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'Crack baby' study ends with unexpected but clear result

philly.com

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Re: 'Crack baby' study ends with unexpected but clear result

#111

Post by [deleted] »

Spooky23 wrote: post #34
calibraxis wrote: post #11

Science vs. hysterical racism, yet again. There's a reason it's "crack baby", and not "cocaine baby". Helps imprison the right sort of person. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Sentencing_Act ) There's a much more dangerous drug than cocaine, for babies. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prenatal_cocaine_exposure ) It's alcohol, a legal drug. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fetal_alcohol_syndrome )

My dad worked in an environment heavily impacted by the crack epidemic. It was real, and the hysteria was based on the horrific situations that that existed. Smugly determining that "crack baby" was some racist code word cooked up to imprison black people is missing the point. Crack lowered the price point of cocaine dramatically, and was devastating to inner city communities. You should note who the study didn't loo…

[deleted]

Re: 'Crack baby' study ends with unexpected but clear result

#112

Post by kevinskii »

JulianMorrison wrote: post #87
Spooky23 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My dad worked in an environment heavily impacted by the crack epidemic. It was real, and the hysteria was based on the horrific situations that that existed. Smugly determining that "crack baby" was some racist code word cooked up to imprison black people is missing the point. Crack lowered the price point of cocaine dramatically, and was devastating to inner city communities. You should note who the study didn't loo…

Who're you going to believe, a randomized controlled trial or your own lying eyes? Hint: if you believe your own eyes, your sample size is one, confirmation bias and the availability heuristic are dancing the cha-cha all over your results, and you fail at science .

You fail at reading comprehension. The OP isn't trying to dispute the study with anecdotal evidence. He's simply suggesting that even though premature birth wasn't a consideration in this particular study, it nonetheless is an important factor when considering the broader effects of crack cocaine use. You can agree or disagree, but you may want to be a bit less smug when you do.

Re: 'Crack baby' study ends with unexpected but clear result

#113

Post by rooshdi »

bittired wrote: post #49
6d0debc071 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In other words, do I think the removal of something posited to be developmentally advantageous would lower IQ after the developmental period had passed?

No, I was saying that money in pocket != intelligence.

But money may = opportunity.

Re: 'Crack baby' study ends with unexpected but clear result

#114

Post by dragonwriter »

bittired wrote: post #32
rayiner wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the kids in the study were selected because their parents were poor, and the average IQ of the kids in the study was around 80. That certainly signals a correlation, and since these are kids and don't have agency over their economic situation, it suggests a direction of causation too.

Logically money should have no direct affect on intellectual capacity (e.g. see my other argument about taking the money away and giving it to someone else). In this case, I think the causation is in the other direction. Over time, people with less intellectual capacity will be less successful, and therefore poorer. That is rational. The other direction is irrational.

> Logically money should have no direct affect on intellectual capacity

If intellectual capacity was purely genetic, this would make some sense. You can't buy better genes for yourself or your children. [1] However, intellectual capacity is demonstrably affected by a variety of environmental factors, including early nutrition, that themselves are strongly influenced by wealth, so we've got pretty good ideas of some of the mechanisms by which wealth influences intellectual capacity.

> In this case, I think the causation is in the other direction. Over time, people with less intellectual capacity will be less successful, and therefore poorer. That is rational. The other direction is irrational.

I think you are confusing "rationality" with fit to your preferred, non-evidence-based, model of the way the world should work.

[1] Well, except that wealth affects mate selection opportunities, so, even with purely genetic intellectual capacity, wealth could plausibly have some influence.

Re: 'Crack baby' study ends with unexpected but clear result

#115

Post by thisisrobv »

throwit1979 wrote: post #44
tripzilch wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> tl;dr - "Poverty is a more powerful influence on the outcome of inner-city children than gestational exposure to cocaine." It's a good thing to back up with a scientific study and facts, but I'd hardly call it surprising (the article did) except to those who have no idea what this poverty looks like. Another interesting part of the bias might be that I've never heard the term "crack baby" (or similar) outside the c…

except to those who have no idea what this poverty looks like. I think this is a very important observation. Sometimes poverty doesn't look anything like this. I'd like to note that although I grew up in "technical" poverty, e.g. in a small rural community with a median income of $11,121, very few saw much violence or any of the markers of poverty lifestyle this article talks about. Although my anecdote is not scient…

Great point. I would love to see some study done around this. It's the combination of poverty and crime that leads to such disaster in most cases. It's not even a lack of community, in my experience both have very strong social ties to one another. Either way, it's a shame we still can't figure this out in America.

