the evolving mind

Two recent studies from the psychological sciences have perfectly illustrated the problem of variable correlation: Why we can’t jump to the conclusion of causation when we find an association between two measures.

1. Long-time cannabis use associated with psychosis

The finding of this study:

Young adults who have used cannabis or marijuana for a longer period of time appear more likely to have hallucinations or delusions or to meet criteria for psychosis, according to a report posted online today that will appear in the May print issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. [bold mine]

How much more likely, the inquiring mind would like to know. Fortunately, this article actually provided the information. A pleasant surprise.

[Y]oung adults who had six or more years since first use of cannabis (i.e., who commenced use when around 15 years or younger) were twice as likely to develop a non-affective psychosis and were four times as likely to have high scores on the Peters et al Delusions Inventory [a measure of delusion]. [bold mine]

Thank you for that precision in reporting.

In a study such as this, having potentially important cultural and political implications, I’d like to see not only the inclusion of a control group — to put things in an absolute perspective, so to speak — but also of a comparison group of alcohol users — to put things in a relative perspective, you could say.

That said, the point I wanted to make is that this finding was not the product of an experiment. No, researchers didn’t randomly assign youth to groups and one of these or more instructed to smoke X amount of marijuana. That type of study would generate results one could be confident about a causal relationship between the variables. But good luck getting a research grant for it. And getting it past the ethics board!

And the authors acknowledged the problem with the nature of their finding.

“The nature of the relationship between psychosis and cannabis use is by no means simple,” they write. Individuals who had experienced hallucinations early in life were more likely to have used cannabis longer and to use it more frequently…..[T]hose individuals who were vulnerable to psychosis (i.e., those who had isolated psychotic symptoms) were more likely to commence cannabis use, which could then subsequently contribute to an increased risk of conversion to a non-affective psychotic disorder.” [bold mine]

Exactly! Kudos to them for keeping that in mind and pointing it out.

Actually, do they deserve kudos for such an elementary level of critical thinking? Because it at least seems relatively rare, at least in the material provided to the more popular media, I’ll applaud it when I find it.

2. Teens with more screen time have lower-quality relationships

In a study on computer and video-game usage and quality of relationships, an association between variables was discovered.

Teens who spend more time watching television or using computers appear to have poorer relationships with their parents and peers, according to a report in the March issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

Again, the skeptical mind wants to know “how much poorer” and “how measured”?

The answer to the latter is “confidential questionnaire” as well as “an assessment of their attachment to parents and peers.” What kind of an assessment and by whom?To the former — kudos again! — the authors provide some numbers, such as:

The researchers also assessed interview responses from 976 individuals who were age 15 years in 1987 to 1988. Among these teens, more time spent viewing television was associated with lower attachment to both parents and peers. For every additional hour of television, teens had a 13 percent increased risk of low attachment to their parents and a 24 percent increased risk of low attachment to peers.

Conducting controlled experiments on lab rats and mice will only get you so far. And mice are notoriously bad video game players, so that would certainly be a confounding factor . . . . Could an experiment be conducted on this topic, with humans? I wonder.

Fortunately, as with the first study listed, these authors too, highlight the hazard of correlational findings by speculating about alternative explanations for theirs:

“However, it is also possible that adolescents with poor attachment relationships with immediate friends and family use screen-based activities to facilitate new attachment figures such as online friendships or parasocial relationships with television characters or personalities,” the authors write.

Exactly! And there are other possibilities.

So, do we conclude that the psychological sciences are worthless? No, not at all. But at the same time, we need to recognize the weak nature of much of the data generation and should refrain from making too much of non-controlled-experiment generated results.

Technorati Links: correlation, psychology, research

In a recent post, Human Sexuality and How Questionnaires Can Fail, I concluded this way:

To the philosophical dictum “know thyself” I would thus add, “and realize there are limits to your self-knowledge.”

Well darn. Should I have five points deducted from my post’s score for going a bit cliché? At least I ended with that bit of over-used Socratic tidbit. A news release out Washington University in St. Louis used it in their first line:

Since at least the days of Socrates, humans have been advised to “know thyself.”

