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Study Linking Autism to 'Male Brain' Retracted, Replaced

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Re: Study Linking Autism to 'Male Brain' Retracted, Replaced

#41

Post by exelius »

daenz wrote: post #2

A quick look at Simon Baron Cohen's tweet[1] (linked from the article) shows that this topic seems extremely divisive and inflammatory to people. Is this retraction and resulting modified study seen as an important victory for people promoting that there are no differences between the "male" and "female" brains? [1] https://twitter.com/sbaroncohen/status/832490232721371136

I wouldn’t say there are no differences between the “male” and “female” brain. I do know my brain wasn’t very happy on the hormones I was born producing — and there’s promising research about how gender identity actually has a basis in physical differences in brain structure [1] which are hypothesized to form based on exposure to various hormone levels during gestation (and which have already been shown to impact gender identity through the very elevated rates of transition of children of mothers who took the synthetic estrogen diethylstilbesterol).

But like anything involving gendered characteristics in humans as expressed in the world, the range of observed behaviors within the two populations overlaps so much it’s hard to draw meaningful conclusions about any individual by differentiating the two.

Based on my personal experience and from talking to others who have medically transitioned, the difference between “inherently male” behaviors and “inherently female” behaviors can be nearly entirely explained by hormones. As in, you change hormones and the behavior changes: testosterone tends to cause elevated anger / aggression while estrogen tends to make people more neurotic with a wider range of emotional response. That’s it. The rest of the differences are either personality or environmental / social factors.

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-17352-8

Re: Study Linking Autism to 'Male Brain' Retracted, Replaced

#42

Post by [deleted] »

781 wrote: post #16
daenz wrote: post #2

A quick look at Simon Baron Cohen's tweet[1] (linked from the article) shows that this topic seems extremely divisive and inflammatory to people. Is this retraction and resulting modified study seen as an important victory for people promoting that there are no differences between the "male" and "female" brains? [1] https://twitter.com/sbaroncohen/status/832490232721371136

Yes. Not related to this specific study: > Meet the neuroscientist shattering the myth of the gendered brain > Are there any significant differences based on sex alone? The answer, she says, is no. To suggest otherwise is “neurofoolishness”. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/feb/24/meet-the-neu...

[deleted]

Re: Study Linking Autism to 'Male Brain' Retracted, Replaced

#43

Post by weberc2 »

gowld wrote: post #40
781 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Not related to this specific study: > Meet the neuroscientist shattering the myth of the gendered brain > Are there any significant differences based on sex alone? The answer, she says, is no. To suggest otherwise is “neurofoolishness”. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/feb/24/meet-the-neu...

She's mincing words, by overemphasizing a distinction between that "highly correlated" isn't that same as "completely explained by". It's akin to saying "There are no significant differences in height based on sex alone, since some women are taller than some men."

> There are no significant differences in height based on sex alone, since some women are taller than some men.

"Boom! Myth shattered!" - The Guardian

Re: Study Linking Autism to 'Male Brain' Retracted, Replaced

#44

Post by tokai »

timwaagh wrote: post #29
sannee wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> identified a problem with the script Shitty academia code strikes again. It's sort of unfortunate that most of academic fields have turned to domain-specific software engineering, which graduates are woefully unprepared to do properly.

the real problem is this code never got peer reviewed.

The peer reviewers are properly not good scripters as well.

Re: Study Linking Autism to 'Male Brain' Retracted, Replaced

#45

Post by DanBC »

lohszvu wrote: post #21
DanBC wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's a victory for all the women who are autistic but go years without a diagnosis because of stereotypes about autism. Simon Baren Cohen is an expert, but he's got some stuff badly wrong before, such as saying that autism is a condition marked by lack of empathy because of alexithymia. Turns out this is incorrect, but it caused considerable hardship for many autistic people who were unable to get a dx because th…

How does a diagnosis benefit someone with autism?

It helps them explain their life; it allows them to make reasonable adjustments and to ask other people to make reasonable adjustments; it helps people to understand what they're going to find harder; it helps people explain what their skills are.

Re: Study Linking Autism to 'Male Brain' Retracted, Replaced

#46

Post by cmpolis »

kerbalspacepro wrote: post #23
Gimpei wrote: post #12

Looks like it was an issue with a script. I wouldn't be surprised if this isn't a bigger issue than we know in science. Good scripting practice is not taught in most programs. On top of that it's not really possible to write tests for regressions.

What would a good resource for good scripting practices?

I think general programming best practices would apply, particularly code review and planning your code and breaking it up into discrete parts. I have seen many scripts for research that are 5k LOC of spaghetti that become impossible to read or adjust.

Re: Study Linking Autism to 'Male Brain' Retracted, Replaced

#47

Post by DanBC »

klyrs wrote: post #35
DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Early intervention with behaviour modification therapy, especially in early school life where social interaction skills really matter. In adult life, it can lead to better psychological therapy. Managing anxiety in ASD is different to neurotypical people, for example.

> Managing anxiety in ASD is different to neurotypical people, for example. Speaking as somebody too 'high functioning' for a diagnosis... please elaborate edit: the responses to this feel weird, does anybody have resources for ASD folks experiencing anxiety?

Some autistic people experience high levels of anxiety in social situations.

If they're diagnosed as autistic they get suitable help.

If they're not diagnosed as autistic they get treatment for Social Anxiety or Social Anxiety Disorder, and that treatment doesn't work because they don't have SA or SAD.

Re: Study Linking Autism to 'Male Brain' Retracted, Replaced

#48

Post by exolymph »

lohszvu wrote: post #21
DanBC wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's a victory for all the women who are autistic but go years without a diagnosis because of stereotypes about autism. Simon Baren Cohen is an expert, but he's got some stuff badly wrong before, such as saying that autism is a condition marked by lack of empathy because of alexithymia. Turns out this is incorrect, but it caused considerable hardship for many autistic people who were unable to get a dx because th…

How does a diagnosis benefit someone with autism?

In addition to practical benefits, people who get a diagnosis talk about feeling seen and understood. And then other people will be a lot more understanding — although not guaranteed to be nice — about someone having autism versus "that person is weird."

Re: Study Linking Autism to 'Male Brain' Retracted, Replaced

#49

Post by SubiculumCode »

I personally know the author of this paper who conducted these analyses. He is my office mate.

He discovered his own error that then led to this retraction. The error involved under-documented statistical code which expected the coding of male and female (0,1) to be reversed when training a classifier on each group, is my understanding. He kept the coding of sex the same across both training regimes. This created erroneous results. He became suspicious about the results after new applications of the analysis to new dataset produced over the top beautiful results.

The take is this. The mistake was honest, and way too easy. My office mate is a superb scientist with the highest integrity. He caught a mistake, and fessed up to it. This is good science.

Note: I am not part of the group that published this paper.

Re: Study Linking Autism to 'Male Brain' Retracted, Replaced

#50

Post by jonnycomputer »

kerbalspacepro wrote: post #23
Gimpei wrote: post #12

Looks like it was an issue with a script. I wouldn't be surprised if this isn't a bigger issue than we know in science. Good scripting practice is not taught in most programs. On top of that it's not really possible to write tests for regressions.

What would a good resource for good scripting practices?

I think a very good thing to do is to write test code (almost never done in my experience) with made-up datasets where you know exactly what the results should look like.
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