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> Making causal claims without accounting for genetic confounds is simply pseudoscience, there are no excuses. This study was done in response to the Scarborou

> Making causal claims without accounting for genetic confounds is simply pseudoscience, there are no excuses. This study was done in response to the Scarborough and Dobrich paper that found that how much parents read to their children (generally) isn't correlated with children's future reading ability, but how many books are in their household is a positive predictor of future reading ability. It's one of the most famous and surprising findings in all of social science. I'd suggest rather than the authors not "understanding science" or whatever, perhaps it's more likely that their target audience wasn't people on HN who would complain without knowing anything about the field. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0273229784710100 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027322978...

131012 8y ago
It is ethically impossible to ask for DNA samples to every participants in a social science study. Parent OP comment is equivalent than stating that social science is impossible. As any opinion, it can be held, and yet some people may find it ludicrous. As for the conclusion of the study, it is rather mild and has been known for a while: social class has impacts on people, especially on education related outcome.
- cma 8y ago
  The standard is controls with adopted identical twins.
- testvox 8y ago
  No one mentioned DNA samples. The standard way to control for genetic differences is to use genetic twins separated at birth and reared apart.
jerf 8y ago
"but how many books are in their household is a positive predictor of future reading ability." It will be interesting to see how this updates over time. My children are not physically surrounded by books, but they've got Amazon Freetime and nearly blanket permission to use it, which they take advantage of quite a bit. It's a lot more easy access to books than I had at their age.
paganel 8y ago
> It’s one of the most famous and surprising findings in all of social science. Kind of makes sense in a way. Only anecdotal, but I’ve learned to read at 5 years of age almost all by myself (my dad had taught me the letters a little time before that) only because I was bored as hell while I was vacationing at my grandparents’ house and there were a couple of books around. I picked one and started reading it loud while I was alone, and that was it. I’m no genius, mind you, that’s why I think that my experience is not unique.
PeterisP 8y ago
That's the whole point - there is research supporting the point that "how many books are in their household is a positive predictor" not only of future reading ability but also a bunch of other things, but there seems to be no research supporting that "Growing Up Surrounded by Books Could Have Powerful, Lasting Effect on the Mind". These are very, very, very different things. In essence, a very likely explanation for the observed "childhood books vs adult success" observation is that growing up surrounded by books is an indicator that your parents may have higher socioeconomic status than average, or that they have an above average educational background and IQ, or possibly all of it, and for those things it's well known that they have hereditary (both nature-hereditary and nurture-hereditary) effects that indicate that the kids are somewhat more likely to be successful in most aspects of life. That observation (both in your link and in the studies described in the main article above) is not a reason to assume any causal relationship; the original studies don't claim that, but the article we're discussing does try to imply such claim without any appropriate justification, and that is inexcusable pseudoscience.
- Alex3917 8y ago
  > there seems to be no research supporting that "Growing Up Surrounded by Books Could Have Powerful, Lasting Effect on the Mind" Maybe not in this particular study, but the whole point is that any given study is going to be done in the larger context of a one or more fields of pre-existing research. If you look at the paper I linked to, the proposed model is that in order for kids to be good at reading, they need to read. And the kids who read the most are going to be those who love reading. Now when you as a parent read books to your kids, some kids will love that and others will hate it. And if you read to them if they don't like it, that can actually turn them off from reading and lead to them being worse at reading in the long term. Whereas if you just leave books around the house, sooner or later they're likely going to read some of them, and are more likely to develop a love of reading just by reading things they're interested in when they're interested in them rather than having reading being forced on them before they're interested. No one is arguing that there isn't an SES component or whatever. But the actual proposed explanation comes from the context of the last 50+ years of research on intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation, and is interesting on its own. Any one paper isn't going to look at more than one specific thing, but if you're only looking at that one paper without understanding the larger context of the research then you're not going to understand what's interesting about it or why it was worth doing.

131012 8y ago

It is ethically impossible to ask for DNA samples to every participants in a social science study. Parent OP comment is equivalent than stating that social science is impossible. As any opinion, it can be held, and yet some people may find it ludicrous. As for the conclusion of the study, it is rather mild and has been known for a while: social class has impacts on people, especially on education related outcome.

cma 8y ago
The standard is controls with adopted identical twins.
testvox 8y ago
No one mentioned DNA samples. The standard way to control for genetic differences is to use genetic twins separated at birth and reared apart.

jerf 8y ago

"but how many books are in their household is a positive predictor of future reading ability." It will be interesting to see how this updates over time. My children are not physically surrounded by books, but they've got Amazon Freetime and nearly blanket permission to use it, which they take advantage of quite a bit. It's a lot more easy access to books than I had at their age.

paganel 8y ago

> It’s one of the most famous and surprising findings in all of social science. Kind of makes sense in a way. Only anecdotal, but I’ve learned to read at 5 years of age almost all by myself (my dad had taught me the letters a little time before that) only because I was bored as hell while I was vacationing at my grandparents’ house and there were a couple of books around. I picked one and started reading it loud while I was alone, and that was it. I’m no genius, mind you, that’s why I think that my experience is not unique.

PeterisP 8y ago

That's the whole point - there is research supporting the point that "how many books are in their household is a positive predictor" not only of future reading ability but also a bunch of other things, but there seems to be no research supporting that "Growing Up Surrounded by Books Could Have Powerful, Lasting Effect on the Mind". These are very, very, very different things. In essence, a very likely explanation for the observed "childhood books vs adult success" observation is that growing up surrounded by books is an indicator that your parents may have higher socioeconomic status than average, or that they have an above average educational background and IQ, or possibly all of it, and for those things it's well known that they have hereditary (both nature-hereditary and nurture-hereditary) effects that indicate that the kids are somewhat more likely to be successful in most aspects of life. That observation (both in your link and in the studies described in the main article above) is not a reason to assume any causal relationship; the original studies don't claim that, but the article we're discussing does try to imply such claim without any appropriate justification, and that is inexcusable pseudoscience.

Alex3917 8y ago
> there seems to be no research supporting that "Growing Up Surrounded by Books Could Have Powerful, Lasting Effect on the Mind" Maybe not in this particular study, but the whole point is that any given study is going to be done in the larger context of a one or more fields of pre-existing research. If you look at the paper I linked to, the proposed model is that in order for kids to be good at reading, they need to read. And the kids who read the most are going to be those who love reading. Now when you as a parent read books to your kids, some kids will love that and others will hate it. And if you read to them if they don't like it, that can actually turn them off from reading and lead to them being worse at reading in the long term. Whereas if you just leave books around the house, sooner or later they're likely going to read some of them, and are more likely to develop a love of reading just by reading things they're interested in when they're interested in them rather than having reading being forced on them before they're interested. No one is arguing that there isn't an SES component or whatever. But the actual proposed explanation comes from the context of the last 50+ years of research on intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation, and is interesting on its own. Any one paper isn't going to look at more than one specific thing, but if you're only looking at that one paper without understanding the larger context of the research then you're not going to understand what's interesting about it or why it was worth doing.