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> "...and mutational load affects both facial symmetry and mental illness."
There's little solid evidence for inherited mental illness, not excluding severe neuro-developmental abnormalities (which may also have environmental causes such as teratogen exposure), in fact there aren't even any solid independent physical-chemical tests for DSM disorders.
The phenomenon described in the article is well known as "Berkson's paradox": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkson%27s_paradox
Berkson's Paradox - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26566810 - March 2021 (39 comments)
Berkson's Paradox - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18667423 - Dec 2018 (21 comments)
Berkson's Paradox - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8264252 - Sept 2014 (20 comments)
> Get unlimited access to data science stories from industry leaders on Medium. cant read this article without "upgrading". no i dont want to "upgrade". can we downrank Medium until they stop doing bullshit like this? (yes towardsdatascience is a well known data publication, would love to push them gently into moving off medium)
When you start off an article with a pop-science fallacy, it can color the rest of the article in a negative light: > "...and mutational load affects both facial symmetry and mental illness." There's little solid evidence for inherited mental illness, not excluding severe neuro-developmental abnormalities (which may also have environmental causes such as teratogen exposure), in fact there aren't even any solid indepe…
A quick web search seems to suggest that ADHD, depression, and autism are all known to run in families?
An example I like is in basketball. A lot of tall players aren't good shooters. People wonder why, like are they launching the ball too high and messing up the angle? Are their hands too big to precisely control the ball? Are they lazy and not practicing? Seems more likely to be this same paradox - if you're short and can't shoot, you never make it to the NBA.
Survivor bias arises when you study what you think is a full population, while in fact you're looking at a selected sample that did survive the very thing you're studying.
A classical example in finance happens when you want to study, say, the performance of tech companies over the last 10 years. If you just pick current tech companies and look at their past performance, you will be biased towards companies that did make it. You have to include companies that don't exist anymore but would have been included were you to perform the study say 5 years ago.
An example I like is in basketball. A lot of tall players aren't good shooters. People wonder why, like are they launching the ball too high and messing up the angle? Are their hands too big to precisely control the ball? Are they lazy and not practicing? Seems more likely to be this same paradox - if you're short and can't shoot, you never make it to the NBA.
Especially in the modern NBA, where players are pushed very hard to get out from the post and shoot. Being unable to shoot puts a limit on a players career, even at 7+ feet. There’s a reason why in the off-season every big in the league posts insta videos of themselves draining 3s in an empty gym.
The level of competition in the NBA is fierce, as is the incentive to learn to shoot. If many bigs don’t, the only reasonable explanation is that it’s physically more challenging.
An example I like is in basketball. A lot of tall players aren't good shooters. People wonder why, like are they launching the ball too high and messing up the angle? Are their hands too big to precisely control the ball? Are they lazy and not practicing? Seems more likely to be this same paradox - if you're short and can't shoot, you never make it to the NBA.
When you start off an article with a pop-science fallacy, it can color the rest of the article in a negative light: > "...and mutational load affects both facial symmetry and mental illness." There's little solid evidence for inherited mental illness, not excluding severe neuro-developmental abnormalities (which may also have environmental causes such as teratogen exposure), in fact there aren't even any solid indepe…
> There's little solid evidence for inherited mental illness A quick web search seems to suggest that ADHD, depression, and autism are all known to run in families?
> (8) Family genetic studies. The phrase “family genetic studies” is commonly used in psychiatry to refer to designs in which investigators examine the familial aggregation of one or more disorders, such as panic disorder or major depression, within intact (i.e., non-adoptive) families (e.g., Weissman, 1993). Given that the familial aggregation of one or more disorders within intact families could be due to shared environment rather than—or in addition to—shared genes (Smoller and Finn, 2003), the phrase “family genetic study” is misleading. This term implies erroneously that familial clustering of a disorder is necessarily more likely to be genetic than environmental. It may also imply incorrectly (Kendler and Neale, 2009) that studies of intact families permit investigators to disentangle the effects of shared genes from shared environment. Twin or adoption studies are necessary to accomplish this goal.
> (9) Genetically determined Few if any psychological capacities are genetically “determined”; at most, they are genetically influenced. Even schizophrenia, which is among the most heritable of all mental disorders, appears to have a heritability of between 70 and 90% as estimated by twin designs (Mulle, 2012), leaving room for still undetermined environmental influences. Moreover, data strongly suggest that schizophrenia and most other major mental disorders are highly polygenic. In addition, the heritability of most adult personality traits, such as neuroticism and extraversion, appears to be between 30 and 60% (Kandler, 2012). This finding again points to a potent role for environmental influences.
Reminds me of someone I've seen in the news a lot lately.