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Water Fluoridation Linked to Higher ADHD Rates

newsweek.com

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Re: Water Fluoridation Linked to Higher ADHD Rates

#51

Post by possibilistic »

parfe wrote: post #20

I think science articles should be banned from HN. The userbase is clearly not educated well enough to deal with the issues. It only produces comments from armchair scientists conjuring up whatever pet theory they can explain away the results with. Comments like the classic freshman stats quote "correlation does not equal causation", or the standard response starting with "Judging from the abstract", or the always in…

Absolutely not!! This would be a blatant act of censorship--and to what end? You'll see the same junk science on Reddit anyway.

The feedback from the HN community on science articles is some of the best on the web. It honestly comprises about a third of the reason I visit. I wouldn't know where else to get that.

Granted, I may have a different perspective given that I did a biochem undergrad and can read primary literature. Some of my experience and frustration with the popular media coverage and editorial behavior has given me a lens with which to evaluate coverage of other disciplines. But shouldn't we expect everyone here to have or develop a similar critical thinking patten? Why do we need to treat our community with baby gloves?

Re: Water Fluoridation Linked to Higher ADHD Rates

#52

Post by ejstronge »

DennisP wrote: post #43
bicknergseng wrote: post #16

Ugh. I hate to think of all of the "I told you so's" from the misguided people in Portland who continually vote against fluoridating the water with no actual scientific basis for doing so.

Studies showing that fluoride causes hyperactivity in rats go back to the 90s, according to the article. Maybe the people in Portland should be given the benefit of the doubt. I understand the whole fluoride issue has been tainted by conspiracy theories, but honestly, it's not that unscientific to think that ingesting a known endocrine disruptor might have a biological effect.

Out of curiosity, do you have references on fluoride and endocrine disruption?

Further, I disagree regarding whether anyone should receive 'the benefit of the doubt'; we should defer to the many public health studies on the benefits of fluoride.

Re: Water Fluoridation Linked to Higher ADHD Rates

#53

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

fl0wenol wrote: post #49

The most interesting tidbit in the article was this: About 90 percent of the fluoride that is added to the water takes the form not of pharmaceutical grade sodium fluoride but ... fluorosilicic acid ... This material is a byproduct of phosphate fertilizer manufacturing ... several studies have suggested that this form of fluoride can leach lead from pipes. ...other work shows that children in fluoridated areas have e…

The concern over lead in the water system is largely focused on lead-based solder in copper pipes. That is restricted largely to postwar homes up until the emergence of PVC and PEX plumbing in the 80's.

Re: Water Fluoridation Linked to Higher ADHD Rates

#54

Post by vixen99 »

bicknergseng wrote: post #16

Ugh. I hate to think of all of the "I told you so's" from the misguided people in Portland who continually vote against fluoridating the water with no actual scientific basis for doing so.

I guess you have the results of a detailed poll which checked the Portland public's knowledge of the issues or are you being a tad patronizing in your assumptions?

Re: Water Fluoridation Linked to Higher ADHD Rates

#55

Post by DennisP »

ejstronge wrote: post #52
DennisP wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Studies showing that fluoride causes hyperactivity in rats go back to the 90s, according to the article. Maybe the people in Portland should be given the benefit of the doubt. I understand the whole fluoride issue has been tainted by conspiracy theories, but honestly, it's not that unscientific to think that ingesting a known endocrine disruptor might have a biological effect.

Out of curiosity, do you have references on fluoride and endocrine disruption? Further, I disagree regarding whether anyone should receive 'the benefit of the doubt'; we should defer to the many public health studies on the benefits of fluoride.

It's in the Newsweek article, which discusses several possible biological mechanisms for problems from fluoridation, complete with sources, many of which are direct links to studies. Perhaps read it?

