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Study Linking Autism to 'Male Brain' Retracted, Replaced
- daenz 8y agoA quick look at Simon Baron Cohen's tweet[1] (linked from the article) shows that this topic seems extremely divisive and inflammatory to people. Is this retraction and resulting modified study seen as an important victory for people promoting that there are no differences between the "male" and "female" brains? [1]https://twitter.com/sbaroncohen/status/832490232721371136 https://twitter.com/sbaroncohen/status/832490232721371136
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- tnzn 8y agoWell, it is clearly stated that it's a methological error.
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- DanBC 8y agoNo, it's a victory for all the women who are autistic but go years without a diagnosis because of stereotypes about autism. Simon Baren Cohen is an expert, but he's got some stuff badly wrong before, such as saying that autism is a condition marked by lack of empathy because of alexithymia. Turns out this is incorrect, but it caused considerable hardship for many autistic people who were unable to get a dx because they could see things from someone else's point of view, even if only in a limited way.
- lohszvu 8y agoHow does a diagnosis benefit someone with autism?
- NikkiA 8y agoIt allows them to request accomodation under the ADA for one.
- pjmorris 8y agoAnecdotal, n=1: Our son's autism diagnosis got him placement in a special pre-school focused on special developmental needs, and has gotten him special placement all through his public school career to date, with small classes and lots of extra support.
- DaiPlusPlus 8y agoEarly intervention with behaviour modification therapy, especially in early school life where social interaction skills really matter. In adult life, it can lead to better psychological therapy. Managing anxiety in ASD is different to neurotypical people, for example.
- klyrs 8y ago> Managing anxiety in ASD is different to neurotypical people, for example. Speaking as somebody too 'high functioning' for a diagnosis... please elaborate edit: the responses to this feel weird, does anybody have resources for ASD folks experiencing anxiety?
- Nasrudith 8y agoWell for one stressors are different - in addition to sensory issues that aren't common things like not finding awkward silences awkward. Stimming probably wouldn't prove helpful to neurotypicals for an example backwards.
- gowld 8y agoFor one thing, anxiety isn't always a root cause. If you are autistic your anxiety may have roots in sensory issues, different from anxiety experienced by someone with schizophrenia.
- whatshisface 8y agoIt's only a political thing in the minds of the politically-inclined. Since when was autism a cornerstone in anybody's ideology? I think the only reason this is riling people up is that it involves gender in the title.
- DaiPlusPlus 8y ago“Autism-identity” could be considered an idiological movement.
- danharaj 8y ago> Since when was autism a cornerstone in anybody's ideology? Anti-vaxxers?
- RodericDay 8y ago"Men have different distribution of extremes, more dumbasses but also more brilliance, eg. autistic savants, which explains more CEOs and Nobel Prize winners, and therefore systemic sexism is a myth to deny biologically determined outcomes." it's a very important shibboleth for modern sexists
- 781 8y agoYes. Not related to this specific study: > Meet the neuroscientist shattering the myth of the gendered brain > Are there any significant differences based on sex alone? The answer, she says, is no. To suggest otherwise is “neurofoolishness”. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/feb/24/meet-the-neuroscientist-shattering-the-myth-of-the-gendered-brain-gina-rippon https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/feb/24/meet-the-neu...
- gowld 8y agoShe's mincing words, by overemphasizing a distinction between that "highly correlated" isn't that same as "completely explained by". It's akin to saying "There are no significant differences in height based on sex alone, since some women are taller than some men."
