Slashdot Mirror
TV Really Might Cause Autism
Alien54 writes "Cornell University researchers are reporting what appears to be a statistically significant relationship between autism rates and television watching by children under the age of 3. The researchers studied autism incidence in California, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Washington state. They found that as cable television became common in California and Pennsylvania beginning around 1980, childhood autism rose more in the counties that had cable than in the counties that did not. They further found that in all the Western states, the more time toddlers spent in front of the television, the more likely they were to exhibit symptoms of autism disorders. The Cornell study represents a potential bombshell in the autism debate."
It's for the children! Won't somebody PLEASE think of the children! FORGET IT! Ban electricity! For the children! For the children!
What about internet use, with sites such as youtube, will that cause autism as well?
Well, cable television was becoming more prevalent, yes, but wasn't detection of autism and recognition of its status as a disorder also becoming more acknoledged?
Oh, and exactly what debate is there about autism? I think I missed something here.
~ C.
oh that's A.D.D., what was this post about?
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
I haven't watched TV for 8 years now. And sometimes I think people are really fucked up by TV these days.
;-)
Politicans are trained by personality coaches to look great on TV.
So I guess TV is responsible for everything.
My opinion might be wrong. But at least it's my own opinion
Damn, I read that as "TV Really Might Cause Atheism".
How disappointing!
Everyone, let's say this together. Come on, I want everyone to join in. Let's all yell it at the top of our lungs until the media hears us. Ready? Here we go:
CORRELATION DOES NOT EQUAL CAUSATION!
CORRELATION DOES NOT EQUAL CAUSATION!
CORRELATION DOES NOT EQUAL CAUSATION!
Now stop reporting on every correlation between disease X and social variable Y as though it were somehow equivalent to a randomized double-blind study on the effects of Y on X. Thank you.
"Toddlers are the stormtroopers of the Lord of Entropy."
I guess not anymore, huh?
Learn to separate truth from illusion. Because in this world, it's the hardest thing to do.
I call bullshit.
That is, it is entirely possible (and plausible) that a correlation exists. However I'd interpret it in the reverse way. That is, the study shows just that children born with autism are more likely to spend time watching TV (knowing the features of autism, this is entirely possible).
Moreover, the existence of a correlation does not show necessarily a cause-effect relationship. Do you remember Lisa Simpson showing Homer a rock that protected from tigers?
This kind of papers are what my collegues call "scientific pornography" -papers thrown up just to stir up controversy, but based on very fragile assumptions and with a few data inflated as much as possible. Quite a common occurrence, sadly, these days.
-- Patent no.123456: A way to personalize
There was some research that linked an unusual relationship with the mother with the incidence of autism, although it has fallen foul of modern political correctness it has to my knowledge never been disproved. TVs are incapable if being emotionally responsive, and I would expect that parents who leave their kids in front of a TV for long periods are more likely to be emotionally distant from their children.
Perhaps the problem is not Television, but rather, the quality of the shows catching children's interests. I highly doubt educational tv is causing autism. The content on channels like nickelodeon, disny, and even MTV is highly lacking. The method of constantly changing frames and displaying lots or colors does keep someone watching, but it makes it hard to concentrate. Could this be the cause?
What about the content that children assimilate into their social consciousness? Do children who watch more educational programming like PBS, Discovery, and Animal Planet exhibit less symptoms of autistic bahevior than those who watch "junk food" like Cartoon Network, MTV, and VH1?
As I grew up, I didn't have cable until I was in 4th grade. I was practically limited to PBS. I grew up with Sesame Street, Mr. Rogers, Wild Kingdom, NOVA (yes, I watched NOVA as a kid), and a dash of British programs. My junk food TV was basically introduced after I had learned many critical social and language skills. While my behavior may be construed as peculiar, I am hardly autistic.
To a noob, root is like a gay bar...and he's wearing assless chaps
At least in Europe, watching the cable channels makes it hard to deny that the mental disabilities occur prior to the airing of most programs :/
Could there POSSIBLY be other factors at work?
How about the increased understanding of and accurate diagnosis of autism and autism-related disorders around that time?
How about the repetitive nature of television programming, especially kids shows, appealing to autistics as a source of consistency and comfort?
How about the fact that the places getting cable were also the places getting elevated concentrations of geeks, who seem to have genetic quirks that have this tendancy to result in autism-like disorders? Could that POSSIBLY have ANYTHING to do with a rise in autism in Washington, _Oregon_, and *CALIFORNIA*?
All tubes causes autism, so internet as well...
Dunno about TFTs
From TFA:
Now, don't misunderstand me: they may have very interesting things to say, but IMHO, a solid background in medicine and especially autism should be required to launch "bombshells" of this nature... This being said, my 2 1/2 years old is never going to watch TV again. Just to be on the safe side.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
Sitting your child in front of a talking box all day instead of having a real human taking care of them impairs their ability to communicate? Who would have thunk it?
:)
Though I am no expert in child behavior or learning styles, from what I have heard/seem most all children learn by observing. If most of their attention is devoted to passive entertainment (Television), they are observing a system in which they do not get to interact or communicate within.
Though I don't want to pull a Jack Thompson here and blame the tech for all of today's problems, I also think television is at least partially responsible for many of the behavioral "conditions" faced by today's children (mainly ADD). I don't deny the existence of ADD as a valid condition, however it is my belief that it's a learned trait rather than a naturally occuring condition and that television helps it along quite a bit. Maybe I am way off base here (Dammit Jim, I'm an engineer not a Children's psychologist!) however I think that reducing the amount of time kids spend in front of the bewb tube can only be a good thing, even if it only means they have to spend more time with their folks.
