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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

#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?

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

#7
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?

You can't study everything at once.

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

#8
post #5

This is getting into questions you can't ask, and IQ is a severely flawed metric, but I wonder what the IQs are of the parents, and if the children's scores are higher or lower, and if we can rule out heredity.

The results of IQ tests are strongly driven by poverty as well.

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

#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.

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

#10
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 equal, which it isn't. Unfortunately clothing, shared experience and knowledge, language, etc. significantly influence testing and decisions.
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