- weberc2 8y ago> There are no significant differences in height based on sex alone, since some women are taller than some men. "Boom! Myth shattered!" - The Guardian
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- repnestful 8y agoThe studies underlying that article are really interesting, and it's frustrating to see science journalism butcher them so badly. (Everywhere, not just The Guardian; New Scientist did the same thing.) There's a lot of great work demonstrating the lack of a physical gender dichotomy, and I hate watching the 'AI winter' pattern where people dismiss that work because stories like this one use it for completely inapplicable claims. Here's Rippon: > "The idea of the male brain and the female brain suggests that each is a characteristically homogenous thing and that whoever has got a male brain, say, will have the same kind of aptitudes, preferences and personalities as everyone else with that ‘type’ of brain. We now know that is not the case." That idea does have support, it's not a strawman. But it's the sort of idea you see from religious fundamentalists, not something any serious scientist has entertained in a very long time. People talking about prenatal testosterone, spatial reasoning fluidity, and gendered variance are not saying, even a little bit, that "everyone with a male brain will have the same aptitudes". The state of the art here is work like Joel on 'mosaic' brains, which looks at gender differences by brain region. It finds that there are many brain features gender-correlated physical differences, but these features have overlap between genders and the level of skew between different features is weakly correlated. Here's Joel (https://www.pnas.org/content/112/50/15468 https://www.pnas.org/content/112/50/15468): > "Our study demonstrates that, although there are sex/gender differences in the brain, human brains do not belong to one of two distinct categories: male brain/female brain." And a critic of Joel (https://www.pnas.org/content/113/14/E1968 https://www.pnas.org/content/113/14/E1968): > "the authors convincingly establish that there is little evidence for this strict sexually dimorphic view of human brains, counter to the popular lay conception of a “male” and “female” brain[...]Critically, however, the conclusion that human brains cannot be categorized into two distinct classes depends largely on the level of analysis[...]In fact, an individual’s biological sex can be classified with extremely high accuracy by considering the brain mosaic as a whole." While Rippon is jousting with the idea of strict dichotomy, researchers who reject sex differentiation concede that there are widespread statistical differences by sex. (Rippon vaguely acknowledges this too, "Of course there are sex differences", but it goes nowhere.) Other researchers are building models that can predict sex at >90% accuracy from brain-feature data. The Guardian writer implies that differences disappear after correcting for brain size, but the actual results say some significant features disappear. Even after regressing out head size, Chekroud's model retains 70% accuracy. (And of course, brain size has a strong sex correlation, so if you want to talk about real populations you wouldn't control for it.) Finally, Finally, the story leaps to claiming adult differences are the result of socialization changing the brain. There's a lot going on here, none of it good. For one, it's the usual pop-science journalism format; the first half is study-driven, the second half applies that credibility to an unstudied claim. Do the mosaic differences exist with similar strength in early childhood? That could support or invalidate the entire narrative, and we simply don't know. For another, it makes the all-too-common mistake of conflating "not inborn" with "socialized", switching straight from physical brain structure to stereotypes without even mentioning intermediate factors like hormones. Finally, it heavily misrepresents existing research. Brain plasticity results in black cab drivers are repurposed to say that playing with Legos "very likely" produces lasting, observable brain differences. (But wait, how would gendered play be reflected in the brain? Didn't we just hear that adult men and women, despite all that socialization, don't have clearly observable brain differences? Well yes, it's not a very good article.)
- phkahler 8y ago>> Is this retraction and resulting modified study seen as an important victory for people promoting that there are no differences between the "male" and "female" brains? Yes - of that you can be certain. Was the retraction and modification done to satisfy those people? That's an important question that will probably go unanswered.
- whatshisface 8y ago>Was the retraction and modification done to satisfy those people? They're saying that it was a methodological error, so probably not.
- exelius 8y agoI wouldn’t say there are no differences between the “male” and “female” brain. I do know my brain wasn’t very happy on the hormones I was born producing — and there’s promising research about how gender identity actually has a basis in physical differences in brain structure [1] which are hypothesized to form based on exposure to various hormone levels during gestation (and which have already been shown to impact gender identity through the very elevated rates of transition of children of mothers who took the synthetic estrogen diethylstilbesterol). But like anything involving gendered characteristics in humans as expressed in the world, the range of observed behaviors within the two populations overlaps so much it’s hard to draw meaningful conclusions about any individual by differentiating the two. Based on my personal experience and from talking to others who have medically transitioned, the difference between “inherently male” behaviors and “inherently female” behaviors can be nearly entirely explained by hormones. As in, you change hormones and the behavior changes: testosterone tends to cause elevated anger / aggression while estrogen tends to make people more neurotic with a wider range of emotional response. That’s it. The rest of the differences are either personality or environmental / social factors. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-17352-8 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-17352-8
- tnzn 8y agoThere is still flaw in the reasoning though. Transitionning implies much more than just a change in hormone balance as you are aware. Plus emotionnal responses to subjective feelings and physiological cues are not free from social influence either.