The Himalayan country of Bhutan only started recieving television in 1999. This was followed by a drastic increase in crime (including murder) in the tiny nation. It would be interesting to see if there's also an increase in autism, as this study would suggest.
"A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"
Just keep watching the NY Rangers through the years like I have.
"save a cow, eat a vegetarian"
...but over here in the UK we had broadcast TV for ages before we had cable. I'd guess you guys over there Is there something special about cable TV that would contribute to autism? Over and above the programming content I mean, which I assume didn't change all that drastically at the introduction of cable (except for the public access stuff we find so amusing over here!)
Game dev and music blog
Another theory is ethyl mercury in vaccines. From Wikipedia:
Dr. Mark Geier and his son David Geier have published eleven peer-reviewed studies on the possible link between autistic spectrum disorders and childhood vaccines (TCVs). In their first study, they compared the number of complaints associated with TCVs, administered between 1992 and 2000, to the number of complaints resulting from a thimerosal-free vaccine administered between 1997 and 2000. The children who received greater amounts of ethylmercury from TCVs were more likely to have a complaint filed with the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). Further studies by the Geiers yielded similar results. In 2006, the Geiers published an article , "Early Downward Trends in Neurodevelopmental Disorders Following Removal of Thimerosal-Containing Vaccines", which contends that recent data confirms a reduction in autism diagnoses corresponds directly with the removal of TCVs from childhood vaccination schedules.
How ironic that an 'Overbooked Benefit for Autism Education' may itself be the cause of authism.. In case you are a cat and have missed it here's a clip.
And when you gaze long enough into the code, the code will also gaze into you.
Is it the fact that you're watching TV that's causing it, the actual device you're viewing TV on, or the fact that most of TV is complete crap?
Before anybody starts jeering stupidly and making wise about this subject, perhaps people should read this article from Scientific American: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&colI D=1&articleID=000B7F38-893D-152E-88E283414B7F0000
Now for some of the usual comments people tend to spew out:
Correlation is not causation
This is true - but correlation indicates that there MAY BE a causation. Thus, when things are strongly correlated and there are other reasons to suspect a causal connection, it is well worth researching further.
Increased awareness
Perhaps 'increased awareness' of autism means that we discover more cases that were not previously recognised? Perhaps, but I don't think it is very likely. Full-blown autism is not something you overlook. It is a serious disorder that in most cases means lifelong disability, and it is unlike any other psychiatric disorder. The increased awareness, I suspect, mostly means that now we spot more of the milder cases, but it is not my impression that this is what this research is about.
So why is it that people on this list are hostile to the idea that maybe TV can contribute to the emergence of autism? My guess is that this is because people on the list tend to be heavy consumers of passive entertainment, like TV and computer games; you don't want to hear that it may be bad for you.
If you have read the article I referred to above, you will know that autism probably has a lot to do with the development of 'mirror neurons' in the brain; a neural system that makes us able to imitate what other people do. Like all neural systems, the mirror neurons need to be trained, and TV is probably not a very good role model for that, at least not if you are already weak in this area. So it is actually quite reasonable to suspect that watching too much TV at an early age may contribute to the development of autism.
The MMR vaccine:
http://www.badscience.net/?p=249
Is it CRT sets that are causing it? Cable vs. Over The Air shows? The quick cuts and overstimulation of modern television?
Also, have they studied the effect of watching television while wearing a tinfoil hat?
There is a question here of why there is correlation in the first place. If it isn't the causation factor, what factor is causing the rise of autism that just happens to correlate with the rise of television viewing in these areas?
My neice (now 12) is autistic. Whether it is coincidence or not, shortly after her dose of thermosil, she stopped talking and relating. She can talk a bit, knows the alphabet, etc, but her using them is very rare and pretty much only at her discretion.
It's very hard to connect with her. To get her attention 95% of the time is just about impossible, television on the other hand, has no problem. It's one of the few things that can always get her attention. I've always wondered if it's something of a signal processing problem. Television being two dimensional, perhaps it's just easier for them to grok. Also, the shows she tends to watch (Sesame Street, etc), all the characters usually are brightly contrasted and have high pitched, funny easily discernable voices.
-William Shatner can be neither created nor destroyed.
CORRELATION DOES NOT EQUAL CAUSATION!
I think that the study itself really drives this point home. If you read the actual paper (PDF file) a major part of their case is:
1) When the weather is lousy, children watch more television
2) Places with a lot of rain and snow have more autistic children
I'd imagine that when the weather is bad, children also are more likely to use umbrellas. Therefore, by their logic, umbrellas cause autism.
The paper is titled "DOES TELEVISION CAUSE AUTISM?"
The abstract claims: "Our precipitation tests indicate that just under forty percent of autism diagnoses in the three states studied is the result of television watching due to precipitation, while our cable tests indicate that approximately seventeen percent of the growth in autism in California and Pennsylvania during the 1970s and 1980s is due to the growth of cable television."
(my emphasis)
Neither Slashdot's editors nor posters, nor "the media", are blithely claiming causation based on a paper that reports correlation. The researcher paper is clearly suggesting causation, not just correlation.
Perhaps you'd like to contact the authors and inform them that correlation does not equal causation. Maybe they'll scrap their research and start again based on your insightful input.
I am autistic. I have never owned a television. My family has never owned a television. To date, this has not changed. Television may be a contributing factor but it is far from necessary for the development of autism. I am still holding out for a genetic difference.