Re: 'Crack baby' study ends with unexpected but clear result

#116

Post by shmageggy »

geoffw8 wrote: post #66
tome wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is crack cheaper? Google and Wikipedia are quite unhelpful on this question.

I can't speak with any real authority, but I would suggest its down to the fact crack is cocaine mixed with further agents, allowing there to be a higher yield from the same amount of cocaine. You'd have to also consider whether smoking the drug is more intense than sniffing, which would possibly compensate for the fact theres less cocaine. Not a source per se, but some interesting info here on consumption methods: h…

This paper [1] backs up your hypothesis. "First, crack can be smoked, which is an extremely effective means of delivering the drug psychopharmacologically. Second, because crack is composed primarily of air and baking soda, it is possible to sell in small units containing fractions of a gram of pure cocaine, opening up the market to consumers wishing to spend $10 at a time. Third, because the drug is extremely addictive and the high that comes from taking the drug is so short-lived, crack quickly generated a large following of users wishing to purchase at high rates of frequency."

This DEA History Book [2], however, suggests the reasons might be partially economic. "Soon there was a huge glut of cocaine powder in these islands which caused the price to drop by as much as 80 percent."

[1] http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/fryer/files/fhlm_crack_coca... [2] http://archive.is/1wF5

Re: 'Crack baby' study ends with unexpected but clear result

#117

Post by KMag »

flexie wrote: post #93
calibraxis wrote: post #11

Science vs. hysterical racism, yet again. There's a reason it's "crack baby", and not "cocaine baby". Helps imprison the right sort of person. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Sentencing_Act ) There's a much more dangerous drug than cocaine, for babies. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prenatal_cocaine_exposure ) It's alcohol, a legal drug. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fetal_alcohol_syndrome )

Of the 110 "crack babies" followed for 25 years, only 12 finished college or were on track to finish college, while 2 were shot dead. So it's only 6 times more likely for inner city kids to graduate from college than to get shot to death?

If you're poor, and especially if you're poor and have the "wrong" skin color, people don't expect you to get a college degree, so people don't push you to succeed. It was always an unspoken assumption that I would graduate from college, and people around me set up my life that way.

Yes, the homicide rate is high, but I find the low college graduation rate more disturbing.

On a side note: shot, stabbed, or strangled doesn't make much difference to the homicide victim or their loved ones. Hopefully you'd have the same reaction if two of them were stabbed to death.

Re: 'Crack baby' study ends with unexpected but clear result

#119

Post by clavalle »

JulianMorrison wrote: post #87
Spooky23 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My dad worked in an environment heavily impacted by the crack epidemic. It was real, and the hysteria was based on the horrific situations that that existed. Smugly determining that "crack baby" was some racist code word cooked up to imprison black people is missing the point. Crack lowered the price point of cocaine dramatically, and was devastating to inner city communities. You should note who the study didn't loo…

Who're you going to believe, a randomized controlled trial or your own lying eyes? Hint: if you believe your own eyes, your sample size is one, confirmation bias and the availability heuristic are dancing the cha-cha all over your results, and you fail at science .

Having worked with a slew of severely developmentally delayed crack babies and alcohol syndrome kids, I am going to have to go with my own eyes.

This study did not include pre-term crack babies. That is a selection method that is going to skew heavily towards 'light' crack users.

Crack or cocaine is very, very bad for development. It can create a child that literally cannot do anything for themselves and some that live in excruciating pain every single day of their lives (that is the very dark side of having such advanced neo-natal care).

Fetal alcohol syndrome is just as bad if not worse.

It is irresponsible to suggest otherwise. The fact that astute HN readers are looking at this and saying "See, it is overblown!" is very scary. That means the broader population reading this article is likely to do the same thing.

The writer of this article owes it to society to be very clear about the limitations and biases of this study.

Re: 'Crack baby' study ends with unexpected but clear result

#120

Post by clavalle »

btilly wrote: post #58
VLM wrote: post #19

Bad story design... trying to talk about the typical result, then late in the article drop the bombshell "The team considers Jaimee and her mother, Karen, among their best success stories.". If they "have to" go anecdotal, they could have at least picked the median subject. Like doing a report on the health effects of smoking, and intentionally selecting the healthiest 99 year old smoker in the world rather than the…

Bad story design... I disagree. If you're trying to tell a compelling story, you want to reinforce the story that you're trying to tell in every way that you can. That makes it more compelling, and sells more page views. The danger being, of course, that making reasoned decisions based on compelling story lines is dangerous. But this article isn't in that business - it wants to sell page views.

Journalists have a responsibility to the public that goes beyond page views. That is what makes them journalists.
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