5 ms·

I'm not sure why this study from 7 years ago is being dug up because it's not a particularly good, interesting, or definitive study. Some problems with it: 1.

by c3534l 9y ago

I'm not sure why this study from 7 years ago is being dug up because it's not a particularly good, interesting, or definitive study. Some problems with it: 1. Small sample sizes. 2. Significance was only found in one subset of the population. Given enough ways to divide up groups of people, you will almost always get false positives. 3. Not an experimental design. 4. The study did not control for simple factors like income or the health of the parent.

samat 9y ago
2. Is explained in the abstract, all other issues are legitimate, though.
petters 9y ago
> this study from 7 years ago is being dug up That is not fair. You're making it sound like it's a JS framework. Seven years is nothing in this case.
- dublinclontarf 9y ago
  I suppose the point being made is that enough time has passed for the study to have been properly validated; as the parent comment points out, lots of issues have been found with it.
  - lostcolony 9y ago
    That, and the fact it then isn't newsworthy. A single data point isn't science. It -might- be news, if it was a super recent data point (though, obviously, requires peer review and replication). This is neither.
    - ColanR 9y ago
      Old stuff is reposted here all the time. If it's interesting to the HN community, it's news.
  - jfaucett 9y ago
    > as the parent comment points out, lots of issues have been found with it. I'm not familiar with the research here so I can't say either way. But a preliminary google scholar search turned up a lot of articles which seem to suggest that breastfeeding has a bunch of positive impacts on numerous intelligence and general well-being metrics. The article itself has been cited 209 times according to google scholar [1], and this study [2] (cited 400+ some odd times) seems to accept some of the propositions made in this paper as givens. Anyway, I think it would have been interesting if the null hypotheses here weren't rejected. I kind of expect evolution to have optimized human breastmilk over alternatives for infant development. 1. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=15094195751510081699&as_sdt=2005&sciodt=0,5&hl=en https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=1509419575151008169... 2. http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/129/3/e827.short http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/129/3/e827.sho...
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
dalbasal 9y ago
Our study also helps provide a framework for future mechanistic studies on I realize that repeat studies are important generally in science. But, many studies (particularly health related) seem to have such a result built into their design. If you get a result, it will just be preliminary and require a larger sample study moving on. Is there a mechanism in science for actually taking these preliminary results and validating/falsifying them more conclusively? Does a result like this make a larger scale study this team's top priority for the next study? Will these results convince another team to do the full study? Otherwise, it feels like there's something structurally wrong. If the study is designed as a non-conclusive prototype or framework, what's the point unless it leads to other studies?
- m12k 9y ago
  I wish there was a sort of Snopes/Politifact/Rotten Tomatoes for science - an independent body that queried the top scientists in each field, and used this to quantitatively map the current state of the art and the consensus (or lack thereof) around that field's theories. Instead of e.g. 'the current state of CRISPR research' or 'P vs NP' being something that lived implicitly in the minds of the few researchers that keep up to date with all the relevant papers, it could be explicit on the site for all to see (including journalists, who would finally have an easy way to avoid putting their foot in their mouth with another 'Scientists show that lung cancer causes smoking!' headline). Even if all that could be said in a given area was 'Correlation has been shown, causation has not, a study is underway to try to establish this, and 60% of randomly queried researchers in the area believe causation will be proven' then that would still be super valuable. The result "99% of climate researchers and meteorologists believe climate change to be manmade" is a great result, but it would be much more hard-hitting if it came from an institution that was already considered to be reliable.
  - ever1 9y ago
    This mechanism already exists in some way with top journals and peer-reviewing. Their credibility relies on their capability to select the most important and proven papers.
DangerousPie 9y ago
I agree this is a weak, small study but I'm not sure I agree with your point 4. Obviously this all depends on having a large-enough sample size to start with, but if the groups are properly randomized they shouldn't have to control for income/health of parents (since it's not correlated with the independent variable). I'm also not sure what you mean by #3.
- ballenf 9y ago
  > In the trial of interest here, mothers elected to breastfeed but varied in their success in expressing milk and, therefore, in the need for supplementary feeding. According to randomisation before breastfeeding commenced, these infants were given one of three supplements: a nutrient enriched preterm formula (PTF), a standard term formula (TF; used in the 1980s for feeding preterm infants) or banked breast milk (BBM; provided by unrelated donors and unfortified). Since the mothers self-selected breastfeeding, the study makes the assumption that banked breast milk (from a random donor) is equivalent to fresh milk from the mother. It assumes that the act of suckling on the mother's breast has no bearing on brain development. See recent evidence regard pre-term babies and skin contact: http://handtohold.org/resources/helpful-articles/the-benefits-of-kangaroo-care/ http://handtohold.org/resources/helpful-articles/the-benefit... Finally, it ignores other (more recent) studies showing how the mother's milk reacts to signals from the baby's saliva (backwash from baby sucked back into breast). https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/growth-curve/backwash-nursing-babies-may-trigger-infection-fighters https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/growth-curve/backwash-nursi... (Not saying these links aren't equally or more flawed, but it's avenues of causation ignored.) Wouldn't a valid study require randomized instruction to mothers about whether to breastfeed? Is that ethical? Compliance is equally tough: breastfeeding can be incredibly difficult for some moms/babies. Further, couldn't the difficulty in breastfeeding also be correlated to the effects -- could children reject breastmilk based on the mother's health or otherwise based on the "quality" of the milk? Please forgive if I'm asking questions that are well understood -- by no means am I claiming to be knowledgeable in this field. But I do have kids and went through hell with one of them on this, so I'm very interested in the research.
alexandercrohde 9y ago
It's not clear to me why you are picking at the mechanics here. Are you arguing a different study that shows the same thing should be substituted? Because it's my understanding that the evidence shows a breastmilk->IQ correlation as well as all the other health benefits [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breastfeeding#Baby https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breastfeeding#Baby]
slededit 9y ago
Complaints about small sample sizes are practically a stock answer at this point. I've never seen a study posted that didn't have this complaint. It would be much more useful to talk about the statistical significance in more quantitative terms.

