Is there a simple, accurate and cost efficient test for toxoplasma? I got a cat 2 years ago... it never leaves the apartment on the 7th floor and never comes in contact with other cats. However it is a rescue cat so could have been infected before adoption.
Having a Cat Does Not Cause Mental Illness, New Study Suggests
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Re: Having a Cat Does Not Cause Mental Illness, New Study Suggests
#12Oh thats good. This was something I've been wondering lately.
Re: Having a Cat Does Not Cause Mental Illness, New Study Suggests
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
Really? What's your reasoning here? I would speculate that having a dog would be a better after the fact indicator of mental illness considering their more frequent use in animal assisted therapy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal-assisted_therapy#Types
There's no reasoning there; there's just "Aren't I clever?"
Funny enough, the same could be said of your rebuttal.
Re: Having a Cat Does Not Cause Mental Illness, New Study Suggests
#14Having a cat may not cause mental illness, just that in my experience having a cat is a sign of mental illness
i realize you're joking, but it made me think: i wonder if there are any correlations about "not having a pet" with egocentrism.
Re: Having a Cat Does Not Cause Mental Illness, New Study Suggests
#15Is there a simple, accurate and cost efficient test for toxoplasma? I got a cat 2 years ago... it never leaves the apartment on the 7th floor and never comes in contact with other cats. However it is a rescue cat so could have been infected before adoption.
There are serological antibody tests for T. gondii, but they appear to vary widely in accuracy (sensitivity, specificity, ppv, &c). I have no idea what they cost.
Re: Having a Cat Does Not Cause Mental Illness, New Study Suggests
#16Re: Having a Cat Does Not Cause Mental Illness, New Study Suggests
#17If you look at the abstract, all of the correlations actually show that having a cat does predict mental illness at all ages considered. But the effect sizes are relatively low (albeit consistent with the more direct studies looking at people actually infected with toxoplasma rather than people who might be infected), so with a few hundred or thousand people, it technically doesn't satisfy p for toxoplasma having bad…
The jump from "we could not detect a difference" to "there is no difference" is so frustrating. (And this is a mistake the authors make in this case, not just the journalists.)
Re: Having a Cat Does Not Cause Mental Illness, New Study Suggests
#18If you look at the abstract, all of the correlations actually show that having a cat does predict mental illness at all ages considered. But the effect sizes are relatively low (albeit consistent with the more direct studies looking at people actually infected with toxoplasma rather than people who might be infected), so with a few hundred or thousand people, it technically doesn't satisfy p for toxoplasma having bad…
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Re: Having a Cat Does Not Cause Mental Illness, New Study Suggests
#19If you look at the abstract, all of the correlations actually show that having a cat does predict mental illness at all ages considered. But the effect sizes are relatively low (albeit consistent with the more direct studies looking at people actually infected with toxoplasma rather than people who might be infected), so with a few hundred or thousand people, it technically doesn't satisfy p for toxoplasma having bad…
Yes, frequentist inference only allows you to reject the null hypothesis (cats do not cause mental illness), but not to accept it if you fail to reject [1].
The abstract as written is simply wrong from a statistical point of view:
our study strongly indicates that cat ownership in pregnancy or early childhood does not confer an increased risk of later adolescent PEs [2]
If you instead adopt Bayesian reasoning, then the direction of the measured effect is weak evidence that cats cause illness later in life. Either way you cut it, the study author's interpretation fails to coincide with the actual data they collected.
[1] https://liesandstats.wordpress.com/2008/09/08/accept-the-nul...
[2] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/psychological-medici...
Re: Having a Cat Does Not Cause Mental Illness, New Study Suggests
#20Having a cat may not cause mental illness, just that in my experience having a cat is a sign of mental illness
i realize you're joking, but it made me think: i wonder if there are any correlations about "not having a pet" with egocentrism.
I feel people who own pets don't see things from a pet's perspective. But that's probably just me. Having someone love you based on sort of sort weird stockholm-syndrome based relationship is weird. The cat comment, as much as it's a joke I have seen most folks around me who own cats have this need for constant drama. And Goodness, no matter how much the cats randomly lashes out at these owners, the owners still love em, where's the bloody logic in that? I guess everyone on here is a S&M lover. But anecdotal evidence doesn't count for much haha