Minus ten for them. But maybe not. For the idea was central to their announcement: Others may know us better than we know ourselves, study finds. Summarizing research results that appeared in the February 2010 issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the article states:

Simine Vazire, Ph.D., Washington University assistant professor of psychology in Arts & Sciences, has found that the individual is more accurate in assessing one’s own internal, or neurotic traits, such as anxiety, while friends are better barometers of intellect-related traits, such as intelligence and creativity, and even strangers are equally adept as our friends and ourselves at spotting the extrovert in us all, a psychology domain known as “extroversion.”

Interesting. Of course, as a hard-core skeptic, I’d like some numbers to go along with my study results, please. The only number I found was for the number of subjects: 165 volunteers. This Certainly makes it a preliminary finding/study. But what I really want to know is the degree of difference. How much better are we at gauging our internal states? How much better are others at gauging our intelligence and creativity?

Can we know something of ourselves? Sure. But perhaps we should keep in mind (as should psychotherapists everywhere) that what we know is not so much ourselves as it is our perceptions of ourselves. And not only does our power of perception have limits but it can be altered and skewed. Perhaps even mistaken.

Technorati Links: perception, psychology

I’m not fond of the term “debunk.” It implies that something was fully bunk to begin with and then was thoroughly “de”-ed.

A news release at ScienceDaily last week got me thinking about it. The title read, Study Debunks Millennia-Old Claims of Systematic Infant Sacrifice in Ancient Carthage

With a title like that I expected to encounter a slam-dunk argument. But check out the lead paragraph [bold mine].:

A study led by University of Pittsburgh researchers could finally lay to rest the millennia-old conjecture that the ancient empire of Carthage regularly sacrificed its youngest citizens. An examination of the remains of Carthaginian children revealed that most infants perished prenatally or very shortly after birth and were unlikely to have lived long enough to be sacrificed, according to a Feb. 17 report in PLoS One.

And that debunks? Okay, the title was likely written from the U of Pitt publicity department, or something, and not the researchers themselves. But a quote by the lead researcher and argumentation further into the body of the piece raises similar questions. [Again, bold mine.]

“Our study emphasizes that historical scientists must consider all evidence when deciphering ancient societal behavior,” Schwartz said. “The idea of regular infant sacrifice in Carthage is not based on a study of the cremated remains, but on instances of human sacrifice reported by a few ancient chroniclers, inferred from ambiguous Carthaginian inscriptions, and referenced in the Old Testament. Our results show that some children were sacrificed, but they contradict the conclusion that Carthaginians were a brutal bunch who regularly sacrificed their own children.”

Okay, we’ve got to consider all evidence. I assume some of that evidence is the weak stuff of the reports and inscriptions mentioned. Still. And, get this, the researchers’ results show that some infants were indeed sacrificed. But not as many as assumed. Um, does this qualify as a debunking? Moving a line of degree of something doesn’t seem to rise to that level, if you ask me.

And if you do ask me, debunking is a description of an activity better suited to Scoobie-Doo and his gang when they pull back a curtain to reveal the guy running the projector of the ghost image haunting some poor dupes. Now that’s a debunk.

Technorati Links: semantics, skepticism

Mood can influence your decisions. Not always, and perhaps not by much. But there is a growing body of research that demonstrates that thinking is not a purely cognitive (“mental”) activity. As mentioned yesterday, social context will influence it. Emotional state will too.

Recent research into mood and shopping decisions didn’t just compare good mood vs. bad, but two varieties of more pleasant moods. The news release posted at ScienceDaily included this summary of the results:

“We found that pride enhanced desire for public display products,” the authors write. “Feeling pride led people to want nice watches, shoes, and clothing for going out. However, pride did not enhance desire for home products.”

In contrast, the emotion of contentment led people to want products for their homes.

This research actually shows the influence of both emotion and social-emotion on decision-making. Interesting.