by c3534l 9y ago

samat 9y ago

2. Is explained in the abstract, all other issues are legitimate, though.

petters 9y ago

> this study from 7 years ago is being dug up That is not fair. You're making it sound like it's a JS framework. Seven years is nothing in this case.

dublinclontarf 9y ago
I suppose the point being made is that enough time has passed for the study to have been properly validated; as the parent comment points out, lots of issues have been found with it.
- lostcolony 9y ago
  That, and the fact it then isn't newsworthy. A single data point isn't science. It -might- be news, if it was a super recent data point (though, obviously, requires peer review and replication). This is neither.
  - ColanR 9y ago
    Old stuff is reposted here all the time. If it's interesting to the HN community, it's news.
- jfaucett 9y ago
  > as the parent comment points out, lots of issues have been found with it. I'm not familiar with the research here so I can't say either way. But a preliminary google scholar search turned up a lot of articles which seem to suggest that breastfeeding has a bunch of positive impacts on numerous intelligence and general well-being metrics. The article itself has been cited 209 times according to google scholar [1], and this study [2] (cited 400+ some odd times) seems to accept some of the propositions made in this paper as givens. Anyway, I think it would have been interesting if the null hypotheses here weren't rejected. I kind of expect evolution to have optimized human breastmilk over alternatives for infant development. 1. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=15094195751510081699&as_sdt=2005&sciodt=0,5&hl=en https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=1509419575151008169... 2. http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/129/3/e827.short http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/129/3/e827.sho...
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]

dalbasal 9y ago

Our study also helps provide a framework for future mechanistic studies on I realize that repeat studies are important generally in science. But, many studies (particularly health related) seem to have such a result built into their design. If you get a result, it will just be preliminary and require a larger sample study moving on. Is there a mechanism in science for actually taking these preliminary results and validating/falsifying them more conclusively? Does a result like this make a larger scale study this team's top priority for the next study? Will these results convince another team to do the full study? Otherwise, it feels like there's something structurally wrong. If the study is designed as a non-conclusive prototype or framework, what's the point unless it leads to other studies?

