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Yet another example of meme-science. Only idiots would try to explain a complex, subtle phenomena to a single environmental factor.
Are the rates of autism occurrences falling in the US and Europe? With the huge reduction in the number of people smoking, the end of leaded petrol, requirements for catalytic converters in cars, and most of the manufacturing industry being exported to the far east, presumably particulate pollution is far lower than was during the post-WWII years. If this research is correct there should be a corresponding drop in th…
The keywords is "presumably". There should only be a drop if your hypothesis is correct which given population growth, car ownership trends and overall economic growth is doubtful.
I think it's safe to say, that, in the West, air pollution has dropped dramatically: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog
Are the rates of autism occurrences falling in the US and Europe? With the huge reduction in the number of people smoking, the end of leaded petrol, requirements for catalytic converters in cars, and most of the manufacturing industry being exported to the far east, presumably particulate pollution is far lower than was during the post-WWII years. If this research is correct there should be a corresponding drop in th…
I doubt you'd be comparing apples to oranges over a long timeline. Actually, I don't think it's a slam dunk that we have more autism today, or more diagnoses.
Are the rates of autism occurrences falling in the US and Europe? With the huge reduction in the number of people smoking, the end of leaded petrol, requirements for catalytic converters in cars, and most of the manufacturing industry being exported to the far east, presumably particulate pollution is far lower than was during the post-WWII years. If this research is correct there should be a corresponding drop in th…
That's not correct, this research says nothing about other factors that could affect the rate of occurrence of autism.
Yet another example of meme-science. Only idiots would try to explain a complex, subtle phenomena to a single environmental factor.
"There is a large inherited component to autism, but lead researcher Dr Marc Weisskopf said there was mounting evidence that air pollution may play a role too."
It seems that autism has the same pattern. It has genetic aspect and environmental aspect and one of personal experience and amount of practice, so no one could identify all the factors, leave alone find a "single cause". Of course, it is genes, for, say 80% (which is rather a flawed mental construct), like it is in everything else - height or IQ, for example (why should it be different?), but the rest 20% are, of course, not mere "air pollution".
It is the same meme-nonsense (with which we're bombarded daily by mainstream media) as to say, "look, children in a toxic environments have worse grades and misbehave more". OK, perhaps they are, but this is an "empty message", a "meme" based on a naive common-sense. Correlation does not imply causation, and even if this factor is a "valid" one, its actual implication is infinitesimally small - it, perhaps, contributes to "stress" or states related to "depression" (which is another meme). Most of these meme-studies are just misuse of statistical tools together with a confirmation and self-serving biases. People construct statistical "evidences" for their own flawed constructs, instead of methodically removing everything "mental" and see what remains.
Yet another example of meme-science. Only idiots would try to explain a complex, subtle phenomena to a single environmental factor.
We should choose the more charitable interpretation, not because there aren't idiots out there, but because doing so leads to more interesting discussion in the long run—and usually in the short run too.
Yet another example of meme-science. Only idiots would try to explain a complex, subtle phenomena to a single environmental factor.
Let's apply the Principle of Charity here. Perhaps the researchers are idiots, far below the average education and intelligence of, say, Hacker News users. But perhaps they're as familiar with such notions as "complex phenomenon" and "environmental factor" as we are. We should choose the more charitable interpretation, not because there aren't idiots out there, but because doing so leads to more interesting discussio…
The first question is "How does they manage to properly test this "link" with a distinct control group". Could you explain, please.
So, I prefer to read Simon Baron-Cohen.
Yet another example of meme-science. Only idiots would try to explain a complex, subtle phenomena to a single environmental factor.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Let's apply the Principle of Charity here. Perhaps the researchers are idiots, far below the average education and intelligence of, say, Hacker News users. But perhaps they're as familiar with such notions as "complex phenomenon" and "environmental factor" as we are. We should choose the more charitable interpretation, not because there aren't idiots out there, but because doing so leads to more interesting discussio…
Why not? Are researches not hungry for grants, quick fame and cheap sensations? Do they never neglect subtleties of statistical models, like necessity of a third "control group"? Are they all flawless and brilliant, or there might be some halo effect, overconfidence and jumping to conclusions? Are they never trying find a support for their hypothesis form correlations barely distinguishable statistically? Kahneman su…
If you have specific information about this or relevant research, by all means contribute it. But railing against idiocy in a generic way lowers the signal/noise ratio of the threads: if generic it must be predictable, and if predictable it can add no information. The Principle of Charity is so good for counteracting this that we may add it to the HN guidelines.
Intellectual charity doesn't require accepting anything false. It means that when there are several reasonable interpretations, you should pick the strongest. This goes against the default tendency we all have, to pick the weakest to then have the pleasure of overturning it. That pleasure is strong—so strong that one may begin seeing idiots for it—and it overpowers the pleasures of curiosity, which is what we're going for.