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'Crack baby' study ends with unexpected but clear result

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

#21

Post by arkades »

bittired wrote: post #10
ctdonath wrote: 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…

Attending college increases pre-college IQ scores a mean of just under 20 points (I don't recall the precise number from the study now, I remember it was between 15 and 20). That's not "smarter people get into college" - that's before-and-after on the same subjects.

Growing up wealthy entails a lot more advantages than four years of courses, at that.

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

#22

Post by Symmetry »

bittired wrote: post #10
ctdonath wrote: 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…

No, there's actually a good amount of evidence that poverty does in fact cause low IQs. For instance the divergence between the IQs of East Germans and West Germans during the partition, and the way they converged again after the Cold War.

It is true that people with low IQs will tend to become poorer (though conscientiousness is often a bigger factor), but reversion to the mean should limit the impact of that in the children of poor people.

EDIT: Here's a rather in depth article on the topic: http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/race-iq-and-... There's tons of evidence that at a population level wealth is the main driver of IQ differences, though genetics does play a large role at the individual level.

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

#24

Post by samspot »

jdmitch wrote: 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?

They wouldn't be able to tell which babies were premies because of the cocaine, and which were because of other factors.

A study of only premies would be interesting, but might yield the same result as this study.

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

#25

Post by DanielBMarkham »

I got the part about not seeing a relationship between crack usage and mental functioning. It's a very interesting result. What I don't understand is "Hurt and her team began to think the "something else" was poverty."

Is there any data referenced in the article to actually support that claim? It's the central thesis here, and I don't see any supporting argument. I see some text around seeing people arrested, dead bodies, and so on, but there are lots of poor rural kids who never see that. This is much more a function of urban poverty.

Maybe I missed it.

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

#26

Post by bittired »

rtpg wrote: post #12
bittired wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Pretty sure growing up in poverty can negatively influence access to mentally stimulating things. Not saying that the number on the bank account directly influences IQ, but tackling poverty would probably have ripples in the school system too.

This is going in a bad direction for sure now, but here is this thing:

Some people, regardless of race, have lower intellectual capacity. That is what IQ tests try to measure, but fail to do completely because a lot is still based on education and experience that is difficult to factor out of the tests.

A greater number of those people that have less intellectual capacity are not going to be as financially successful. Unless you just make them. And that "making" them is as temporary as the funds that keep going to them. That is NOT to say that we should not feed the poor and hungry. We should! And, we should try to educate them more, because they need more help. However, that is charity. People deserve love, food, and shelter. But, we are not able to "bring up" people to a level that cannot be sustained because they don't have the intellectual capacity. That is why welfare fails and is taken advantage of. Unless you have some sort of medicine or medical treatment that can make people with less intellectual capacity have greater intellectual capacity to even everyone out, then it should be considered charity to help the poor- not some sort of way to make everyone smarter.

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

#27

Post by rayiner »

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 )

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.... Indeed, the available data shows the opposite: babies whose mothers drink lightly during pregnancy have better balance and higher IQs: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-204_162-57589867/moderate-drinki.... This is largely due to maternal predisposition; higher-IQ women are more likely to drink during pregnancy.

It turns out that the placental barrier is pretty awesome.

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

#28

Post by bittired »

6d0debc071 wrote: post #16
bittired wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Being poor does not cause lower IQ Down the page - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6078722 - we have lancewiggs saying that the results of IQ tests are strongly driven by poverty. What basis do you have for your claim?

Here is the logic:

1. Given all of the smartest 50% of the people in the world.

2. Take all of their money away.

3. Give it to the other 50%.

Lets say we were able to do those three. Now do you think being poor causes lower IQ?

DON'T CONFUSE CORRELATION WITH CAUSATION!

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

#29

Post by rayiner »

bittired wrote: post #10
ctdonath wrote: 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…

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.

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

#30

Post by bittired »

smoyer wrote: post #17
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 wife was a early-childhood development specialist at our local Easter Seals and the kids with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome were very sad. It's totally preventable, and the lack of understanding of consequences is devastating.

Agreed. Don't drink too much when pregnant. But, a short glass of wine once a week or so isn't excessive.
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