this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2023
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[โ€“] Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Sigh, I was wondering if this particular misunderstanding of statistics had migrated from reddit to here.

No, you cannot dismiss a study because it "only" has 212 people. 200 people is enough to get an 85% confidence level.

On top of that, it is hardly the only study showing vaginal microflora alteration in bidet users:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21058441/

Normal microflora (Lactobacillus species) was not present in 42.86% of bidet toilet users, compared to 8.77% of non-users. Fecal bacteria were detected in 50 of the 268 cases (18.66%), 46 cases in users (92%) and only 4 cases in non-users (8%). Contamination by other pathogens was 4 to 6 times higher in users than in non-users.

I get there is a cult of bidet users who will hear no slander of them, but it's not going to make me spray water from my toilet seat and around my vulva and potentially into my vagina. You are not changing my mind on this and I invite you to read more about sample sizes if you want to do something productive: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6970301/

[โ€“] puppy@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Your first study has even used women who had admitted to the hospital and therefore used the shared hospital toilet bidets. I think this fact alone would make it enough to disqualify it.

Apart from hospital bidet being a one extra germ filled surface the patient touches, it raises the following questions. Was there a problem with the brand of bidet used in the hospital that might cause more of an uncontrolled spray? Did the particular toilet bowl shape contribute to the result? Non of these stays the same within the general population and any outliers would be cancelled out in a huge dataset.