(Cue 'rain man' quotes).
From the study:
Using the Bureau of Labor Statistics' American Time Use Survey, we first establish that the amount of television a young child watches is positively related to the amount of precipitation in the child's community. This suggests that, if television is a trigger for autism, then autism should be more prevalent in communities that receive substantial precipitation. We then look at county-level autism data for three states - California, Oregon, and Washington - characterized by high precipitation variability. Employing a variety of tests, we show that in each of the three states (and across all three states when pooled) there is substantial evidence that county autism rates are indeed positively related to county-wide levels of precipitation.
Perhaps there's something in the water.
We recently had heard in the office over one of the Yellow Machine that's made by Anthology Solutions.
again! Do those people who wrote CORRELATION IS NOT CAUSATION over and over again in their lame effort to earn slashdot karma even read the report?
Probably not. Because if they did, they will see that the paper is not one of those correlation-therefore-causation blog-level research they often read.
From the paper's abstract
In other words, this study is not about looking for the causes of autism but about verifying if the correlation predicted by hypothesis manifests itself. It's an entirely different thing.
Maybe the next time people recite the correlation-is-not-causation karma (without actually knowing a hint about statistics) perhaps they should read the research paper first?
First, my background. My brother is autistic, my brain falls under the aspergers category. I can say that neither of us watched much TV, educational or otherwise, as kids. While statistical analysis can be useful, this research is just a joke. At the same time as TVs were increasing so was pollution, sea temperature, and the minimum wage. All of which you can link to anything you feel like.
There is a LOT of evidence that Autistic Spectrum Disorders are genetic, there is some evidence it is environmental, but really it is leaning way towards the genetic.
Statistical analysis shows some interesting facts. In the last 20 years, the number of autism cases has gone up, but then, the methods of diagnosis have improved, so lets ignore this one.
Autism concentrations however make more interesting reading.
Places with high geek concerntrations, programmers, engineers, etc, give a high proportion of autistic births. In the last 20 years, geeks have lost a lot of the social stigma and have become desirable partners, thus leading to an increase in births to the techie group, and a disproportionate number of autistic or aspie kids in that group. Maybe this is environmental, are all techies bad parents? More likely it is genetic.
A lot of information about autism is now available. It is possible to see that areas of the brain in autistic people work slightly differently. Now Im not a neuroscientist, but really, can environmental issues cause physical changes in the brain? I dont see how. Im willing to be proven wrong there but it just makes sense to me that it is genetic.
But while autism is obviously a bad condition, not all conditions on the autistic spectrum are, in my opinion, bad. I myself am perfectly happy with my aspie brain, making me somewhat socially uncomfortable, but technically very capable. I wouldnt take a 'cure' even if one were found. Where would we be without people like Einstein, Mozart, and other amazingly high achievers who have had conditions classed as autistic spectrum disorders. The world would be a poorer place without them.
what the hell is TV ?? I only wach internet series 16 hours a day!!!
Many of us whach TV to try to understand the world, since as far as we can see, its a deeply f**ked up place, where people kill for fun, where people wage wars because they can and where people do jobs they don't want to do and then moan about it, yet refuse to do anything about it.
TV helps us understand the insane world around us, help us learn how people respond, what fatial movements mean, what body language as a whole means. We don't know thease things almost from birth like the majority of people. We have to learn them like somebody would learn quantum mecanics, except feelings don't have finite rules.
one fact for you, they tested all the enterants for Oxford Uni in the UK one year, and found that somewhere in the reagon of 75% had an "autistic spectrum disorder", and I would be interested to see about how many people on
anybody interested in more info, email me or message me on gmail (badspyro@)
thanks,
Badspyro
Actually it was spiders, not tigers...(not that I'm an anonymous avid Simpsons fan or anything
Autism is more than inability to communicate. Milder forms reveal another side: stronger visualisation.
Maybe children are adapting to our more technological world? Certainly there'll be those who fall off the end of the Bell curve, but it would seem a shame to me if the medical response was "Deviance. Let's eradicate it!"
Wikileaks, no DNS
lol!!!!! i watchd tv evry day as a kid and igot no adhd!!!!1111111!!!!!!!!!
In Canada we have warning labels on cigarette packs. Big warning labels. Cigarettes cause cancer, etc. So, naturally, some dollar store entrepreneur creates fake warning labels.
;-)
... it's obviously not a perfect analogy, but I've been debugging way too long to care]
e -against-the-mighty-machines-day-9-of-no-tv.
Anyway, when I was a stereotypical angry young philosophy student, I thought it would be fun to make my own fake warning labels to put on my cigarette packs. So, who did I turn to? Hume, of course.
So, my cigarette packs had a big warning: "Correlation Does Not Imply Causation" on them. I thought it was a good joke, by philosophy joke standards anyway.
Now, I knew perfectly well that in this case even though it did not imply it, it was in fact true. Of course cigarretes caused cancer. In many cases correlation is, um, correlated with causation. But I was 18 so I didn't care; I thought it was funny.
What a joke.
So, the point is: correlation is a start. If there is a correlation, you should look for ways to establish whether causation exists or not.
Now, you usually cannot do real proper experiments on humans with smoking (starting with a large random set of non-smokers, making half of them smoke their entire lives, and seeing how many of each group died of cancer). The ethics boards at the university wouldn't approve
So, do you just give up and say "thank you for smoking" or "well, we'll never prove anything according to David Hume then". No, you don't. There are statistical tools like factor analysis which let people smarter than me figure out how much of A is (probably) caused by B, etc.