Why should findings like this be of interest to non-psychologists? Because any person aspiring to be a critical thinker should be aware of the many ways thought can be influenced. Including those ways outside of conscious awareness.

To know thyself is to understand how thinking can be skewed and to realize the importance of taking remedial counter-measures, whenever possible.

Technorati Links: psychology, skepticism

The Holy Momma — as depicted in a humongous Sicilian house of worship.

Me, I prefer houses of pancakes.

Look at all that gold. And the crowns.

I am skeptical of skeptics who “are religious.” For it is a focus on facts, measurable, replicable, reliable facts, that does or at least should lead the skeptic. Not a superficially glittering argument, not a finery of worldview. Facts.

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I’m sure it bothers many of you, too. To hear anyone with an alternative view, no matter how whacky and mis-informed, called a skeptic. So we have 911-skeptics, Holocaust-skeptics, vaccine-skeptics, and even evolution-skeptics.

The above is one of the reasons I am partly dissatisfied with the term, skeptic. The general nay-sayer connotation. To me, however, what makes a skeptic a true skeptic are attributes such as these: 1) an initial reaction to any claim with an attitude like this: “I wonder what the evidence is behind the claim?” 2) a commitment to scientific information, reasoning and critical thinking. And, perhaps most importantly, 3) a lack of a guiding commitment to a cause. Besides getting things right.

Consider the vaccine “skeptics.” I’m sure many of them consider themselves skeptics. And we skeptics are the ones being duped by big pharma and the government. But could we consider their general position as truly skeptical? I would say not. Why?

Most importantly, they seem to have prematurely arrived at a conclusion and are stuck there due to commitment to a cause. Their education on the matter is flawed/incomplete. They appear to lack a commitment to scientific information and critical thinking.

An article I found buried on my desk got me thinking about this: Refusing Chickenpox Vaccine Associated With Increased Risk of Disease.

The primary finding of the research was summed up in the lead -

Children whose parents refuse the varicella (chickenpox) vaccine appear more likely to develop the disease, according to a report in the January issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

Seems like good, basic information. No fear-mongering, just facts. Further down in the piece we get to this statement, which is relevant to the current situation we have of parents refusing to vaccinate their children because they have been poorly informed of the risks — one of them completely bogus (causing autism):

The findings suggest that if more parents refuse vaccines, the incidence of varicella and related complications also may increase over time, especially among individuals at high risk of severe infection (such as pregnant women, infants and those with compromised immune systems).

Frequently there is a selfishness underlying a guise of skepticism. Because I want to hate the government, I’m going to convince myself that 911 was a conspiracy. Because I hate something or other about Jews or the Jewish state, I’ll find a way to deny the Holocaust. Because I’m over-protective of my child, I’ll reduce its minuscule risk of complications by avoiding vaccines, and indirectly increase the risk of other children becoming ill.

Sometimes the selfishness can merely be a preference for maintaining one’s preferred worldview. The true skeptic, like the true scientist, is committed to the facts first, what they might imply comes later. Often it’s reversed in the pseudo-skeptic.

Speaking of facts. While the numbers weren’t great in the above mentioned chicken-pox study, at least the article provides them. Bravo for that.

Among the 133 children who developed chickenpox, seven (5 percent) had parents who refused the varicella vaccine, compared with three (0.6 percent) refusals among the 493 controls. “Compared with vaccine acceptors, children of vaccine-refusing parents had a nine-fold increased risk of varicella illness,” the authors write. “Overall, 5 percent of varicella cases in the study population were attributed to vaccine refusal. We believe these results will be helpful to health care providers and parents when discussing decisions about immunizing children.”

Yes. Provide information, good information, unbiased information, and let parents choose. Numbers are good information. Raw numbers have yet to be spun into an argument meant to persuade. And that is why they are better.

As an example of weaker science reporting, we have this news release: Cannabis Damages Young Brains More Than Originally Thought, Study Finds. This topic, too, is important and there are people who have very strong opinions about marijuana. If against it, they prefer to hear how bad it is for individual health and society in general. If for it, the opposite.

Me, I just want the facts.