Re: Water Fluoridation Linked to Higher ADHD Rates

#56

Post by rcthompson »

elif wrote: post #10
rcthompson wrote: post #5

After reading the title and the paper's abstract, this seems to me like just one more instance of the many, many statistics that are strongly correlated with overall economic development of a society, and hence strongly correlated with each other without any causal link. In this case, the relevant factors would be "water fluoridation prevalence" and "capacity of doctors to diagnose ADHD", which are both almost certai…

It is naive postulation to dismiss the paper for not addressing a variable, when you have not even read the paper to know whether they addressed the variable. Further, your cursory read of the abstract somehow missed the clause "after controlling for socioeconomic status"

I didn't miss that clause. Controlling for SES is not trivial. And they only controlled for it at the state level. I'm just saying that the variables they measured seem like the kind of ones that are strongly correlated with economic development, so looking for a week association between the variables themselves is like looking for a needle in a haystack. Even if you eliminate 90% of the haystack (i.e. control for most, but not all, of SES effects), finding the needle doesn't get much easier.

Or looking at it another way, my point is that since most correlations like this turn out to both have economic development as a common cause rather than being themselves causally related, I require extraordinary evidence to the contrary before I believe it.

Re: Water Fluoridation Linked to Higher ADHD Rates

#57

Post by dang »

parfe wrote: post #20

I think science articles should be banned from HN. The userbase is clearly not educated well enough to deal with the issues. It only produces comments from armchair scientists conjuring up whatever pet theory they can explain away the results with. Comments like the classic freshman stats quote "correlation does not equal causation", or the standard response starting with "Judging from the abstract", or the always in…

Obviously we can't ban science articles, but the point you're raising is important. Reductionist dismissal of new work based on partial understanding of the marginally related is a tell-tale sign of the middlebrow. It is epidemic in communities like this. I don't think there's anything more vital to intellectual maturity than learning to recognize those dismissive reflexes in oneself and inhibit them. That is the essence of an open mind.

There's an analogy to startup investing here. The habit of dismissing the easily dismissable—the obviously lame, the obviously bad idea—guarantees failure even though it's almost always right. This is what the masters of the art keep trying to tell us.

I marked this subthread as off-topic because it's off topic; it doesn't mean we don't agree.

The post has been hammered by both the flamewar detector and a ton of user flags. We turned the former off, but not the latter. Doing more would probably make things worse.

Re: Water Fluoridation Linked to Higher ADHD Rates

#58

Post by elif »

michael_h wrote: post #17
elif wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is naive postulation to dismiss the paper for not addressing a variable, when you have not even read the paper to know whether they addressed the variable. Further, your cursory read of the abstract somehow missed the clause "after controlling for socioeconomic status"

I think the 'controlling for socioeconomic status" was just between the states, not an all encompassing control of economic status. Two states with a similar rise in economic activity and ADHD wouldn't fail afoul of the control. Maybe. This article might hold up, but my past experience with statistics in medical papers does not give me great hope. For a while, my job was to review the math in interesting papers (well…

"Hierarchical and multivariate regression analyses were conducted to examine the relationship between artificial water fluoridation prevalence and ADHD prevalence after controlling for natural water fluoridation prevalence and SES, and SES respectively." ... "Moreover, results did not appear to be confounded by socioeconomic status because they remained consistent after controlling for this variable." ... "Moreover, artificial water fluoridation prevalence [compared with SES] even appeared to be the more robust predictor."

Even if you have a problem with the stat analysis (i don't), The fact that it's a stronger predictor than SES is quite damning regardless of controls.

Re: Water Fluoridation Linked to Higher ADHD Rates

#59

Post by threatofrain »

parfe wrote: post #20

I think science articles should be banned from HN. The userbase is clearly not educated well enough to deal with the issues. It only produces comments from armchair scientists conjuring up whatever pet theory they can explain away the results with. Comments like the classic freshman stats quote "correlation does not equal causation", or the standard response starting with "Judging from the abstract", or the always in…

Speaking personally, I think on average it takes me about 30 to 80 articles from a divergent field to get a grasp of what's going on.

At the same time, when I go into forums like these, I'm aware of what kind of crowd I'm going to get: while most people give their off-handed dismissal "Omg, that n size. 120 is way too small for something so important."

What we might need is a general and informal rule that science-based posts should have at least several studies in good standing.

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