3 ms·

Or, people with headaches produce offspring with headaches, but kids don't know they have headaches and just get angry and act out

by glibgil 10y ago

eric_h 10y ago
Certainly plausible, and the article itself makes some attempt to discount the certainty of a causative link (though not 'til the end, so not everyone who reads it will necessarily get that far).
redofrac 10y ago
From the article: "They looked for a link between a child’s behavioral problems at age 7 and his or her mother’s post-natal acetaminophen use, and found none. They looked for a link between a child’s behavioral problems at age 7 and acetaminophen use by the mother’s partner during pregnancy. Again, they found no association."
- hinkley 10y ago
  You guys are downvoting a guy that didn't ask what you're answering. Who isn't reading for content?
greenshackle 10y ago
> They looked for a link between a child’s behavioral problems at age 7 and acetaminophen use by the mother’s partner during pregnancy They thought about that. Doesn't look like it.
- hinkley 10y ago
  But they didn't look at a link between acetaminophen use by the child and behavioral problems.
dopamean 10y ago
Didn't read the article?
- whiddershins 10y ago
  Removed my downvote, because i get why you wrote that, but possibly the parent didn't read it carefully, or possibly didn't understand, or possibly simply disagrees with the methodology used to eliminate confounders, or any number of other possibilities. From the guidelines: Please don't insinuate that someone hasn't read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
hinkley 10y ago
If you read between the lines: > They failed to discern a pattern of increased medication-taking by women who were carriers of genetic variations linked to behavioral problems. The mothers carrying known behavioral genetic markers were not more likely to take acetaminophen. If the headaches were correlated to a known marker then you would expect it to also be passed on to an offspring in a statistically significant way. But if there's an unknown marker that correlates with pain complaints? I know of at least one psychologist who is going back to some of Jung's commentary on behavioral issues and trying to carve out a set of people who are diagnosed as 'shy' or 'ADD' but who just have heightened senses. The gist of it is that some people have a less aggressive filter on their senses, and eventually they can't cope with the information overload and they begin to act out, not unlike an exhausted child. Depending on environment and luck, they might develop shyness, ADD like symptoms, become scarily perceptive (extreme case: Sherlock Holmes, Psych), or some combination of all three. These people also complain about physical discomforts and pain with a higher frequency than normal people. The question of how exactly they eliminated pre-natal painkiller use of the mother as a predictor for behavioral problems wasn't addressed in either summary but might be buried in the data.
- samatman 10y ago
  This is why it makes me sad that we're still doing things like pharmacology without a full genetic workup of every subject in the study. What if there's a marker that not only correlates the aspirin use and the child's behavioral problems, but subjects with the marker more strongly correlate the relationship than subjects who don't? That kind of statistical analysis is how we find out a random stretch of DNA is a marker in the first place. All forms of human study will advance dramatically once this becomes standard practice, as indeed it must. Of course, you're completely throwing out the fig leaf of 'anonymous' health data. But it turns out that for the vast majority of health studies, deanonymizing the data is quite practicable in most cases already. And the gain to medicine would be enormous.

Or, people with headaches produce offspring with headaches, but kids don't know they have headaches and just get angry and act out

by glibgil 10y ago

Or, people with headaches produce offspring with headaches, but kids don't know they have headaches and just get angry and act out

eric_h 10y ago

Certainly plausible, and the article itself makes some attempt to discount the certainty of a causative link (though not 'til the end, so not everyone who reads it will necessarily get that far).

redofrac 10y ago

From the article: "They looked for a link between a child’s behavioral problems at age 7 and his or her mother’s post-natal acetaminophen use, and found none. They looked for a link between a child’s behavioral problems at age 7 and acetaminophen use by the mother’s partner during pregnancy. Again, they found no association."

hinkley 10y ago
You guys are downvoting a guy that didn't ask what you're answering. Who isn't reading for content?

greenshackle 10y ago

> They looked for a link between a child’s behavioral problems at age 7 and acetaminophen use by the mother’s partner during pregnancy They thought about that. Doesn't look like it.

hinkley 10y ago
But they didn't look at a link between acetaminophen use by the child and behavioral problems.

dopamean 10y ago

Didn't read the article?

whiddershins 10y ago
Removed my downvote, because i get why you wrote that, but possibly the parent didn't read it carefully, or possibly didn't understand, or possibly simply disagrees with the methodology used to eliminate confounders, or any number of other possibilities. From the guidelines: Please don't insinuate that someone hasn't read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

hinkley 10y ago

If you read between the lines: > They failed to discern a pattern of increased medication-taking by women who were carriers of genetic variations linked to behavioral problems. The mothers carrying known behavioral genetic markers were not more likely to take acetaminophen. If the headaches were correlated to a known marker then you would expect it to also be passed on to an offspring in a statistically significant way. But if there's an unknown marker that correlates with pain complaints? I know of at least one psychologist who is going back to some of Jung's commentary on behavioral issues and trying to carve out a set of people who are diagnosed as 'shy' or 'ADD' but who just have heightened senses. The gist of it is that some people have a less aggressive filter on their senses, and eventually they can't cope with the information overload and they begin to act out, not unlike an exhausted child. Depending on environment and luck, they might develop shyness, ADD like symptoms, become scarily perceptive (extreme case: Sherlock Holmes, Psych), or some combination of all three. These people also complain about physical discomforts and pain with a higher frequency than normal people. The question of how exactly they eliminated pre-natal painkiller use of the mother as a predictor for behavioral problems wasn't addressed in either summary but might be buried in the data.

samatman 10y ago
This is why it makes me sad that we're still doing things like pharmacology without a full genetic workup of every subject in the study. What if there's a marker that not only correlates the aspirin use and the child's behavioral problems, but subjects with the marker more strongly correlate the relationship than subjects who don't? That kind of statistical analysis is how we find out a random stretch of DNA is a marker in the first place. All forms of human study will advance dramatically once this becomes standard practice, as indeed it must. Of course, you're completely throwing out the fig leaf of 'anonymous' health data. But it turns out that for the vast majority of health studies, deanonymizing the data is quite practicable in most cases already. And the gain to medicine would be enormous.