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Suggesting genetics is responsible instead (as opposed to any other variable) is no less pseudoscience. If only we could find some smart parents and get them t

by drb91 8y ago

Suggesting genetics is responsible instead (as opposed to any other variable) is no less pseudoscience. If only we could find some smart parents and get them to deny their kids books, we’d know for sure!

hackinthebochs 8y ago
Suggesting that genetics could be the causative factor isn't pseudoscience. It's pointing out that this study cannot disambiguate between the two, and so claiming causation is false.
- drb91 8y ago
  The “claim” the original poster complained about also hedged with the word “could”—it’s in the title ffs. I am really tired of people talking about correlation and causation and completely ignoring carefully hedged phrases. Can we save them for when articles actually make concrete claims about causal links? There’s still interesting stuff here to discuss, and you can even soapbox your favorite theory. But there’s little to gain from actually discussing the (obvious) lack of causal link here. Unless you can point out how you’d improve the study—it’s not entirely obvious to me what the next step would be as I’m not a scientist.
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  - jasode 8y ago
    >The “claim” the original poster complained about also hedged with the word “could”—it’s in the title ffs. Fyi... in the abstract of the actual paper that the article is based on, the authors used less hedging and suggested more of a cause & effect: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0049089X18300607* https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0049089X1...
    - dragonwriter 8y ago
      It also indicates that the conclusion is based on controlling for the major social confounding factors that are typically also viewed as key intermediary mechanisms by which genetic factors influence the outcomes of interest, including both own occupation and educational attainment and parental educational attainment. Even if the underlying reality is that growing up around books is an effect of a shared hidden (genetic or otherwise) cause, the fact that it is a predictor even after for controlling for the identified alternative factors is quite a significant result. (Though, as other comments point out, self-reporting may be a problem, though “people that are more successful than expected for their occupation, education, and parental education tend to overreport the number of books they grew up with compared to less successful individuals” would be an interesting result in its own way.)
  - hackinthebochs 8y ago
    You're right that the headline is cautious enough not to misrepresent the content of the study. I think controlling for parent and child educational attainment, which likely subsumes much of the possible confounders, is sufficient to claim a plausible causative effect of the presence of books.
EthanHeilman 8y ago
Or lock a child in a room full of books for several hours each day as Liebnitz's father's will required to be done to Liebnitz (this may be an apocryphal story).
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badpun 8y ago
There’s plenty of smart people who don’t read books, they shouldn’t be hard to find for a study.

by drb91 8y ago

hackinthebochs 8y ago

Suggesting that genetics could be the causative factor isn't pseudoscience. It's pointing out that this study cannot disambiguate between the two, and so claiming causation is false.

drb91 8y ago
The “claim” the original poster complained about also hedged with the word “could”—it’s in the title ffs. I am really tired of people talking about correlation and causation and completely ignoring carefully hedged phrases. Can we save them for when articles actually make concrete claims about causal links? There’s still interesting stuff here to discuss, and you can even soapbox your favorite theory. But there’s little to gain from actually discussing the (obvious) lack of causal link here. Unless you can point out how you’d improve the study—it’s not entirely obvious to me what the next step would be as I’m not a scientist.
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- jasode 8y ago
  >The “claim” the original poster complained about also hedged with the word “could”—it’s in the title ffs. Fyi... in the abstract of the actual paper that the article is based on, the authors used less hedging and suggested more of a cause & effect: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0049089X18300607* https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0049089X1...
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    It also indicates that the conclusion is based on controlling for the major social confounding factors that are typically also viewed as key intermediary mechanisms by which genetic factors influence the outcomes of interest, including both own occupation and educational attainment and parental educational attainment. Even if the underlying reality is that growing up around books is an effect of a shared hidden (genetic or otherwise) cause, the fact that it is a predictor even after for controlling for the identified alternative factors is quite a significant result. (Though, as other comments point out, self-reporting may be a problem, though “people that are more successful than expected for their occupation, education, and parental education tend to overreport the number of books they grew up with compared to less successful individuals” would be an interesting result in its own way.)
- hackinthebochs 8y ago
  You're right that the headline is cautious enough not to misrepresent the content of the study. I think controlling for parent and child educational attainment, which likely subsumes much of the possible confounders, is sufficient to claim a plausible causative effect of the presence of books.

EthanHeilman 8y ago

Or lock a child in a room full of books for several hours each day as Liebnitz's father's will required to be done to Liebnitz (this may be an apocryphal story).

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badpun 8y ago

There’s plenty of smart people who don’t read books, they shouldn’t be hard to find for a study.