According to many news sources today, new investigations conclude (whenever you see something along the lines of - new investigations conclude xxxxx, it is time to turn on your critical filter) that: Circumcision may stop millions of HIV deaths in Reuters Science and Circumcision 'could cut HIV risk' in BBC NEWS

Maybe it could, but so will cutting of all penises. Likewise removing all breasts will reduce occurrence of breast cancer.

All stop eating will reduce the number of fat people and so on.

Simply refraining from sex (abstinence) will likely also reduce AIDS spread and over population. (But of, of course, as this is seen as rightist it is per default much worse than mutilation).

My first point here is, of course, that just because some course of action will lead to some result is not in itself justification i.e. the ends does not necessarily justify the means. Sounds simply enough, but nonetheless this trick is often used.

Let us take a closer look at the BBC article and see if we can find more logical fallacies either in the article, or much worse, in the research protocol.

An international team of researchers used data on HIV infection rates and the prevalence of male circumcision across Africa to predict the potential impact.

Wow! Is this the method? Well surely the difference then is more likely to be explainable by other factors. Have these reseachers never heard of Occam's Razor (no pun intended). Or that correlation does not prove causation?

I wonder if there is another more predictive correlation here? Let us see. Hmmm. Maybe the more rich areas in Africa are more likely to be able to spend a 400 dollar operation on mutilation than areas with only enough money to take care of feeding. Further maybe in these richer areas there is also more to spend on condoms and education.

No, foreskin does not cause AIDS. Of course it does not.

What we need to do is help Africa move forward, not make silly researcher trying to justify something that has nothing to do with the case in point. Once again UN has shown itself to be utterly useless at solving the problems of the world.

Catherine Hankins, chief scientific adviser to the United Nations Programme on HIV/Aids (UNAIDS) and a co-author on the study, said: "The big message from the paper is that there is a tremendous potential for male circumcision to have an effect on the HIV epidemic, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa.

And here we have it, the origin of bad research. Politics and science do not play well together.

And finally, with risk of committing a fallacy myself (the naturalistic fallacy), I would like to say that foreskin evolved for a reason, so before spending 100 of millions of dollars on the mutilation of children we might want to take a closer look at the research which in this case clearly deserves the label 'advocacy research'.

Apart from being unnatural mutilation circumcision also poses a serious health threat and it is not uncommon that boys die from the operation.