Teenage fathers and mental health: a true story unfairly reported

There’s a difference between something being true, and something being fair, as I’m sure you realise. I’m going to look at a story that is, on the face of it, probably true, but because of how it’s portrayed, less than fair. The story is that the children of teenage fathers are more likely to suffer from certain congenital health problems, including autism, schizophrenia and spina bifida. This is because, according to research published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B and contrary to what has been believed, the rate of new mutations (which cause these problems) in sperm does not go up in a simple line as men get older. Instead, very young fathers have a high rate of mutation, which drops to a lower level in full adulthood and then only rises back to the teenage rate as the man gets older. This story has been reported in the Mail and the Times, among other places, and they report this stuff pretty accurately, as far as I am qualified to judge.