Anyway, I have a 2 year old son now, and stuff I thought was funny at 18 is certainly not funny anymore over a decade later. I quit smoking. I certainly wouldn't give my son a cigarette, ever.
However, if there is a strong correlation between TV and autism, I have to wonder whether I am in effect doing something similar. What if further anaylsis proves (as much as you can prove anything) that it is indeed a cause?
What would I have done??
[yeah, yeah, there's a mountain of evidence in one of the cases vs. one study in another
"Correlation Does Not Imply Causation" does not mean act insanely. You have only ever seen gravity by correlation, but you still believe in it. (Yes you do. Wipe that smirk off your face.)
Now, coincidentally, I also cancelled cable TV after reading Gregg Easterbrook's original Slate article. Obligatory blog whoring: I blogged about it at http://peterarmstrong.com/articles/2006/10/08/rag
Do I think there is conclusive, Hume-would-be-proud proof that TV causes autism. No.
Do I think that TV is good for young children?
Would I give my 2 year old son a cigarette?
Correlation is need to proove causation. But by itself alone it doesn't implie it. Other finding are necessary like models that explains WHY such causality should be expected (What's the biochemistry involved ?). Or see Koch's postulate : expremients that proove that by adding/removing the candidate cause ou can somewhat control the effect.
But on the other hand some mecanism is partially known. Also there are finding pointing to the fact that autism is associated and may be caused by some abnormal brain wiring that already happen in utero, thus debunking the old "it's-the-mother's-relationship-fault" supposed cause. Also if it start that early in the developpement, later exposure to the TV is less likely to be the main causing factor.
And in this case I think it's clearly a case of pure correlation that depend on an additionnal common cause. From what I've understood during my studies (got a degree in medecine) and what I've observed (one of my brothers has autism) : one of the caracteristics of an autist is being much less capable to anticipate or to cope with complex not easily predicted event. In this case the TV is reassuringly predictible : once turned it just plays the show. No complex social interraction required. And also, if wired to a VCR or DVD player, the TV can always play that specific shows that the autist knows and can correctly anticipate, etc...
TV isn't a cause *of* autism. But, the cognitive mecanism that are specific of autism, also happen to find the TV very reassuring.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I don't even own a TV!
-Alien54
Yes I agree there is a correlation. My 6yo who has Aspergers Syndrome would watch TV all day if we let him. But did TV cause AS? Or does Autism encourage TV watching? Yes there is a link, but which way does it go?
Do violent video games cause violence or are violent people attracted to violent video games?
5) Autism is correlated with the type of parents (i.e genetic causes) that prefer cable TV.
There is no such thing as luck. Luck is nothing but an absence of bad luck.
Don't sit to close to the TV. It will make you go sterile & ruin your eyes.
I picked a paragraph from Wikipedia hastily and had not realised that it is only about the work of two people.
Wasn't "correlation equals causation" one of the things on Carl Sagan's infamous "bunk detector"?
Seriously. This study shows nothing except that autistic children watch a lot of TV. Does this mean that TV watching causes autism, or does it mean that autistic children tend to gravitate towards the television (perhaps turning TV into some kind of crude autism detector), or do autism and excessive TV viewing have some third common cause?
The study definitely deserves attention. But showing a statistically significant relationship only means that this is worth looking at; by itself it doesn't mean anything else.
http://pages.prodigy.net/unohu/brainwaves.htm
Watching television does alter people's brain waves.
http://www.epilepsy.org.uk/info/photo.html
There is also evidence that television may cause seizures in some epileptics.
The most probable way for television to affect people's brains is through the eyes. The eyes convert the frequencies that hit it into electrical signals. The strongest frequency would be 60 Hz. but 30 Hz is present and so are its harmonics.
The other possibility is acoustic. Most TVs emit audio at 15 kHz. Most of us can't hear it past a certain age but it's there anyway.
Television also radiates a lot of EM signals. You really have to sit near the set to get much of those but some people do sit too near.
So, we know that television does have neurological effects on some people. It seems plusible that television might cause neurological disorders.
Next thing you know people will be saying that the decline in pirates is directly related to global warming!
But seriously now.... after actually skimming over the study we it does have some actual points, but seems to
miss some societal problems, it instead is based entirely in proving the relation between television and autism,
even going as far as to provide precipitation data. Unfortunately the yearly precipitation and yearly cable subscription graphs do not interact enough to provide any supporting evidence of the problem.
To me, it is likely that the statistical data of diagnosis reflects societal awareness of the problem.
Lets consider full length films and films made for television, taken from http://autistic-people.com/autism-movies.html
By 5 year blocks, the number of autism related movies released, vs california autism rate by birth year ( page 61 of the pdf)
1970-1975: 2 movies, 0.0005
1975-1980: 4 movies, 0.0005
1980-1985: 1 movies, 0.0008
1985-1990: 3 movies, 0.0013
1991-1995: 7 movies, 0.0027
Gee, it seems that there might be some kind of coorelation there too, now doesn't it....
Non sequitur: Your facts are uncoordinated.
For those who want to check the report, the discussion about interpreting the results starts around page 37 in the first PDF, and covers the correlation vs causation issue. They even say that this is not definiate proof of causation, but correlation here does strongly support the hypothesis.
It appears that these researchers actually _do_ know their statistics, unlike most of the trashy flawed research that comes out of the medical profession (and from psychologists in particular).
--
Simon
Its F*ucking Barney and the TeleTubbies
Seriously - Cable introduced many more channels and childrens programming creating what we know today as the cable baby sitter. This resulted in longer viewing times and child oriented visualizations - think Japanese anime rather than Sesame Seed Street.