m12k 9y ago
I wish there was a sort of Snopes/Politifact/Rotten Tomatoes for science - an independent body that queried the top scientists in each field, and used this to quantitatively map the current state of the art and the consensus (or lack thereof) around that field's theories. Instead of e.g. 'the current state of CRISPR research' or 'P vs NP' being something that lived implicitly in the minds of the few researchers that keep up to date with all the relevant papers, it could be explicit on the site for all to see (including journalists, who would finally have an easy way to avoid putting their foot in their mouth with another 'Scientists show that lung cancer causes smoking!' headline). Even if all that could be said in a given area was 'Correlation has been shown, causation has not, a study is underway to try to establish this, and 60% of randomly queried researchers in the area believe causation will be proven' then that would still be super valuable. The result "99% of climate researchers and meteorologists believe climate change to be manmade" is a great result, but it would be much more hard-hitting if it came from an institution that was already considered to be reliable.
- ever1 9y ago
  This mechanism already exists in some way with top journals and peer-reviewing. Their credibility relies on their capability to select the most important and proven papers.

DangerousPie 9y ago

I agree this is a weak, small study but I'm not sure I agree with your point 4. Obviously this all depends on having a large-enough sample size to start with, but if the groups are properly randomized they shouldn't have to control for income/health of parents (since it's not correlated with the independent variable). I'm also not sure what you mean by #3.

ballenf 9y ago
> In the trial of interest here, mothers elected to breastfeed but varied in their success in expressing milk and, therefore, in the need for supplementary feeding. According to randomisation before breastfeeding commenced, these infants were given one of three supplements: a nutrient enriched preterm formula (PTF), a standard term formula (TF; used in the 1980s for feeding preterm infants) or banked breast milk (BBM; provided by unrelated donors and unfortified). Since the mothers self-selected breastfeeding, the study makes the assumption that banked breast milk (from a random donor) is equivalent to fresh milk from the mother. It assumes that the act of suckling on the mother's breast has no bearing on brain development. See recent evidence regard pre-term babies and skin contact: http://handtohold.org/resources/helpful-articles/the-benefits-of-kangaroo-care/ http://handtohold.org/resources/helpful-articles/the-benefit... Finally, it ignores other (more recent) studies showing how the mother's milk reacts to signals from the baby's saliva (backwash from baby sucked back into breast). https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/growth-curve/backwash-nursing-babies-may-trigger-infection-fighters https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/growth-curve/backwash-nursi... (Not saying these links aren't equally or more flawed, but it's avenues of causation ignored.) Wouldn't a valid study require randomized instruction to mothers about whether to breastfeed? Is that ethical? Compliance is equally tough: breastfeeding can be incredibly difficult for some moms/babies. Further, couldn't the difficulty in breastfeeding also be correlated to the effects -- could children reject breastmilk based on the mother's health or otherwise based on the "quality" of the milk? Please forgive if I'm asking questions that are well understood -- by no means am I claiming to be knowledgeable in this field. But I do have kids and went through hell with one of them on this, so I'm very interested in the research.

alexandercrohde 9y ago

It's not clear to me why you are picking at the mechanics here. Are you arguing a different study that shows the same thing should be substituted? Because it's my understanding that the evidence shows a breastmilk->IQ correlation as well as all the other health benefits [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breastfeeding#Baby https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breastfeeding#Baby]

slededit 9y ago

Complaints about small sample sizes are practically a stock answer at this point. I've never seen a study posted that didn't have this complaint. It would be much more useful to talk about the statistical significance in more quantitative terms.