Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Association Between Maternal Fluoride Exposure During Pregnancy and IQ Scores

jamanetwork.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 46 posts

Re: Association Between Maternal Fluoride Exposure During Pregnancy and IQ Scores

#21

Post by morsch »

mjburgess wrote: post #9
User23 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s no replication crisis in psychometry. It’s the highest quality area of psychological research, at least with respect to reproducibility. While there’s room for debate as to what exactly it is that’s being measured, there is none for whether something meaningful at all is being measured. IQ measurements have strong predictive power too for various outcomes, such as educational attainment. A civilization reduct…

Unfortunately little of what you've said is true. IQ only has predictive power at very low scores; above 100 it randomly correlates with, eg., wealth and various other extrinsic objective measures. The only cases where "success" is measured by the profession are circluar, ie., its often claimed Drs/lawyers etc have high IQs, but necessarily so, since they're all filtered based on IQ tests. Psychometry has nothing to…

If you're saying that lawyers and PhDs all have to score high on what's literally an IQ test, then I don't think that is true. You can become both without ever doing an IQ test, and as such there can be no filtering -- are those even routinely administered?

However, to succeed at higher education (and to get into it), especially written tests, you need to be good at some stuff that also means you'll be decent at an IQ test. That means they have some value, though I tend to agree that it means very little overall.

Re: Association Between Maternal Fluoride Exposure During Pregnancy and IQ Scores

#22

Post by saalweachter »

streptomycin wrote: post #13

https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-study-... are some skeptical comments from other scientists in the field.

The chief complaint seems to be that they only found statistical significance on one measure for one subpopulation (boys), and other measures were not significant (and while the correlation for girls was not statistically significant, it was leaning the opposite direction!).

Sure, maybe there's a correlation purely centered around boy's non-verbal IQ scores, but it smells a lot like a "if you look for enough correlations you'll eventually find one".

Re: Association Between Maternal Fluoride Exposure During Pregnancy and IQ Scores

#23

Post by mjburgess »

morsch wrote: post #21
mjburgess wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately little of what you've said is true. IQ only has predictive power at very low scores; above 100 it randomly correlates with, eg., wealth and various other extrinsic objective measures. The only cases where "success" is measured by the profession are circluar, ie., its often claimed Drs/lawyers etc have high IQs, but necessarily so, since they're all filtered based on IQ tests. Psychometry has nothing to…

If you're saying that lawyers and PhDs all have to score high on what's literally an IQ test, then I don't think that is true. You can become both without ever doing an IQ test, and as such there can be no filtering -- are those even routinely administered? However, to succeed at higher education (and to get into it), especially written tests, you need to be good at some stuff that also means you'll be decent at an I…

All law and medical schools i'm aware of require IQ tests for admission, they're often called "aptitude" or "admissions" tests

Re: Association Between Maternal Fluoride Exposure During Pregnancy and IQ Scores

#24

Post by thebigspacefuck »

hirundo wrote: post #16

If flouride indeed both strengthens teeth and bones and lowers IQ, it becomes even more challenging to pick an optimum level. I think that the more complex a question is, the more important it is for the answers to be decentralized so that we can experiment with many of them. If fluoride does have significant negative as well as positive effects, that's an argument toward removing it from water supplies and making it…

The “Nursery” water (sold at Walmart, Walgreens, etc) for mixing with formula has fluoride added to it. It’s nonsensical.

Example: https://i5.walmartimages.com/asr/d45b6df1-099b-4568-b2a9-5dd...

What purpose does it serve?

We can all get behind breastfeeding raising IQ (https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736...) but maybe it’s the fluoride in the formula lowering IQ.

Re: Association Between Maternal Fluoride Exposure During Pregnancy and IQ Scores

#25

Post by jl2718 »

devmor wrote: post #3

IQ scores? Really? Should we look at the correlation to phrenology reports and the subjects balance of humours as well?

I would say that the particular importance of the measurement is far less relevant than the repeatability of the measurement. In that regard, because IQ is very repeatable in the mid-range, population effects measured by IQ should be considered as evidence of some effect on the neurological system.

Even if IQ is meaningless, this result is still evidence of neurological harm.

