Following the story in the Daily Mail yesterday that we covered here on WVoN about the Pill making women's brains bigger, an article in NHS Choices more or less demolishes the study on which the report was based.
It says the study was too small (it involved 14 men and 28 women) to conclude anything very much and certainly not that the Pill affects "the volume of grey matter in the brain".
It points out that there is "no way of knowing what other factors, including genetic factors, may have had on these participants' brains as no other data was taken. Also, since it did not actually examine or measure cognitive performance, it cannot shed any light on how the Pill might affect cognitive or social skills".
I guess there is one small pleasure to glean from this, in that the Daily Mail used the story to try to reinforce the rather tired stereotype that women talk a lot because the study allegedly enhanced the brain's "conversation hub". Now that is worth talking about.