Week after week, month after month, the health (and mental health) news headlines blare with the latest “link” between two things. Take, for instance, a few articles from just this past week we’ve published… Childhood cancer? Less likely to marry. Obese? Depression is more …
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Dear John,
I must admit I clicked on this thinking it was about your wonderful and dedicated editor, Candy.
Regards Sonia
This is great. Keep calling them out!
Great article! I loved reading it the whole way through
. Keep up the grood work!
You seem to missing out on the structure and purpose of these types of studies. You seem to under the impression that in 1970 they attempted the study to uncover the reasons for adult violent criminal behavior. That isn’t the case. The research was done to periodically take as much data as possible in a random sampling of population. Then, future research could use that sampling to observe long-term behavior and develop correlations. Of what is unknown when the research started – at that is the point.
The research ended up showing a correlation between Candy and Violent Criminal Behavior. What does that mean? Nothing in terms of cause and effect. Why make that correlation then? Once you have the correlation NOW you can do more studies – research if there is a causal and predictive relationship between them, work out mechanisms for such. You have that target ‘Candy as a kid -> Violent behavior as an adult’, and you can now ask the ‘Why’ question you couldn’t have asked before. And that may lead to research that increases detecting violent behavior earlier, or preventing violent behavior, etc…
p.s. You said:
“But what’s even more astonishing is that the candy-eating behavior of 17,380 children was not reported. What if 10,000 of those children also reported eating candy at age 10 daily? Wouldn’t that basically nullify the researchers’ findings?”
The candy eating habits of the non-violent population was reported, and you quoted that report:
“About 69 percent of those who reported having committed violent acts also reported eating candy daily at age 10, compared to 42 percent of those who did not have a violent criminal past, the study authors noted.”
69% of the criminally violent. 42% of non-criminally violent. That is a difference of just more than 25%. Had the two populations behaved the same in terms of candy-eating, then only 15 of them would have eaten candy.
Also, the comparison between the 35/17415 violent criminals, vs. UK’s overall 2,034/100,000 violent crimes is hard to make. One counts the crimes, one the criminals. One is counted by law enforcement the other is self-reporting. One is for a specific year, the other is totaled over a different time period. So the differences appear drastic but it is hard to do it correctly and as is probably isn’t interesting (meaning accurate). My biggest concern with this study is it’s reliance on self-reporting for activities people generally don’t want to self-report.
Apparently Jerry Seinfeld was obsessed with lollies as a boy.
There’s no need to rail against a real or perceived disinformation campaign here. The researchers found a correlation. They did not claim causation. Any dietitian, naturopath, and even a few MDs will tell you that excessive sugar is detrimental to the body. One doctor who had extensive experience with diabetic patients even told me that sugar should be classified as a carcinogen due to its detrimental effects on the circulatory system, which lead to the type of hypoxia commonly associated with some cancers.
From an evolutionary perspective, we rarely had access to sugar, and now that it’s available in literally every place that sells food, we are really going for it as a species. It sets up a certain mild “high” that may become subtly addictive. If you think I’m full of hot air, try going just one week without eating something sweet (no fruits either, which have natural sugars). Everyone in the so-called First World is addicted to sugar.
The correlation that was implied but not stated in this research was that sugar may be associated with addictive behavior, which has already been shown to be clearly correlated with criminal activity.
Dr. Grohol, I understand that this is your website but I don’t understand this vitriol against researchers. Budgets are limited and not every study can take every variable into consideration. The research is one thing, sensational headlines are another. Please learn to separate the two in your mind. This type of reactionary reporting just makes people less likely to critically read and interpret the research on their own, instead of just skimming headlines on CNN and digesting the media’s conclusions without analysis.
One of the things these studies never investigate or control is Subliminal Distraction exposure.
Included in Culture Bound Syndromes are several behaviors involving sudden violence. When you investigate the ethnic groups involved they all have the potential for Subliminal Distraction exposure. (Going Postal – US, Amok – Malaysia, iich’aa – Navajo)
Families traditionally lived in too-small single-room arrangements. Huts, hogans, kivas, and even Tepee’s create the “special circumstances” for SD exposure. Such structures crowd individuals close together so that if one person engages deep mental investment to the point of light dissociation the movement of nearby family members is subliminally detected for SD exposure. (Daydreaming is enough dissociation.)
Recent outbreaks of Grisi Siknis after hurricane Fredrick, when Miskito Indian families would have been confined inside, points to SD exposure for that behavior. It involves delusional fights with invisible foes and attacks on people and things.
For students likely exposure comes from computer use in a busy location with detectable movement in peripheral vision. Too-close side-by-side seating in class rooms replicates those circumstances for someone with sensitivity for SD exposure. Making lecture notes requires full mental investment. Large nearby movements would be subliminally detected.
In seven years investigating I have been unable to find anyone in medicine or psychiatry aware this problem does or even could exist.
Statistical studies produce correlations which have a less than 1/200 chance of being relevant. This is why these investigations turn out wrong. Real scientists will tell you that they are a place to start looking for what to look for. They are not an end in themselves, heck most of the time they are not even the beginning. If you look at many of these studies they are conducted by either MDs or soft subject academics.
An MD, a clinical non-behavioural psychologist, an economist, a mathematician, a physicist, and a logician and Neils Bohr are on a train. They see a cow with brown spots in a field.
MD: “Eating grass gives you brown spots.”
Pysch: “Eating grass gave that cow brown spots.”
Econ.; “The cows in this area have brown spots from eating grass”
Math: “There is a cow in there with brown spots and it is eating grass.”
Physicist: “There is a cow with brown spots on this side which we are observing from, and it appears to be eating grass.”
Logician: “I appear to be observing at least half a cow with brown spots or dirty marks, and it is taking green strands into its mouth.”
Neils Bohr: “If in fact I exist in the form I appear to exist in and if what I know if the world is essentially correct then light is hitting the retinas of my eyes and forming a pattern when interpreted by my brain..”
The Rest: “Shut up Neils!!”
Sensationalism, lack of knowledge, and the need to produce all contribute to research like this, and articles like this, and discussions like this. Of course, everything is correlated with everything else. Correlation is the least informative, and perhaps most misinformative tool in the statistical armamentarium.
Writers should know this, readers should know this, and high school students should be taught that correlation might pique curiosity, and perhaps give guidance to a research direction, but little else.
Much the same could be said about “association.”