- naasking 8y ago> testosterone tends to cause elevated anger / aggression And sexual interest. Hormones actually have many effects, but those are the most immediate/obvious ones.
- opwieurposiu 8y agoThis "too much overlap to draw a distinction" idea seems silly. The border between orange and yellow has overlap and can not be precisely defined, and yet we still can recognize the difference between orange and yellow. Many statistical techniques have been invented to prevent outliers from biasing correlations.
- SubiculumCode 8y agoAbsolutely not. In deed, it has nothing to do with Simon Cohen. See my comment below. I am office-mates with the scientist that discovered his own error.
- repnestful 8y ago> Is this retraction and resulting modified study seen as an important victory for people promoting that there are no differences between the "male" and "female" brains? Not especially - more like an averted defeat. It's certainly not a win for gendered-brain theories, but it's not much of a loss either. Cohen's work is hugely controversial even after taking the existence of "gendered brains" as a given. He makes his claim from two directions: first, that most autistic people are male, and second, that most autistic women have 'male brains'. Rejecting first claim is obviously compatible with sex differences. The basic answer is that autism in women is underdiagnosed and Cohen is mistaking test error for base rates. There are lots of possible reasons which are indifferent to brain sex (gender stereotypes, clinician expectations), plus the claim that autism presents differently in men and women, which is compatible with both socialization and deep-seated gender differences. His second claim basically requires brain sex differences to exist, but it's still possible to accept that while disputing that autistic women have "male brains". For one thing, a lot of the debate about brain sex today works from the same underlying framework (e.g. the 2015 'mosaic brain' work) while reaching very different conclusions about how substantial sex differences are, and that whole model is largely incompatible with Cohen's. For another, lots of people charge that Cohen's data is simply wrong - that his stats on autistic women with 'male brains' come from botched studies which should be discounted regardless of what brains are like. People who reject major sex differences like Cordelia Fine aim at Cohen a lot, because his model would largely invalidate theirs. But lots of people claiming major sex differences also reject Cohen, either because their models don't match (e.g. "higher male variance" versus Cohen's "male brains"), or because they simply think studies like these are methodologically weak independent of that question.
- SubiculumCode 8y agoWhile autism is under-diagnosed in females, there is no good evidence that this sufficiently explains the different rates of diagnosis in males and females.
- skywhopper 8y ago"Victory" is the entirely wrong way to look at it. A serious scientist would not crow about a result like this in a paper, and anyone interested in the success of science should be very sad about such a majorly incorrect statistic being pushed out into the world. As for the tweet, Baron-Cohen's language in that tweet seems to be a cry of triumph, using language that he presumably realizes (or ought to) would be inflammatory. There are good reasons that this is a sensitive subject. And how you present and talk about the results is a big part of why. Science--particularly psychology and neuroscience--has a long-established history of unscientific lies and willful misinterpretations about differences due to sex (and race and other things) that have been demonstrably harmful to millions of people. Only the confidence of ultimate privilege could make you think that now we've finally turned a corner and can be totally objective about such things. When the biggest names in such research lecture other people about how important it is to be serious about studying oh-so-scientific proof of sex differences while simultaneously cheering on their long-preferred outcome like it's a sporting event is... unprofessional at best. A good scientist should be humble about their own instincts and should be thoughtful and careful about succumbing to confirmation bias. But here we had Simon Baron-Cohen crowing over a single result in the most obnoxiously oversimplified way possible. There's a huge amount of context here that I am (and probably you are) missing, and I certainly can't judge these people's motives. But I'll say it again: serious scientists who really care about finding out the facts about sex differences in brain development should probably not be crowing about single studies on Twitter in inflammatory ways.