Re: Association Between Maternal Fluoride Exposure During Pregnancy and IQ Scores

#26

Post by PuppyTailWags »

heliodor wrote: post #4

The wording in the summary could have been done better. Read casually, it comes across as suggesting causation instead of correlation: Findings -- In this prospective birth cohort study, fluoride exposure during pregnancy was associated with lower IQ scores in children aged 3 to 4 years. Meaning -- Fluoride exposure during pregnancy may be associated with adverse effects on child intellectual development, indicating…

*only in boys, according to the study

this reads like cherry-picking to me.

Re: Association Between Maternal Fluoride Exposure During Pregnancy and IQ Scores

#27

Post by [deleted] »

thebigspacefuck wrote: post #24
hirundo wrote: post #16

If flouride indeed both strengthens teeth and bones and lowers IQ, it becomes even more challenging to pick an optimum level. I think that the more complex a question is, the more important it is for the answers to be decentralized so that we can experiment with many of them. If fluoride does have significant negative as well as positive effects, that's an argument toward removing it from water supplies and making it…

The “Nursery” water (sold at Walmart, Walgreens, etc) for mixing with formula has fluoride added to it. It’s nonsensical. Example: https://i5.walmartimages.com/asr/d45b6df1-099b-4568-b2a9-5dd... What purpose does it serve? We can all get behind breastfeeding raising IQ ( https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736... ) but maybe it’s the fluoride in the formula lowering IQ.

[deleted]

Re: Association Between Maternal Fluoride Exposure During Pregnancy and IQ Scores

#28

Post by civilized »

This study has a lot of the hallmarks of pure noise that won't replicate.

- Small sample size (601 kids)

- Effect has opposite sign in girls and boys

- Negative association in boys was barely statistically significant

- Positive association in girls barely missed statistical significance

Not to mention we're testing IQ in 4-year-olds.

Re: Association Between Maternal Fluoride Exposure During Pregnancy and IQ Scores

#29

Post by PlsDntBan »

thebigspacefuck wrote: post #24
hirundo wrote: post #16

If flouride indeed both strengthens teeth and bones and lowers IQ, it becomes even more challenging to pick an optimum level. I think that the more complex a question is, the more important it is for the answers to be decentralized so that we can experiment with many of them. If fluoride does have significant negative as well as positive effects, that's an argument toward removing it from water supplies and making it…

The “Nursery” water (sold at Walmart, Walgreens, etc) for mixing with formula has fluoride added to it. It’s nonsensical. Example: https://i5.walmartimages.com/asr/d45b6df1-099b-4568-b2a9-5dd... What purpose does it serve? We can all get behind breastfeeding raising IQ ( https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736... ) but maybe it’s the fluoride in the formula lowering IQ.

So, medicated water for children?

10 years ago I chose to have my kids in a community that does not fluoridate the water because there has LONG been an association with IQ and ingesting fluoride.

But, MOST insanely, fluoride is by all account a medicine, we are one of the ONLY countries in the world that medicates our water supply. Just think about it, why do we medicate our ENTIRE water supply?

There is something terrible behind the fluoridation of the American water supply, I have no idea what but I do know that as a scientist what we are doing makes no sense and is VASTLY more harmful then beneficial.

Re: Association Between Maternal Fluoride Exposure During Pregnancy and IQ Scores

#30

Post by wil421 »

thebigspacefuck wrote: post #24
hirundo wrote: post #16

If flouride indeed both strengthens teeth and bones and lowers IQ, it becomes even more challenging to pick an optimum level. I think that the more complex a question is, the more important it is for the answers to be decentralized so that we can experiment with many of them. If fluoride does have significant negative as well as positive effects, that's an argument toward removing it from water supplies and making it…

The “Nursery” water (sold at Walmart, Walgreens, etc) for mixing with formula has fluoride added to it. It’s nonsensical. Example: https://i5.walmartimages.com/asr/d45b6df1-099b-4568-b2a9-5dd... What purpose does it serve? We can all get behind breastfeeding raising IQ ( https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736... ) but maybe it’s the fluoride in the formula lowering IQ.

Those are supposed to have lower fluorine than tap water. According to the CDC, babies who only drink formula with tap water can develop dental fluorosis, faint white lines on the teeth.[1].

It’s not always possible to breastfeed.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/fluoridation/faqs/infant-formula.html

Post reply on HN