I believe this may be tied to the effect on the brain of the visual stimulation in conjunction with significantly prolonged exposure.
So what do we do with all the lawsuits alledging vaccines are responsible for increased autism rates? --- Oops.
Please note that the study referred to here has not been published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. Until the authors do so this paper cannot be seen as scientific evidence. Publishing your results in the popular press before having it checked by other researchers in the field is simply bad science.
The other anonymous coward is very right in pointing at the problem of correlation vs causation. The correlation reported here may simply be due to differences in referral rates. People who watch a lot of television may be better informed about autism and may seek help more often than people who don't watch television. This study does not provide any evidence for a causal link between watching television and risk for autism.
The word Autism is a catchall for a wide spectrum of disorders, from severly impaired kids to the fashionably diagnosed little darlings belonging to attention-starved suburban housewives, which tends to muddy the diagnostic waters a bit. Most seriously Autistic children manifest symptons almost from birth. Despite what some parents claim as a regression during the toddler years, I suspect kids are born with it. It's simply difficult to diagnose a child with a psychological disorder before they are old enough to even walk or talk.
If you want a controlled study, here it is: I have two children, by the same wife. One is perfectly normal. The other is autistic. I suspected there was something wrong with the Autistic one by the time he was nine months old. (Most babies love to be held. This one was completely hyper, and would squirm out of everyone's arms as soon as he was physically capable of it. He rarely slept. He walked early, but displayed odd mannerisms. While many toddlers are fascinated by television, he manifested no interest in watching it at that age at all.) But he was not diagnosed until he was three, because there was very little diagnostic criteria to go one. Babies really don't do much other than cry, eat, sleep and poop.
They both watched plenty of TV by the time they were three. Just like I did in the sixties. They are 10 and 11 now. I taught the eldest to read the usual way, and he is a voracious reader. He still loves TV. And video games. And fart jokes, and every other thing a normal eleven year old loves. He's still not autistic. The youngest, the Autistic one, would rarely sit still for a story. He liked to flip through books, but didn't want to be read to. He can read now, though. Know why? I turned the English subtitles on whenever he watched his favorite DVD's.
He learned to read watching television.
This study is bunk. It's not a theory. It's more like the plot to Halloween III.
This may seem weird but should not be so surprising. Autism is
Since autism is clearly related to language learning, we studied it in Philosophy, when I was at Birckbeck College. Children that are autistic have difficulty comprehending that others can see the world differently from the way they do. They will not understand for example that if a character in a muppet show hides something, the other characters in the show won't know that it is hidden.I have just been reading Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations where through a series of questions he gets to the complexity of language learning, how much of a social process it is, how much it involves games - should in fact be seen as a set of overlapping games. When playing with a human being, there is always immediate feedback between a child and the people and objects around it, which involves smiles, cuddles and frowns, movements, hopping up and down, hiding, etc. The people on kids programs try the best to do that, but they can never directly respond to the child's immediate emotions, and they are in the end only ever a two dimensional picture on a box. So that the objects they move don't have a physical presence for the child. If those objects fall they can't hurt the child, if the people speak about an object, the child can't participate, if the person lies the child can't be deceived.
Children placed all day in front of a TV may not cry, but there is something fundamental that they will be missing.
If you RTFA, you'll see that they control for the issue you're talking about.
As a pediatrician trained in child development (and the parent of an autistic teenager), I've got a strong interest and background in this, and I can tell you quite plainly that the paper is crap.
This is a spectacularly good example of really stupid statistical games. I only skimmed it (Acrobat Reader blew up on me as I tried to save it, and I'll get another copy later), but these people did the following amazing things:
1. Accept as fact that autism itself is increasing (as opposed to the diagnosis of autism). This is possible, but contentious and somewhat controversial. I'll spare you the full story, but the general opinion is that while the disorder is more common than it once was, changes in diagnosis (and benefits for diagnosis) make it hard to do more than guess at the actual rate of increase.
2. Consider de novo a hypothesis "that early childhood television watching is an important trigger for the onset of autism." They do note that nobody else has bothered to consider this, but don't spend much time wondering why. Apparently, they're special. Perhaps because nobody has measured this in a useful manner? They do admit this, but they find a solution!
3. Because there are no good numbers for early television watching, they use precipitation as a proxy for television watching. Apparently, if it rains, you're likely inside with the tube on. They do show a strong positive correlation between rainfall and autism. Yep, that's right - rain causes autism.
4. But wait - it can't be the rain, it has to be the television! That's what we started trying to prove, anyway, so it's important to stay focused. They try it another way: they consider the availability of cable. They show that autism correlates with the availability of cable. No, really, it does. Of course, diagnosis of a LOT of chronic developmental syndromes increases with affluence, because of the increased availability of medical care and the reduction in "grab-bag" diagnoses like "mental retardation". But still, it must be the cable.
5. Having neatly done all the "proof" they require, they then proceed to tear the numbers apart and "prove" that 40% of autism in California is triggered by early television watching, while only 17% is triggered in PA. Why, we don't know, but it appears that rain, or cable, or maybe just TV is more powerful in CA than in PA. Or something like that.
I don't have time for a complete fisking right now, but I may do it later. Aside from the basic methodologic errors (confusing correlation with causation, adopting a highly questionable proxy indicator without validating it, and spending almost no time ruling out confounding factors or tainted data), there remain the dozens of smaller tactical problems that should have sidelined this turkey. I assume the peer reviewers, if there are any, were on drugs.
