Okay, first off, it's NOT that the NL study was fraudulent as one person
said.  It's NOT fraudulent; there are middle grounds here.  The problems
relayed on the list and off are mostly that ***people are reading things
into it***.  That's the biggest problem and it's not with the study, it's
with people inserting their own desires rather than reading carefully to
see what is actually there.  There were some design weaknesses.  Fine.
Many studies have some design weaknesses and when present they have to be
taken into consideration and affect the weighing of the study results but
certainly do not discount them.  It takes a bad study to discount results
completely.  The study DOES show that there might be a pattern which links
neutering age to onset of adrenal growths, BUT the slush factor in when
those growths occurred was very large and the affected sample size was very
small -- large enough slush that a difference of a few months would be in
the noise IF rates are constant (still an unknown); small enough sample
that the chances of errors are larger.  Apparently, it does NOT address
whether the rates for early neuters differs from late neuters, or why the
rates seen there differed from the ones seen here.  ( I am still going from
Karen's reports, but hope to get a copy of the study from our vet next
week.) Also, remember that Karen posted that this was within a 3 month
window for onset -- NOT life-time histories, so that can really affect
numbers if one tries to compare.  Our current 3 month window if ending now
has one of seven with adrenal onset.  In any three month window we've never
had more than one of six.  In most 3 month windows we won't have any at
all.  Still, take our ferrets over their entire lifetimes to date including
the deceased ones and we have a 25% rate here -- because more time is
covered.  I can't recall seeing any U.S.  numbers that were NOT about
adrenal disease during life histories to date so that alone would affect
the results, making the NL numbers look better, as do the ages represented
in the study since so many of the NL ferrets were so very young, etc.  It
doesn't mean that the study didn't have value.  It does.  It means that
it's hard to compare apples and oranges, and that people have to read
carefully and be careful to not jump to conclusions.  That's all.  The
study still has value.  REMEMBER: even when people have studied how to read
studies carefully as part of their formal education such studies still are
NOT light reading; a person has to be alert to all sorts of things that
might affect outcomes and interpretations, and still know that there
probably have been aspects which were missed.  That's one reason why there
are so many discussions about papers and studies among professionals and
also with their students.  There wind up being a lot times sitting around
tables picking apart papers.  It's not easy.  What that means is only that
non-professionals (such as me) who read such studies have to try to be even
more careful.  That's all.
 
In relation to the "out of Egypt" hypothesis; all you need to do is to
compare the expertise, methods, and what led to the conclusions and that
makes it easy to weigh one against the other.  The original notation about
ferrets and Egypt came from a breeder seeing a photo of a hieroglyphic
which showed an animal that reminded the breeder of a ferret.  Years
later (by third hand report if memory serves) a museum guide who was not a
Comparative Mammologist or of any other field which studies bones in detail
mentioned many ferret mummies (likely to mean mongoose instead -- but you
know how often that confusion happens).  On the other side of the fence are
people who DO study mammalian osteology ( bones of mammals) comparatively
and have gone to the trouble of studying the topic IN DEPTH and with
CAREFUL checks.  They have written that there is not evidence to date that
ferrets were in Ancient Egypt.
 
Those who have not read the Natural History section of
http://www.ferretcentral.org (NOT .com which is a much, much more recent
and different thing) will want to do so.  It's also got a very clear health
section for owners, as well as a great general FAQ, more info, and loads of
links.  Vets will be interested due to the input from multiple vets.  There
are also vet articles at http://miamiferret.org/fhc.  Two sites ENTIRELY
by vets to help vets a LOT are: http://www.afip.org/ferrets/index.html and
http://www.ferretdoctor.com/.
 
There's also a British ADV vet study at the
http://www1.btwebworld.com/beechhouse/ferrets.htm and the cedar vs. pine
info by Jeff Johnston when he was a doctoral program student in
epidemiology at U. NC is at http://www.trifl.org/cedar.html .
 
We aren't talking about stupidity on anyone's part -- just about exercising
and acquiring skills which is something we all do every day.  Heck, that's
a large part of what makes a day a good one.  We've all got loads to learn
and always will have, but we each also have something to teach.  That's
all.  We're only human.  The only ones around here who know it all are the
FERRETS!  (Just ask them.)
[Posted in FML issue 2947]