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Study is probably crap. An association between cannabis use and schizophrenia says nothing about which way the arrow of causation flows. It could very well be t

Study is probably crap. An association between cannabis use and schizophrenia says nothing about which way the arrow of causation flows. It could very well be that cannabis use causes schizophrenia, or it could be that people feeling early signs of schizophrenia are more likely to use cannabis. There is no way to tell from this kind of study. Science is hard.

michaericalribo 4y ago
Science is hard, and that's why science rarely gives black-and-white answers. This study is not the one final word on the matter. But that doesn't mean it's not still useful. Science is done based on the evidence that is found, and this counts as some evidence. Does it answer every question? Of course not. Does it help improve our understanding of the occurrence of it? Yes. Correlation is not causation, but where there's smoke, there's often a fire—as these findings continue to be validated (and there have been other studies that find similar links), it becomes more and more relevant to understand why there is such a correlation—to find a causal mechanism, if it exists, or to confirm that it's just spurious correlation.
- vlovich123 4y ago
  > where there's smoke, there's often a fire Actually, as the replication crises shows, most smoke from papers either isn't real / doesn't point to a fire. So that maybe is a flawed line of reasoning. Correlation (if the research is done carefully to avoid intentional or unintentional p-hacking, and free of fraud) can point to maybe do a follow-up study (or do lots of different kinds of studies to do a good meta analysis that can try to establish causation) but the replication crisis indicates the good studies are swamped by the meaningless ones.
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dang 4y ago
"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." "Avoid generic tangents." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- amanaplanacanal 4y ago
  Sorry for my cranky comment.
  - dang 4y ago
    Appreciated!
- dooglius 4y ago
  It's not shallow at all, and the above comment teaches more than the wild speculation and anecdotes many of the other top-level comments have.
  - dang 4y ago
    It counts as a shallow dismissal because it was (a) generic and (b) an oft-repeated internet cliché. You could in fact replace "cannabis" and "schizoprehnia" with "foo" and "bar" and you'd have a template for a shallow dismissal of published studies.
    - dooglius 4y ago
      I disagree that because something is generic and oft-repeated, that it is shallow or cannot teach. > You could in fact replace "cannabis" and "schizoprehnia" with "foo" and "bar" and you'd have a template for a shallow dismissal of published studies. Indeed, replacing with foo and bar would be valid, and the fact that this is the case, i.e. that correlation is not evidence of causation in general, remains a deep and important statement about reality. It is particularly important to correct this when the headline is direct misinformation about what the study found. Do you think code snippets using foo/bar as placeholders are shallow or uninformative? There is a good reason they are often used in programming discussions: to demonstrate that whatever is being shown applies in general.
phkahler 4y ago
I have read that Schizophrenics tend toward heavy smoking as well. Given that, it makes sense that they might try smoking something a bit more potent, though I'm not sure it would have the effect they're looking for. I read the article looking for evidence of causation and didn't see it, so it could be either way. Maybe the actual study was more clear on this point.

michaericalribo 4y ago

Science is hard, and that's why science rarely gives black-and-white answers. This study is not the one final word on the matter. But that doesn't mean it's not still useful. Science is done based on the evidence that is found, and this counts as some evidence. Does it answer every question? Of course not. Does it help improve our understanding of the occurrence of it? Yes. Correlation is not causation, but where there's smoke, there's often a fire—as these findings continue to be validated (and there have been other studies that find similar links), it becomes more and more relevant to understand why there is such a correlation—to find a causal mechanism, if it exists, or to confirm that it's just spurious correlation.

vlovich123 4y ago
> where there's smoke, there's often a fire Actually, as the replication crises shows, most smoke from papers either isn't real / doesn't point to a fire. So that maybe is a flawed line of reasoning. Correlation (if the research is done carefully to avoid intentional or unintentional p-hacking, and free of fraud) can point to maybe do a follow-up study (or do lots of different kinds of studies to do a good meta analysis that can try to establish causation) but the replication crisis indicates the good studies are swamped by the meaningless ones.

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dang 4y ago

"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." "Avoid generic tangents." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

amanaplanacanal 4y ago
Sorry for my cranky comment.
- dang 4y ago
  Appreciated!
dooglius 4y ago
It's not shallow at all, and the above comment teaches more than the wild speculation and anecdotes many of the other top-level comments have.
- dang 4y ago
  It counts as a shallow dismissal because it was (a) generic and (b) an oft-repeated internet cliché. You could in fact replace "cannabis" and "schizoprehnia" with "foo" and "bar" and you'd have a template for a shallow dismissal of published studies.
  - dooglius 4y ago
    I disagree that because something is generic and oft-repeated, that it is shallow or cannot teach. > You could in fact replace "cannabis" and "schizoprehnia" with "foo" and "bar" and you'd have a template for a shallow dismissal of published studies. Indeed, replacing with foo and bar would be valid, and the fact that this is the case, i.e. that correlation is not evidence of causation in general, remains a deep and important statement about reality. It is particularly important to correct this when the headline is direct misinformation about what the study found. Do you think code snippets using foo/bar as placeholders are shallow or uninformative? There is a good reason they are often used in programming discussions: to demonstrate that whatever is being shown applies in general.

phkahler 4y ago

I have read that Schizophrenics tend toward heavy smoking as well. Given that, it makes sense that they might try smoking something a bit more potent, though I'm not sure it would have the effect they're looking for. I read the article looking for evidence of causation and didn't see it, so it could be either way. Maybe the actual study was more clear on this point.