This paper will be a bombshell, all right. I'll use it over and over again as I explain to medical students and colleagues that you don't have to have much in the way of actual brains to write a scientific paper. Or, as I said about another paper in journal club once, "the font is nice, and I like the layout of the tables. It's a shame the actual science is such garbage."
Drawing conclusions from certain developments can be true, but can be just as misleading. It rarely is ONE reason. For reference, see the RIAA's claim of the decline in music sales being solely due to music being copied.
Can there be a relation between autism and TV? Yes. But there are many, many other variables to take into account. The world is changing around our children, mostly, you, as a parent, aren't what your parents used to be. Or are you like your mom/dad?
It's not TV, in my Opinion, rather it's the lack of parental attention. The TV is a very convenient nanny, but it's not the source of all evil. And it certainly is not something that can substitute for education and kid rearing. Mostly because, unlike a TV, a parent can't simply be switched off if it gets annoying (didn't we all wish for that function as kids?). Without that, though, you are not able to solve a conflict. A conflict with a machine can be solved by switching the machine off, thus eliminating the conflict without a solution.
A solution with a human being requires either compromise or overpowering. In a parent/child relationship, it's usually the latter, but to the disadvantage of the child (i.e. it's being overruled). In other words, as hard as it may sound, the child learns that yes, you can lose. And it learns to deal with losing. You can't lose against a machine.
And by learning to lose, you learn to cope with it. You learn strategies that allow you to deal with loss and disappointment. Now, when you grow up and are unable to cope with either, there are a few ways this can manifest. You can either be a psycho who is unable to accept defeat and become more and more violent until your goals are reached. Those are the ones that give fuel to those that want to ban violent games and TV. Indirectly, they're even right. But only because the parents failed in the first place.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It is possible that it is not the increase in TV, but the content. TV did have a very liberal bent to it. Under regan, it was de-regulated and allowed to be monopolized. Since then, large conservative companies have been gobbling it up creating TV in their image. News is perhaps the last set of shows to move towards neo-conism and I would say that it became that way a decade ago. But even the kiddie programming is mixing reality with what the promoters want. The old cartoons that were clearly not real we would watch for a few hours on sat. are gone and instead the have a kind of mixed garbage that is ran over disney and all the others.
Your audience is growing.
Having a TV witch-hunt is not going to solve this (though it might solve a lot of other social ills IMO). If the cause really is something as nebulous as interpersonal contact, there will be no identifiable "cause" that can be excised from our children's lives. However, increasing the time we spend interacting with our children instead of sitting them in front of the goggle-box or Columbine-simulators (joke!) can only be a good thing. Pull this study to pieces if you will, but please at least accept the beneficial insights.
Meta will eat itself
Autism,...caused by this,cured by that,whoa wait a minute,it must be something else.
My 18 yr old son is autistic.During his first 5 yrs of life we only had a 13 inch television that mostly wasn't on till he was in bed.No cable either.
Guess that shoots those findings all to shit.
I'll just stack it right here beside other findings.
Nutrition(lack or excess) causes autism.
Drug use by the mother causes autism.
Phases of the moon may cause autism.
Recessive gene causes autism.
plastic by-products cause autism
Lack of motherly attention causes autism.
How about,close contact,hugging,pressing and squeezing cure autism.
Bang on the head cures autism.
Autistic snaps out of it in late teens.
These are just some of the headlines and studies I've encountered in support groups,from doctors and newsclowns.
I'm just glad my son is happy.functional and loved.Incedently he is NOW addicted to playstation and xbox and spends faaar too much time with them left to his own devices.
Its done wonders for his fine coordination tho.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Okay, as I understand it one county had cable and another didn't. The county with cable had higher autism rates. (yes, I'm overly simplifying)
What OTHER things were different about the counties? Would it be reasonable to assume the one WITH cable was a little less rural and possibly had other, more significant differences than the availability of cable television? Were there smoke-belching factories in one and not the other? Nuclear power plant? Unmonitored government testing?
Perhaps one town was built on top of an ancient Indian burial ground?
"The researcher paper is clearly suggesting causation, not just correlation."
Yes, they are suggesting causation. Thats what studies generally do, suggest things. No where do they state that it is definitively the cause. No where in the /. summary does it state that this is the cause. In fact, I have yet to read a single comment here on slashdot that states that it is the cause. There is a huge difference between the headlines "TV Really Might Cause Autism" and "TV Really Does Cause Autism". The media (or at least /.) was responsible this time. Save your bickering for when someone starts to claim with certainity that TV causes autism.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
...at K-Mart. All that Sci-Fi and Adult Swim has left me rocking back and forth in front of my Toshiba 46" HDTV.
IronChefMorimoto
Not only for the children!
But think of the adults, too! And not only about TV!
Think of the many adults hopelessly alone while silently reading tech news and typing mindless comments, often hiding behind a coward anonymity... what hope they have of a relationship? How will mankind/womankind/personkind avoid extinction?
How... er, wait a... never mind...
I see a number of posts debating the methods of data collection and what it could possibly mean. The real work that must be done now is to investigate these claims and investigate possible mechanisms. If this claim is true, there are going to be rather intense repurcussions. My money? It's not the television itself, it is the non-interactive world that it produces.
Autism is on the rise http://www.fightingautism.org/idea/autism.php. My mother is a school nurse and she's noticed a large increase in the size of the special ed classes. The number of students that are affected (and yes, you can tell that these kids really do have autism by observing them) has gone from a handfull to enough to fill more than two classrooms.
