Comment on Using Tylenol(acetaminophen) during pregnancy may increase children’s autism and ADHD risk
SkaraBrae@lemmy.world 3 days ago
We used the search term “ADHD AND acetaminophen.”
That was how the studies were selected… Lol. Real robust “research” there, guys.
RobotToaster@mander.xyz 3 days ago
That’s literally how you do review studies.
obviously publication bias exists, a study that shows nothing (good or bad) happening when a drug is used is less likely to get published, but that’s a broad problem.
SkaraBrae@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Search for studies containing links between ADHD and Tylenol to determine if there’s a link between ADHD and Tylenol. P-hacking much? That is straight-up cherry-picking results to fit the hypothesis. 💩
Blueberrydreamer@lemmynsfw.com 3 days ago
A search for those terms returns any study that looks at those terms, regardless of whether or not a link is indicated. How else do you expect to determine the validity of a hypothesis if you don’t look at studies that test that hypothesis?
SkaraBrae@lemmy.world 3 days ago
No, it doesn’t. It returns studies that contain Tylenol AND ADHD. There’s an immediate bias in favour of the hypothesis. They should be searched separately, then you would look at how many contain both, then look at how many correlate the two. Presenting only the data that correlates the two is presenting that data out of context: choosing the data to fit the hypothesis. P-hacking.
The media has done the same thing with climate change. They present for debate one scientist ‘for’ climate change and one scientists ‘against’ climate change as though there is a 50/50 chance that climate change is real, despite 99% of scientists falling on the ‘for’ side. A balanced debate would have involved 100 climate scientists with ‘1’ against and 99 ‘for’. Instead we now have people who think that climate change denial is reasonable because the data was presented in an unbalanced, or biased, way.
If you only present that data that you think is relevant then you bias the result in your favour. If the data for all studies investigating the cause of ADHD was included, and then the % including Tylenol, then the % correlating Tylenol with ADHD, you would have a very different number… A much more honest one.