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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

#31

Post by mischanix »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #25

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 bo…

>It was amid that climate that Hurt organized a study of 224 near-term or full-term babies born at Einstein between 1989 and 1992 - half with mothers who used cocaine during pregnancy and half who were not exposed to the drug in utero.

>All the babies came from low-income families, and nearly all were African Americans.

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

#32

Post by bittired »

rayiner wrote: post #29
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…

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.

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

#33

Post by jasonlotito »

jlgreco wrote: post #9
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?

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.

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

#34

Post by Spooky23 »

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 look at -- premature babies or the rates of premature delivery of crack abusers vs the average.

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

#35

Post by jre »

bittired wrote: post #28
6d0debc071 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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!

I think if you take the babies of the smartest X% people in the world and raise them in poverty then yes, their average IQ will be lower than if they were raised in a middle class household.

Poverty means you have to skip meals, you can't afford books, you go to a school were there aren't enough teachers and so on... Those are all things that have an influence the intellectual development of a person.

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

#37

Post by dllthomas »

rayiner wrote: post #29
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…

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.

Surely, they should have picked themselves up by their bootstraps by age 3.

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

#38

Post by JshWright »

bittired wrote: post #30
smoyer wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A glass of wine a _day_ wouldn't be excessive.

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

#39

Post by rayiner »

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.

It depends on how you ascribe causation to hereditary factors. Does it make sense to say that a 4 year old is poor because of his low IQ? I don't think so, because a 4 year old has no agency over his economic circumstances.

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

#40

Post by 6d0debc071 »

bittired wrote: post #28
6d0debc071 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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!

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