Think about what the possible mechanisms could be. It is not going to be anything exotic like radiation or refresh rates or the like. We are plopping children down in front of the TV during the time their brains are 'wiring'. Their brains are learning to deal with a world that fits in a tiny box and that they have no control over. The brain isn't something that plops out of the womb fully done; it learns to adapt to the sensations around it. A recent study suggests that an imbalance of communication pathways is a likely mechanism of autism. It is known in development that pathways are pruned as children develop ( Early Brain Development ).
So, plop a kid down in front of the TV for hours a day. They are transfixed and their brains are wiring to cope with a world in a box that they can provide no input to or alter in any way but changing channels, volume level or the off button. That's really not a stretch. Prepare for articles about tv watching monkeys.
100 years ago, scientists used to say autism was caused by "poor parenting", and pointed fingers at mothers. Today, there is overwhelming evidence that autism is a genetically based disorder. This study seems well beneath Cornell's dignity. Autism incidence is known to be higher in wealthier counties that have facilities to treat autistics; it is a well known phenomenon among epidemiologists.
This study does not say "Without TV this kids would be developmentally normal". At best, you could say TV makes the dissociative disorder more predictable (you know they'll end up with autism instead of multiple personality disorder), not that they otherwise wouldn't have any dissociative disorder at all.
The study makes the faulty assumption of correlating no TV with "normal" and having TV with autism, but does not draw any lines with the myriad of other mental defects the kid could end up with. The study is meaningless without more context.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
The number of shark attacks is also directly proportional to ice cream sales at the beach. We should definitely stop selling ice cream at the beach to reduce shark attacks! :)
. . . I'd mod you -1, Dumbass.
Let me take the time to say that everything has effects on other things. Period. It's obvious that a generation not so gradually increasing their television viewing will have effects, the question is what and whether we will put up with it. The parent post is probably right to an extent. Television interferes with our ability to communicate, but it probably increases creativity, due to the constant exposure to fiction (a topic for a different thread). Just like how autism isn't all bad. I mean, you do have intelligence, and lots of it.
So yeah, TV will change society. Do you really think we attained perfection before the invention of the TV?
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
Ten minutes to Wapner. We're definitely locked in this box with no TV.
A good example of Bad Science. Why, who better to perform an interesting medical study than a couple of Economists!
-- "Can't sleep, clowns will eat me!"
They take too strong a stance based on what they actually found. The title, of course, is sensational, and in the abstract they claim they've found "strong support" for the idea that TV can trigger autism, which I think is sort of a pointless claim to make until you can compare at risk groups (based on genetic factors, e.g., close relative with autism) to see if more of the TV watchers flip than the non-watchers. But they do specify controlling for increased diagnosis by using time series data, as well as comparing California data to the overall US DOE data to show that autism diagnosis was increasing even before expanded surveillance definitions were employed. They also rely on ATUS data to show that precipitation DOES correlate with more TV watching in youngsters, so to say that their proxy is unvalidated is a bit inaccurate.
In short, it's not the bombshell the media will hail it to be, but neither would it seem to be the flaming heap you say.
So what you're saying is that the spike seen in the study in the Pacific Northwest was not in fact caused by increased TV watching, but by the rise of Microsoft and the jobs that came with it!
Seriously, it is possible that TV and autism are correlated but that one did not cause the other. Perhaps the rise in TV watching happened around the same time as a rise in the diagnosis rates of autism. Or that people who are autistic tend to be plopped in front of a TV more often because of their condition. Though I haven't RTFStudy, so I can't say what kinds of controls they had in place or confounding factors they considered.
Hmmm, what ELSE happened in the 1980s that could be the root cause?
The answer is obvious: Yuppies are to blame! Or Cindy Lauper! Or personal computers!
-- No Sig is a Good Sig
So what are they saying.. Watching TV at young ages, makes genius's, with social interaction disorders? This is junk science... although watching Discovery and History Channel's does make you more knowledgable, I doubt it actually changes your IQ by very much.
Ad eundum quo nemo ante iit!
There have been some good alternate, completely unsupported suggestions posted here already in an effort to illustrate how hard it is to link cause with effect.
How about: the longer the children watch televison, the more the TV heats up, and the more chemicals are outgassed from the TV's circuitry.
Anyone else got some more wild speculations that could link time spent in front of a television to autism?
Basically, they seem to be saying that:
precipitation = indoors = TV AND (if and only if cable AND children's programming) = autism in susceptible people.
Who knows? Maybe people who can afford cable are more likely to panel the house in formaldehyde-treated fine woods or any of a thousand other things.
Being older, I find it amusing that they assume parents before cable didn't routinely plop their infants in front of the TV because there wasn't enough children's programming. Nonsense. TV probably accounts for half my infant memory images circa 1952-3. They could as plausibly have said that Big Bird causes autism and Captain Kangaroo and 50s westerns didn't.
Mom was right....it really does rot your brain. Well I guess she had to be right about somthing eventually...dont worry tv, I still love you.
So, grad students, professors, and statisticians, at CORNELL UNIVERSITY, don't know what they're talking about? And you do? Uh huh.
You're full of shit.
didn't read summary or article
Slashdot Classic
You'll need your toddler, some toy blocks, a television, a notepad, a pencil and a rubber band. (If you don't have a toddler just borrow one from the neighbors. Please ask first.)
Put the toddler in the middle of the floor with the blocks for ten minutes. Make a mark on your notepad every time their view abruptly changes. (For example: A dog barks and the kid whips their head around to look out the window.)
