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Comment by winanga | Hacker News Reader

8 pointswinanga8 comments

This is a very limited study that is getting too much press. From what I understand, she has researched "perfect use":

>Her studies found that in perfect use -- meaning the man pulls out every time -- withdrawal has a 4 percent failure rate, as compared to condoms, which have a 2 percent failure rate.

>"But nobody's perfect," said Jones, who published her commentary in the June issue of Contraception magazine.

So, if nobody's perfect, I would say we need more research before drawing conclusions one way or the other.

People don't tend to discount condoms as a method of birth control given perfect and typical use rates the way they do withdrawal even though the typical use failure rates of both methods are very close to each other. I daresay the same goes to most forms of contraception I can think of. If this study can help dispel some myths, so be it. I'm tired of women I know thinking that cervical caps or spermicide or even the female condom have lower typical use failure rates when they don't.

Possibly the biggest potential downside I can see in publicizing this story is that some people might think it an acceptable substitute when there is nothing else, which is not good given that some barrier methods can prevent transmission of some STDs.

The horrible thing is that people are going to hear the sound-bite headline, rather than the actual conclusions of the study, or even the article.

this study shows that condoms are less effective than most people think, not that pullout is a good idea.

The thing is that people tend to cite the best-case effectiveness for condoms and the worst-case for withdrawal, while they are both effective (at preventing pregnancy) if you're not an idiot. The problem is that many people are idiots and can't put a condom on correctly or stop in the heat of things.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_birth_control_met...

Point is, nothing beats intrauterine devices, and pill is the next best thing. The rest are pretty much the same: ok if you pay a lot of attention, risky if not.

The final decision should include a lot of other factors, like willingness to have an abortion or risk of STD, but still, it's a shame intrauterine devices are so underused.

I'm surprised that they didn't include the standard joke about natural methods of birth control:

"You know what they call people who use withdrawal [or the rhythm method]? Parents."

It would be good to submit the "study" mentioned in the submitted article

http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/journals/reprints/Contracepti...

to a review of the checklist on interpreting research results.

http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html

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