In the article about cannabis damaging brains I encountered no numbers. No specific finding. Just this:

“Teenagers who are exposed to cannabis have decreased serotonin transmission, which leads to mood disorders, as well as increased norepinephrine transmission, which leads to greater long-term susceptibility to stress,” Dr. Gobbi stated.

Decreased by how much in how many subjects? Increased by how much? How much greater susceptibility? And how was it determined?

The lead paragraph of the article strikes me as advocating a position.

Canadian teenagers are among the largest consumers of cannabis worldwide. The damaging effects of this illicit drug on young brains are worse than originally thought, according to new research by Dr. Gabriella Gobbi, a psychiatric researcher from the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre. The new study, published in Neurobiology of Disease, suggests that daily consumption of cannabis in teens can cause depression and anxiety, and have an irreversible long-term effect on the brain.

I find this piece subtly biased. It skirts the line of engaging in fear-mongering. Of course, if I were selfishly anti-marijuana I would welcome the article. If selfishly pro-marijuana I’d find reasons to refute it. To deny its conclusions.

As a skeptic I am disappointed by the science reporting not so much for the minor slant I perceive, but because the quality of the information is weak. Where are the specifics, the numbers, the facts?

Job one for the skeptic seeks out information. Not information guided by their pre-existing position, thus likely to confirm it. Rather, he or she seeks out the best, most reliable information available. Specific information, information not yet spun and packaged into emotional implications.

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What is my Aesthetiopathy (TM)? My new get-rich scheme. It’s based on an ancient healing arts I just thought up. My first product will be tincture of orgasmically beautiful rose petal dew. You can use it to treat just about anything.

Technorati Links: alternative medicine, roses

For some time now, the anti-vaxers have been claiming that vaccines cause autism. And by not vaccinating their children they are causing, in the least, an increased risk of disease outbreak. Now research suggests not a single cause of autism (there are likely to be many contributing factors), but a potential causal link between a single factor and autism. And moms may be partly to blame.

Holy smokes! What are moms doing–feeding their kids too much mercury-rich fish? Nope. They are simply waiting longer to have children. And that is the factor, maternal age, that new research has linked to autism rates.

Advanced maternal age is linked to a significantly elevated risk of having a child with autism, regardless of the father’s age, according to an exhaustive study of all births in California during the 1990s by UC Davis Health System researchers. Advanced paternal age is associated with elevated autism risk only when the father is older and the mother is under 30, the study found. [source]

Hmm. How can you get mad at moms? They aren’t evil. They aren’t corporations or under government control. Shoot. Autism is bad (at least increased rates of), therefore we have to find something bad to blame.

Next thing we’ll learn is that too much apple pie is linked to drug use. (Maybe just marijuana late at night, and perhaps the link is causal in the other direction.)

Technorati Links: autism, psychology

Placebos can have treatment value and so they do have their place. If one thing can be safely said about acupuncture is that it has proven to effectively elicit a placebo-like response for a variety of conditions. But does it deserve to be classified as anything more than a placebo or placebo-like treatment? I don’t think so. Not at this point. Why? Because research has shown it to be no more effective than sham acupuncture: it doesn’t matter where the needles go or even if they penetrate the skin — the effect is the same (see the Skeptic’s Dictionary for more). Any expert on acupuncture should know this.

Alas, research underway at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago manifests ignorance. And likely promotes it.

The article announcing the new research, Young patients with chronic illnesses find relief in acupuncture, has much in it to criticize.

“Treating children with acupuncture is a new frontier,” said Dr. Paul Kent, pediatric hematology and oncology expert.

Yes, but is that a new frontier that you want to exploit with an ancient treatment of dubious merit?

“Acupuncture could be a potential solution to this dilemma of controlling pain in pediatric patients,” said Angela Johnson, Chinese medicine practitioner at Rush. [bold mine]

Sure, acupuncture could be effective. As could allowing the children to watch their favorite cartoons. Or a number of other benign therapy-ish activities. As for the bold text . . . egads. It seems they are already acupuncture-friendly at Rush, so I’m wondering how objective the results, and the reporting of the results, will be.

