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Risky business: linking Toxoplasma infection and entrepreneurship behavior
- moocowtruck 8y agois this site almost unusable for anyone else? hmm just seems to be in chrome.. smooth in ff
- cultus 8y agoThis is just p-hacking. It's really sad that in 2018 researchers are still pumping out garbage like this. All of these toxo behavior studies have been very poor quality. For example, there's been a few studies purporting that folks infected with toxo have significantly higher rates of schizophrenia. However, this is false, because toxo rates differ by 2-3x between first-world countries but yet the schizophrenia rate is mostly consistent.
- api 8y agoTime constraints + hyper competitive publish or perish environment = lots of bad or low effort research to pad publication totals.
- abledon 8y agoCan someone explain the math behind the ‘p hacking’ for this study?
- yawaworhtttt 8y agoI think the best way to explain it is with this link: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/p-hacking/ https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/p-hacking/
- phaedryx 8y agoThank you, this is both awesome and terrible.
- mfgmfg 8y agoAlternatively, in comic form: https://xkcd.com/882/ https://xkcd.com/882/
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- chimeracoder 8y ago> However, this is false, because toxo rates differ by 2-3x between first-world countries but yet the schizophrenia rate is mostly consistent. I'm not going to say that the original studies are correct, but this is a fallacious analysis as well. You can't use broad, population-based observations (which are subject to countless possible confounding factors) to dismiss a targeted study that attempts to isolate a single cause and effect relationship.
- cultus 8y agoNo, it's not. The effect size that purportedly occurs according to this research (double-digit percentages of cases caused by toxo) would have been detectable on a population level. There would be marked differences in schizophrenia rates, but there aren't. You'd be right if small effect sizes were claimed, but that's not what's being claimed. Suppose a large portion of schizophrenia cases are caused by toxo. We know the toxo infection rate differs massively between countries, but the schizophrenia rate is consistent. Therefore, there must be another cause of schizophrenia such that its prevalence as a cause of schizophrenia is almost perfectly anti-correlated with toxo infections. More toxo infections, less of this other cause. Or there could be a correlated factor that prevents schizophrenia. Maybe having a cat, in and of itself, prevents schizophrenia. That seems extremely improbable, considering that a priori we should think that a particular amoeba causes schizophrenia is not probable.
- rockinghigh 8y agoIt could still hold if only a small percentage of schizophrenia was caused by toxoplasmosis.
- cultus 8y agoThese studies have usually showed a large effect size and a small sample. That doesn't explain it.
- nerdponx 8y agoI have seen (but not read or vetted) other studies purporting a relationship between toxoplasmosis and other mood/behavior alterations like depression. Is it all junk, or is there any merit to it?
- DonHopkins 8y agoSmells more like poop-hacking to me.
- InGodsName 8y agoCan we extract the prasite and sell it as entrepreneur drink now?
- bitxbitxbitcoin 8y agoI thought this was the concept behind raw water? Expose yourself to all of nature's risky and risk-taking-inducing fecal transmitted parasites!
- elif 8y agoi got water poisoning in the backcountry... the delusion is not that dissimilar to a psychedelic experience, and actually intensified by the pervasive and unavoidable actual fear of death.
- java_script 8y agoAfter observing the behavior of many Silicon Valley idols, popular posters on Quora and Medium, the public presence of Elon Musk, the head of GoogleX[0], etc., I've long suspected that anything that impairs your brain function would also lead to a higher likelihood of "entrepreneurial"[0] behavior. [0]: The roller skates thing. [1]: Imagine I'm making a jack-off motion in the air as I say that word.
- MentallyRetired 8y agoSo saying you have the entrepreneurial bug is a real thing? Seems like correlation without causation, to me.
- zunzun 8y agoSomewhere there now has to be a person thinking "Hmm, I've been eating cat poop for a month now and have not seen any increase in business revenue - am I not eating enough?"
- DonHopkins 8y agoThis new product is certainly entrepreneurial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2yWAD5OzhM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2yWAD5OzhM
- danmg 8y agoThe answer is yes.
- trhway 8y ago>a person thinking "Hmm, I've been eating cat poop for a month now and have not seen any increase in business revenue probably he has been mistakenly taking BS instead.
- cm2012 8y agoThere's so much BS around toxoplasmosis online. Here's corrections for two common misconceptions: 1) Almost everyone who has it got it from eating undercooked meat, not from cats. France has the highest rate of toxoplasmosis in the world because of their propensity for rare meats: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5312802/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5312802/. 2) Unless your cat lived a long part of it's life as an outdoor cat, it is very unlikely to have the parasite (like any parasite).
- in_cahoots 8y agoThis second point really surprised me. I’ve had 5 indoor cats over the course of more than 20 years and cleaned all of their litter boxes. All were adopted as stray kittens, so presumably they spent some time outdoors. And yet I tested negative for toxoplasmosis. As I understand it, you basically have to ingest the stool of a cat who recently hunted a rodent with the disease. If your cat stays indoors and you wash your hands after cleaning the litter box, that’s unlikely. In fact, you’re more likely to get it from gardening because cats will pee in the soil and you’re probably more likely to touch your face if you have touched soil than if you’ve just cleaned a litter box.
- benjaminwootton 8y agoThis trait and disease was discussed at length on the Joe Rogan podcast with Mcauley Culkin. Apparently rats which catch toxoplasmosis are attracted to cat urine, which is an evolutionary reason for its development. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Oyb1xz7waY8 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Oyb1xz7waY8
- rzzzt 8y agoToxoplasmosis is smart enough to spread through the Internet as well: https://vimeo.com/69181785 https://vimeo.com/69181785
- m0skit0 8y agohttps://medium.com/@andrewhayes/correlation-does-not-imply-causation-21472b85630f https://medium.com/@andrewhayes/correlation-does-not-imply-c...
- tabtab 8y agoThe only thing I have to say about this is, meow!
- noddy1w 8y agoThe "jokes" in this thread really underscore how painfully humourless tech people are
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]