Live data from Hacker News

'Crack baby' study ends with unexpected but clear result

philly.com

151–160 of 265 posts

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

#151
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I don't really get that part either. Prematurity is something that is itself heavily studied; prematurity with crack seems like the logical thing to study.

> prematurity with crack seems like the logical thing to study It is a logical thing to study, and most likely is being studied, by someone else. After all, this study wasn't looking at premature babies. That doesn't prematurity with crack isn't a problem, only a different problem.

My issue is less with what the experiment studied and more with how it was summarized (particularly by the headline).

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

#152
post #9
post #6

Hurt's study enrolled only full-term babies so the possible effects of prematurity did not skew the results. Doesn't this mean that their selection sample effectively excluded any babies that had a noticeable physical reaction (other than having cocaine in their system) to the effect of their mothers' cocaine use?

Yeah, I don't really get that part either. Prematurity is something that is itself heavily studied; prematurity with crack seems like the logical thing to study.

Except... How do you know which effects come from crack + premature without subtracting out just premature and just crack?

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

#153
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>people don't expect you to get a college degree, so people don't push you to succeed. Is 'people' a euphemism for 'parents?'

I'm not the previous poster, and my experience is the exact opposite, but I don't think so. My parents gave me the least amount of pressure to go to college of anyone. Teachers, peers, and other people of the community were much more adamant about it. I even remember a few people lecturing my parents, not even me directly, over the importance of me going to college.

Not all communities, especially those on the poorer side, are like that at all. Education is even demonized in some locations. Parents are just a small part of the social attitudes towards such ventures.

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

#154
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>people don't expect you to get a college degree, so people don't push you to succeed. Is 'people' a euphemism for 'parents?'

I doubt it. Friends are very influential. I'm not sure about this, but I assume everyone in my high-school class went on to some kind of post-secondary education within the next few years. I would have felt very strange to not go to university. Everyone's doing it, y'know?

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

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 li…

fnordfnordfnord is right. I'll add: the article strongly implies that you were working with babies born into poverty, misdiagnosed and stigmatised as crack/alcohol babies.

You saw the outcome; you failed to adequately question the etiology. Those babies now have a mental label in your memory, "crack babies", which you use to reason from. But the label itself is incorrect.

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

#156
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you wish to be consistent and say that the authors of the articles in virtually every blog of note are not journalists, then I will agree.

Unfortunately lots of people who have nothing resembling "journalistic integrity" make a living that way. If you're bored, you can turn on Fox News and see how quickly you can identify one.

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

#157
post #2

tl;dr - "Poverty is a more powerful influence on the outcome of inner-city children than gestational exposure to cocaine."

Damn lies and statistics, though. Being poor does not cause lower IQ, nor does lower IQ cause you to be poor. However, you'll find a lot of lower IQ people at poverty level. You can't guarantee that any college candidate that is poor is not going to excel, so poverty, sex, race, religion, sexual orientation, should have absolutely nothing to do with acceptance into any organization, assuming that everything else is e…

There are also issues with using IQ as a proxy for... anything. Especially when we're talking about topics with strong racial components.

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

#158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After a generation or two? Yes. Consider the elements of an IQ test: vocabulary, pattern recognition, mathematics, abstract logic. What kind of environment would you think is more likely to teach children the things they need to do well on an IQ test?

I'm pretty sure they don't test vocab or math in an IQ test. I think you're thinking of the modern day SATs, which can be affected by poverty.

Nope. By "math" I was referring to number sequences (which number comes next...), as opposed to geometric patterns (which shape comes next...); by "vocab" I was referring to analogical questions (a is to b as c is to __).

If SATs are readily accepted to be affected by poverty, I fail to understand why IQ tests wouldn't be also.

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

#159
post #143
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alcohol isn't really that dangerous for babies either. The prevalence of fetal alcohol syndrome is less than 5% for babies of women who drink more than 14 drinks per week during pregnancy: http://www.motherisk.org/prof/updatesDetail.jsp?content_id=2... . There's very little evidence that low levels of alcohol consumption during pregnancy are bad for babies: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2023984,00.ht…

Go careful when recommending that pregnant women should drink, especially if you're quoting general media. ( http://www.nhs.uk/news/2012/06june/Pages/daily-drinking-preg... ) > “Pregnant women can binge drink safely,” according to a report in today’s Metro. Expectant mothers should be able to “down up to 12 alcoholic beverages a week knowing it will have no ill effect on their offspring before the age of five”, the p…

>>> This is important because no one ever pours themselves 80 ml of wine.

Well, this is not completely correct - in wine tastings, for example, the recommended pouring usually is about 2 oz which is under 80 ml. Of course, tasting just once is another question that gets us back to the square one...

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

#160
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you really speak with such authority about all of Europe? In Sweden, where I live, alcohol and pregnancy are not suppose to mix. For example, translating from http://www.vardguiden.se/Tema/Gravid/Livsstilsfragor/Alkohol... : "Since no one knows where the border lies, the recommendations in Sweden and many other countries are to not drink alcohol at all during pregnancy." Or translating from http://www.lakartidnin…

You're right, that's the recommendation But about this I'm not so sure: "most women also stop drinking alcohol when they discover that they are pregnant."

Just like I and others are "not so sure" about your original statement.

Again I ask, how well can you claim to speak for the entirety of Europe? My observation is that Nordic women abstain from drinking during pregnancy at least as often as women who are native born to the US.

What would you accept as evidence that your original statement is incorrect? Perhaps the journal article "Alcohol consumption among pregnant women in a Swedish sample and its effects on the newborn outcomes", which finds: "Before pregnancy, 89% of the women regularly consumed alcohol and 49% reported occasional or frequent binge drinking. Nicotine was used by 15% before and by 5% during pregnancy. During pregnancy, 12% continued using alcohol and 5% also admitted binge drinking." ?

Compare this to the statement in "FOCUS ON: Biomarkers Of Fetal Alcohol Exposure And Fetal Alcohol Effects", which says that "roughly one of every eight women in the United States continues to drink during her pregnancy". 16% is higher than 12%, though I don't know the error bars to tell if that's significant.

If you don't like self-reported tests, then perhaps "Measurement of direct ethanol metabolites suggests higher rate of alcohol use among pregnant women than found with the AUDIT—a pilot study in a population-based sample of Swedish women" is useful. It concludes "Twenty-six women (25.2%) were identified as possible alcohol consumers by the combined use of AUDIT and direct ethanol metabolites."? (Note though that hair cosmetics and other things can cause false positives in a direct metabolites test.)

I interpret this to mean that 75% of Swedish women certainly do not drink alcohol while pregnant.

In other words, it's very easy in Sweden to find women who don't drink while pregnant.

Then for Germany, in "Smoking, alcohol and caffeine consumption of mothers before, during and after pregnancy--results of the study 'breast-feeding habits in Bavaria" the researchers report "25.3% of the mothers reported any alcohol consumption during pregnancy, 69.0% of pregnant women were drinking caffeine-containing beverages. The consumption rates were reduced clearly during pregnancy."

And for France, in "Is pregnancy the time to change alcohol consumption habits in France?" reports that "A total of 52.2% of women indicated that they had consumed alcohol at least once during their pregnancy".

Why did you make such a large, encompassing statement about all of Europe, when (1) there is such a variable rate, depending on the country, and (2) it looks like better than even odds that a 'European' woman does not drink once she knows she's pregnant.

Post reply on HN