Now get a load of this. Here comes the bologna:

Acupuncture is the use of tiny, hair-thin needles which are gently inserted along various parts of the body. The therapy is based on the premise that patterns of energy flowing through the body are essential for health. This energy, called Qi, flows along certain pathways. It is believed that placing the tiny needles at points along the pathways reduce pain and improve the healing process. [bold mine]

What!!! That in a science article? How many people are going to swallow that bologna without chewing? If a treatment work is a separate question for how it works. And the above explanation is pure voodoo. There is absolutely no evidence for Qi and its presumed flow. None. And the fact that sham acupuncture research has shown needle placement to be irrelevant is strong evidence that the “points along the pathways” element is pure bunk.

The article closes with this sentence:

“Parents should be aware that integrative therapies like acupuncture can be helpful from the onset of disease and can have a tremendously positive influence on a child’s quality of life.” [bold mine]

Question: What do you get when you combine a treatment that effectively elicits a placebo-like response with a sales pitch consisting of ancient healing dogma?

Answer: Integrative therapies. Or, in this case, a needle in bologna.

Sales without substance has no place in modern medicine.

Technorati Links: acupuncture, alternative medicine, skepticism

Is high fashion evidence of big smarts? An article posted at ScienceDaily last month got me thinking about it: Use of Body Ornamentation Shows Neanderthal Mind Capable of Advanced Thought.

While I find the data in the research compelling, I’m not so sure about the inferences drawn.

The data:

Professor João Zilhão and colleagues examined pigment-stained and perforated marine shells, most certainly used as neck pendants, from two Neanderthal-associated sites in the Murcia province of south-east Spain (Cueva de los Aviones and Cueva Antón).

Couple that neck pendant with a pair of earrings and some perfume, and that Neanderthal is ready for a night on the town! (Or maybe the valley.) Assuming, of course, that the pendants were worn by females. Which is an assumption that could very well be false. Maybe the ornamentation was of the unisex variety. Or for the cavemen only.

Inference 1:

he practice of body ornamentation is widely accepted by archaeologists as conclusive evidence for modern behaviour and symbolic thinking among early modern humans but has not been recognised in Neanderthals — until now.

“Conclusive evidence” for symbolic thinking? I wonder. Is the . . . intuition (what’s in a word? a lot) “this looks attractive” evidence of symbolic thinking? If the pendants were traded as currency, I could more confidently accept the symbolic-thought conclusion.

Inference 2:

The widespread view of Neanderthals as cognitively inferior to early modern humans is challenged by new research . . . . Professor Zilhão said: “This is the first secure evidence that, some 50,000 years ago — ten millennia before modern humans are first recorded in Europe — the behaviour of Neanderthals was symbolically organised.”

Symbolically organized? Many birds decorate their nests with pretty bits of debris “intentionally” collected for the purpose. Even colorful scraps of human trash. Does this show a rudimentary form of a symbolic organization to their behavior as well? What about the bowerbird and its behavior?

Bird-brained fashion:

The most notable characteristic of bowerbirds is their extraordinarily complex courtship and mating behaviour, where males build a bower to attract mates. There are two main types of bowers. One clade of bowerbirds build so-called maypole bowers that are constructed by placing sticks around a sapling, in some species these bowers have a hut-like roof. The other major bowerbuilding clade builds an avenue type bower made of two walls of vertically placed sticks. In and around the bower the male places a variety of brightly colored objects he has collected. These objects — usually different among each species — may include hundreds of shells, leaves, flowers, feathers, stones, berries, and even discarded plastic items, coins, nails, rifle shells, or pieces of glass. The males spend hours arranging this collection [source].

From the bowerbirds behavior, would we likewise infer that it was capable of advanced thought, of having a symbolic organization to its behavior? Okay, there may be a fundamental difference between the creation of a decorated bower and that of fashioning a pendant, but I would make that distinction with caution. It seems all too easy for we humans to over-estimate the meaning of our own behavior, while under-estimating that of other species.

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