- TheOperator 8y agoWell it is Autism awareness day. So a few bits of context 1: Simon-Baron Cohen has become world famous for promoting his "extreme male brain" theory of Autism to the point its hard to imagine he's NOT emotionally attached to it. 2: It is notable women with Autism get diagnosed later and its broadly believed by those familiar with Autism that they are underdiagnosed. The extreme male brain theory however bega the questiom that maybe women possibly lack as extreme male of a brain as the men and thus are less autistic and that explains the diagnosis discrepancy? Which is obviously controversial. 3: Autistic womens brains AREN'T LIKE typical male brains. So the nomenclature of saying they have "male brains" in itself is controversial. Especially when girls grew up bullied for being different often being accused of not being sufficiently girly. 4: Generally the people who advocate for autistic men have grievances against some aspects of masculinity. Yet autistic men in certain ways act hypermasculine (isolation, indifference to pain, etc.) Male autistics are likely to be raised in an unusually feminine environment and ardn't always considered manly and can yearn for some sort of masculine identity. So there is this awkward dynamic. The group most commonly diagnosed as autistic, white men tend to get no love from their allies in regards to other aspects of their identity. This leads to high functioning autistics like James Damore who literally want to tear down affirmative action policies that nominally benefit autistic people. Men like these proceed to get burned at the stake by their allies. This leads to angry resentful autistics inflaming discussions like this. 5: There is a strong correlation between autism and transgenderism and nobody really knows why. Transwomen are autistic at rates far above the general population. This really pisses off autistic transwomen. Generally autism seems to have a significant impact on gender identity. There is a surprising amount of tension here anyways.
- pvaldes 8y agoAny honest mistake should be welcomed
- 0wnt_U_B 8y agoStill, the point stands. Gay people are autistic, which explains a lot. We need to round them up and medicate them.
- golergka 8y agoHas it happened because of scientific or political reasons?
- MBCook 8y agoIt says in the first sentence or two they found a flaw with their own methodology.
- uasm 8y ago> "Has it happened because of scientific or political reasons?" It's literally in the first sentence: "The authors of a study that claimed to find a link between typical male brain anatomy and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have retracted it and replaced it with a dramatically changed version after finding an error in their methodology."
- FakeComments 8y agoQuoting the actual mistake is more useful, as that sentence doesn’t actually clarify the question — it’s what they’d say if it were for political reasons, as well. > In the letter, Ecker wrote that she and her coauthors had "identified a problem with the script that was used for the prediction of biological sex in male and female individuals with ASD based on their respective neuroanatomy in our original sample." > That meant that "the probabilities we assumed to be indicative of the default (male) category in the female individuals with ASD, as shown in Figure 1B of our article, were flipped and in fact reflect the probabilities for the category of biological female individuals."
- uasm 8y ago> "Quoting the actual mistake is more useful" This isn't Twitter, and it's not my job to condense a paper down to a single sentence for people that wouldn't otherwise spare the time to actually read the article in the first place. Commenter is more than welcome to go ahead and do the reading themselves.
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- Gimpei 8y agoLooks like it was an issue with a script. I wouldn't be surprised if this isn't a bigger issue than we know in science. Good scripting practice is not taught in most programs. On top of that it's not really possible to write tests for regressions.
- kerbalspacepro 8y agoWhat would a good resource for good scripting practices?
- Loughla 8y agoI would like to second this question.
- cmpolis 8y agoI think general programming best practices would apply, particularly code review and planning your code and breaking it up into discrete parts. I have seen many scripts for research that are 5k LOC of spaghetti that become impossible to read or adjust.
- kerbalspacepro 8y agoWe're talking about scientists, not computer scientists. As surely as business managers and industrial engineers don't need to know the best programming practices to be good SQL monkeys, surely scientists- neuroscientists at that- don't need to know general programming practices. There's got to be a specific set!
- jonnycomputer 8y agoI think a very good thing to do is to write test code (almost never done in my experience) with made-up datasets where you know exactly what the results should look like.
