Comment on Using Tylenol(acetaminophen) during pregnancy may increase children’s autism and ADHD risk
SkaraBrae@lemmy.world 3 days agoNo, 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.
Blueberrydreamer@lemmynsfw.com 2 days ago
I understand your passion here, but it’s a little misguided.
The goal of this study is not to try to determine a singular cause for autism. That’s some outside political bullshit that’s relevant in a broad sense, but not the stated purpose of this study.
They set out to look at a potential link between Tylenol and ADHD, so they look at studies involving Tylenol and ADHD. It’s pretty straightforward. P-Hacking would be selecting only studies that did show a positive correlation between Tylenol use and ADHD.
Your climate change metaphor is just wildly off base, I don’t know what to say here honestly.
As others here have pointed out, the study is mildly flawed but the real issue is that the inconclusive results are being wildly misrepresented.
SkaraBrae@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Yeah… 😬 That climate change example was a bit of a stretch. I was just highlighting how easy it is to mislead people with part of the picture, rather than the whole ugly mess.
I still think that omitting studies into the cause of ADHD that don’t include Tylenol is misrepresenting the data.
If there are 1000 studies into the cause of ADHD, and only 50 mention Tylenol, then omitting the other 950 is dishonest. Let’s say 25 of the 50 find a correlation, then 25/50 is way different to 25/1000! That’s where I see the P-hacking.
Thanks for being civil, too.
Blueberrydreamer@lemmynsfw.com 2 days ago
Of course! It’s always refreshing to engage with someone with good intentions.
So, this would only be a misrepresentation if the authors were claiming to look for causes of Autism.
Good science is based on testing a hypothesis. ‘What causes X’ is not a testable hypothesis, it’s too broad, the variables aren’t defined. ‘Does Y effect X?’ is a testable hypothesis, and a solid basis for initial research.
The question of ‘what causes autism’ is a huge one that can’t be answered by a single study. Each potential factor needs to be evaluated on its own merit, and this study does exactly that (with admittedly questionable results).
However, something like the recent HHS report is exactly the place where it’s wildly irresponsible to present only one potential hypothesis as a ‘cause’. That’s where we would expect a high level view of a range of established factors (since obviously there is no one ‘cause’).