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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

#231

Post by newnewnew »

KMag wrote: post #117
flexie wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Is your hypothesis that people with an IQ of 79 could largely obtain meaningful college degrees if only given the proper encouragement?

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

#232

Post by newnewnew »

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…

"By analogy it would be like creating a social meme and scientific study of the negative pregnancy impact of malt liquor consumption (by urban black women), carefully ignoring the consumption of fruity margaritas (by suburban white women)"

If suburban white women consuming fruity margaritas were much more responsible with their drinking, so that they never consumed while pregnant, then we could study the effects of alcohol on pregnancy solely by focusing on the effects of malt liquor on pregnancy.

Crack use was widespread and used by poor pregnant women. Cocaine use has never been as widespread in suburban white populations. So researchers aren't being racist, they're investigating the problem where it actually exists.

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

#234

Post by newnewnew »

vacri wrote: post #194
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.

Part of the IQ test includes vocabulary, and it's not that much of a leap to say that more highly-educated people have a broader, deeper vocabulary, even when controlled for cultural effects. A smaller vocabulary will give you a lower IQ. There are likely to be other factors affected by exposure to wider experiences than you might not get when impoverished; for example, in general, the more you handle numbers, the be…

Highly educated people might also have higher innate intelligence, which allows them to pick up words easier and develop larger vocabularies. Let's not forget that IQ has been shown to be significantly heritable by adoption studies.

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

#235

Post by sliverstorm »

newnewnew wrote: post #233
ctdonath wrote: post #2

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

Somewhere Charles Murray is reading this article and screaming "IQ! IQ!"

I've got to read that book, if only because of how frequently it is coming up in discussion recently.

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

#236

Post by newnewnew »

sliverstorm wrote: post #235
newnewnew wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somewhere Charles Murray is reading this article and screaming "IQ! IQ!"

I've got to read that book, if only because of how frequently it is coming up in discussion recently.

It's a great read despite its "evil" reputation. You'll be impressed by how meticulous Murray is. His style is 80% evidence and 20% conjecture, and he is always careful to separate the two.

"Coming Apart" is also essential reading to understand modern society.

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

#238

Post by enraged_camel »

DanBC wrote: post #143
rayiner wrote: 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…

>>Go careful when recommending that pregnant women should drink, especially if you're quoting general media.

I think there's quite a big difference between saying we have no evidence that alcohol consumption during pregnancy is unsafe, and recommending that pregnant women should drink.

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

#239

Post by ZeroGravitas »

newnewnew wrote: post #236
sliverstorm wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've got to read that book, if only because of how frequently it is coming up in discussion recently.

It's a great read despite its "evil" reputation. You'll be impressed by how meticulous Murray is. His style is 80% evidence and 20% conjecture, and he is always careful to separate the two. "Coming Apart" is also essential reading to understand modern society.

Source of a lot of the evidence:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_Fund

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

#240

Post by qznc »

Symmetry wrote: post #139
qznc wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Be careful about causality and correlation. Poverty probably does not "cause" low-IQ, but poverty is a good indicator for low-IQ due to correlation.

Correlation between A and B does not imply causation from A to B, but it does imply causation there is some causation somewhere, from A to B or B to A or something more complicated. In those cases we have to step down a level and look at the particular mechanisms. We can see some very good mechanisms for how a low IQ might cause poverty in most cases, but the specific reason I mentioned the East/West Germany situatio…

Personally, I believe (!) in a causal chain like this: Poor people dream smaller (hopelessness,knowledge) -> less ambition (in school, career, wealth) -> less motivation (e.g. in IQ tests) -> envy -> aggression against wealthy people

Also what does "poverty" mean here? "Lack of basic resources", then practically nobody is poor in Germany due to our welfare system. Statistics use "less than 60% of average income" or something like that. Then we will never eliminate poverty, anyways.

To "solve" poverty I believe the big question is how to inspire people that it is possible to improve their situation? How to provide hope to poor people? In Germany I think it is intellectually realistic that anybody can improve, but people do not believe it. Essentially, (in the wealthy western world) poverty is not a technical problem, but rather an emotional one.

I do not care about IQ much. I do not know my own IQ. Since I am currently pursuing a PhD I am probably above average, but who really cares? Studies show that IQ predicts academic success, so it means something for high-education jobs. For creative tasks it's useless. Effectively, the IQ of a child only provides a hint about future career choices, but not about success or wealth.

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