- opportune 8y agoThis would be solved if researchers were actually required to provide all software/data necessary to replicate their results
- duxup 8y ago>after finding an error in their methodology. If that's the reason this seems like a non event, as far as some of the typical gender related internet spats goes.
- davidf18 8y agoI've been following the field including Simon Baron-Cohen's studies for well over a decade. I have journal access. There were 16 co-authors [1] to the original article, including Simon Baron-Cohen, Director of the Autism Research Centre (ARC) in Cambridge University [2]. It would seem extraordinary that all of these people including Baron-Cohen would co-sign an article without checking the work. This is especially true given that some people (Emily Willingham, Phd) have a political agenda about the issue. It seems more likely that there was some political motivation for the withdrawal, despite the "methodology" errors which again 16 co-authors did not catch, including Baron-Cohen. I wonder how we can believe any article in JAMA Psychiatry if they let a political agenda get in the way of true science. One must consider the real possibility that the primary author had their career threatened if their article was not withdrawn. What is required is that all source material and analysis be put on-line for anyone to be able to replicate the study (or the study mistake). That is the only way for JAMA Psychiatry to clear itself of accusations of bending to politics. [1] Christine Ecker, PhD1,2; Derek S. Andrews, MSc2; Christina M. Gudbrandsen, MSc2; Andre F. Marquand, PhD3,4; Cedric E. Ginestet, PhD5; Eileen M. Daly, PhD2; Clodagh M. Murphy, PhD2,6; Meng-Chuan Lai, PhD7,8,9; Michael V. Lombardo, PhD7,10; Amber N. V. Ruigrok, PhD7; Edward T. Bullmore, PhD, FRCPsych11; John Suckling, PhD11; Steven C. R. Williams, PhD4; Simon Baron-Cohen, PhD7; Michael C. Craig, PhD2,12; Declan G. M. Murphy, FRCPsych2,6; for the Medical Research Council Autism Imaging Multicentre Study (MRC AIMS) Consortium [2] https://www.autismresearchcentre.com/people_Baron-Cohen https://www.autismresearchcentre.com/people_Baron-Cohen
- SubiculumCode 8y agoI personally know the author of this paper who conducted these analyses. He is my office mate. He discovered his own error that then led to this retraction. The error involved under-documented statistical code which expected the coding of male and female (0,1) to be reversed when training a classifier on each group, is my understanding. He kept the coding of sex the same across both training regimes. This created erroneous results. He became suspicious about the results after new applications of the analysis to new dataset produced over the top beautiful results. The take is this. The mistake was honest, and way too easy. My office mate is a superb scientist with the highest integrity. He caught a mistake, and fessed up to it. This is good science. Note: I am not part of the group that published this paper.
- jonnycomputer 8y agoNo doubt doing so came at a real personal cost. He is to be lauded for it.
- SubiculumCode 8y agoIt did indeed, and I do laud him.
- random878 8y agoThank you for sharing that interesting insight.
- davidf18 8y agoPlease ask your office mate to put everything from images to code to data on-line in the spirit of open and reproducible science. That way others can check the conclusions and the statistical methods, etc.
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- drilldrive 8y agoI am not too sure about autism being directly a further male brain than the normative population. As a counter, the number of Male-to-Female transgender people in the speedrunning community is staggeringly high, and should be given some thought.
- bellerose 8y agoEscapism might just be the case. I know from my own experience gaming was just a way to focus on something else besides a cruel reality. Eventually moved to programming and realized later what was happening. I'm sure if life had been different, I would have done a different career and one that's more social with the focus in a social aspect.
- drilldrive 8y agoEscapism is certainly an aspect of autism. My personal theory is that autism is akin to really dense hair, in that your mind is less flexible, and thus themes of constancy arise early in development. This analogy implies both that an autist would be highly structured in thought, which is Simon Baron Cohen's pioneering idea, and would be very low in prowess of executive function, as the mind would be too inflexible to a change in perspective.
- bellerose 8y agoI'm surprised you associate it with autism and not gender dysphoria.