4 ms·

Please have some awareness of how little thought you are putting into dismissing a field where thousands of very smart people are working on solving the problem

Please have some awareness of how little thought you are putting into dismissing a field where thousands of very smart people are working on solving the problem you describe. In fact, you can correct for the exact problem you describe with sibling studies where people have the same environment but different genes. Have maybe a small ounce of humility in this respect.

astrange 3y ago
> Please have some awareness of how little thought you are putting into dismissing a field where thousands of very smart people are working on solving the problem you describe. Thousands of very smart people do a lot of dumb things. People still work on string theory. The people working on proper causal inference are also smart, work hard, and have Nobel Prizes. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/2021/popular-information/ https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/2021/pop... On the other hand, the people doing genetics who aren't careful about it produced the 23AndMe report which says I have a "17% chance of having green eyes". Against what counterfactual? > In fact, you can correct for the exact problem you describe with sibling studies where people have the same environment but different genes. "Correcting" is a wrong way to think about it. Generally speaking, overcorrection is worse than undercorrection because of collider bias. You need to choose a study design that's correct in the first place. You're describing a natural experiment, which is better than a GWAS of self-selected 23AndMe customers, but does have problems (silly one: selection bias because the sample only includes people with siblings) and more importantly is only guaranteed in the study environment (eg people who live in the UK in 2008) but gets reported without identifying what that environment is.
- ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
  > > In fact, you can correct for the exact problem you describe with sibling studies where people have the same environment but different genes. > You need to choose a study design that's correct in the first place. That's precisely what a sibling study is: a study design that's correct in the first place, as far as the problem we're discussing goes. > You're describing a natural experiment That is correct: a sibling study, which corrects for the problem we're discussing, often contains aspects of a natural experiment, namely that the siblings tend to naturally be siblings, rather than raised together purely for the purpose of a study :)

astrange 3y ago

> Please have some awareness of how little thought you are putting into dismissing a field where thousands of very smart people are working on solving the problem you describe. Thousands of very smart people do a lot of dumb things. People still work on string theory. The people working on proper causal inference are also smart, work hard, and have Nobel Prizes. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/2021/popular-information/ https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/2021/pop... On the other hand, the people doing genetics who aren't careful about it produced the 23AndMe report which says I have a "17% chance of having green eyes". Against what counterfactual? > In fact, you can correct for the exact problem you describe with sibling studies where people have the same environment but different genes. "Correcting" is a wrong way to think about it. Generally speaking, overcorrection is worse than undercorrection because of collider bias. You need to choose a study design that's correct in the first place. You're describing a natural experiment, which is better than a GWAS of self-selected 23AndMe customers, but does have problems (silly one: selection bias because the sample only includes people with siblings) and more importantly is only guaranteed in the study environment (eg people who live in the UK in 2008) but gets reported without identifying what that environment is.

ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
> > In fact, you can correct for the exact problem you describe with sibling studies where people have the same environment but different genes. > You need to choose a study design that's correct in the first place. That's precisely what a sibling study is: a study design that's correct in the first place, as far as the problem we're discussing goes. > You're describing a natural experiment That is correct: a sibling study, which corrects for the problem we're discussing, often contains aspects of a natural experiment, namely that the siblings tend to naturally be siblings, rather than raised together purely for the purpose of a study :)