23December)
> >
> >The question here is the whole of the mechanism behind this phenomenon.
> >
>
> A good start would be to realize what it is you measured. You have not
> shown that anyone's ears grows over time -- merely that the older
> people available to you for this study had bigger ears. That might
> have reflected differences between childhood growth in those growing
> up at various times. Now, what you measured was the easy thing to
> measure; not unreasonable to do that. But now you need to do a better
> expt, and measure the ears of real people over many years, to see if
> they grow.
>
> The "growth" the result shows is quite small compared to the range of
> ear sizes measured. Since you have not measured growth, I would be
> quite cautious about interpreting it in terms of growth.
>
> bob
>
>

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