Almost a year ago, I wrote aboutNicholas Christakis's Ted Talk, which showcased his research about connectedness in social networks.

What would have been my mild interest was heightened by his using obesity as an example: He said his research showed that if your friends were obese, your chances of being obese were 45 percent higher. Even more freaky was his suggestion that if friends of your friends whom you'd never met were obese, your chances were 25 percent higher, and that you had a 10 percent greater chance of being overweight if your friends' friends' friends were.

Turns out, his conclusions haven't been accepted into scientific fact just yet. Writing yesterday in the Boston Globe, reporter Carolyn Y. Johnson recapped the significant doubt that has bubbled up:

The critics point out specific ways in which the researchers’ analyses didn’t adequately rule out reasons other than social contagion that could cause a group to share a trait, including living in a common environment or the tendency for people to choose friends who are similar to them. Are you lonely because you “caught’’ it from a friend in your network? Or is that one of the reasons you became friends?

I don't really want to wade into fight, so much as follow up on my previous post to acknowledge the differences of opinion. Rereading my first post, I was relieved to see that I attributed the findings to him, and asked others what they thought.

I still don't know if people are solely homophilous, or if parts of my being can be contagious to those around me. What I can say is that especially when I was in grade school, I didn't want to hang out with other fat kids, because I didn't want to catch what I'd already caught.