Now sit the toddler in front of a television for ten minutes. Make a mark on your notepad every time their view abruptly changes. (For example: Any time it is obvious that they're changing from one camera to another.)
Now put the rubber band around your wrist. For each mark on the "playing with blocks" sheet snap the rubber band. Now move the rubber band to the other wrist and snap it once for each mark on the "watching TV" sheet.
Which wrist hurts?
What's the control in this experiment? Wouldn't there be a correlation between TV and ... well, anything at all? How many children don't watch television? Sounds like alarmism and scare-ism to me. Did they do a longitudinal study of children who did watch television and of children who did not and examine the size of the autistic children in both populations? The title of the paper seems unscientific - finding a correlation doesn't mean one caused the other. I imagine the scientifically illiterate media will have a field day with this one.
At the bottom of the page as I read this article is the fortune-quote,
"Isn't it interesting that the same people who laugh at science fiction listen to weather forecasts and economists? -- Kelvin Throop III"
So how did counties with autistic kids end up all getting cable TV first? That's a hell of a coincidence.
What, did the parents form up and march on the cable TV headquarters?
"We demand TV to occupy our silent, disturbed, rocking-back-and-forth kids!"
RTFA (hell, even RTFSummary).
Everything in moderation, including moderation itself
According to the article, TV only causes autism if you watch The People's Court! Definitely... definitely People's Court... yeah.
"Would that be so bad really?"
I don't watch much television, but that's my business, nobody else's, and in general, you should be able to do what you want. If you think it's bad for your 3 year old, then don't let them watch it.
Why do you think it's the government's job to regulate or ban things you or I don't like? I really don't understand.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
> were also the places getting elevated concentrations of geeks,
> who seem to have genetic quirks that have this tendancy to
> result in autism-like disorders?
Whoever modded this twit should be forced to have sex with Rosie Odonell for eternity.
Sure, its a free country and you can say what you want and have the right to be as stupid as your want.
Its the other morons who read this idiotic quote and decided to reward it that should be neutered for feeding
into the idiotic myth that their lack of puss*, bad complexion and love of electronic toys is somehow genetic.
m0nstr42.blogspot.com
I'm not so sure this is true.
Watching live TV is a distinctly different experience than watching pre-recorded content that's either been time-shifted (using a VCR) or downloaded. It's not just semantics, it's the difference between allowing television to dictate your evening's schedule to you, or fitting it into your own schedule. It's also the difference between having advertising shoveled at you, and being able to skip it or just never see it at all.
It continually amazes me the degree that people will go to, to schedule their lives around live TV -- particularly when practically everyone has a VCR, so it's not as if it's even mandatory.
I've given up on live television viewing for those reasons, and I really think it's a better way to watch. I set my EyeTV to grab the shows I'm interested in, or put them on my Netflix list if they're on DVD, and watch them an episode at a time when it fits my schedule. When I decide I want to watch TV, it's all there waiting for me -- no turning on the tube and aimlessly flipping around for something to watch. Because I know that the content will be there effectively forever (okay, I guess it would run out of space eventually and stop recording), there's no pressure to see it.
You don't need a TiVO or a PVR to do this, you could do it almost as well with a VCR if you were really good at programming it, or you could just unplug it from the cable completely and use Netflix if you weren't interested in seeing programs until a season after they come out.
IMO, what's really unhealthy is just sitting down for hours at a time and watching low-value programming that you're not interested in, because "it's what's on," or building one's life around a television schedule because you just have to see something when it's on live. The lengths that people go to for entertainment is ridiculous, when it ought to be the other way around.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Mission-creep in the psychiatric-industrial complex has caused the expansion of many syndromes to encompass more and more people, because the more people you can diagnose as having a disease, the more money the psychiatric-pharmaceutical industry can make.
/. readers would gladly be diagnosed as autistic by the psychiatric-pharmaceutical industry, I suspect.
It used to be that the term "autism" was reserved for severely impaired kids. Now its definition has been expanded to include anybody on the slightly geeky side.
Most
We must be alert to the danger that public policy could become captive to a scientific-technological elite. - Eisenhower
Correlation != Causality
I wonder when the newspapers are going to get that.
JoAnn
Autism is actually caused by other people's autistic children.
Every autistic child has had contact with these autistic children, often at special schools or when their parents visit support groups accompanied by their offspring.
The correlation is almost 100%.
Another leading cause of autism is having your child diagnosed by a doctor.
I know of NO autistic child who has not had contact with members of the medical proffession.
My research is controversial, but I believe that statisticly it's much more accurate than competing research blaming it on television.
I don't think TV would cause Autism, I think it could indeed agrivate it.
One suggested cure for Autism is to enforce socialising on them. I'm dubious about the effectiveness of this, but I think if done in the right way it does help. However, the opposite is very possible and highly likely, a lack of socilising will make them worse.
Relating to studies in areas such as dyslexia it has been shown that television cannot replace true human interaction for things such as language aquisition. It would not suprise anyone if the same is said for social development.
If the children are not able to learn interaction from an early age, but instead are sat in front of a TV then their Autistic tendencies will become worse.
However I don't think it is a cause, there is evidence to suggest that any amount of a social environment from the earliest of ages still is not enough to negate Autism developing in some cases.
Like most things, it's a case of a predisposition that is helped or worsened by environmental factors.
Thank you for your voice of reason. For some quality research on the cause of rising incidents of autism, I recommend this article: http://www.knowledgeofhealth.com/pdfs/autism.pdf
Abstract:
Observers are calling it a national emergency as the rate of autism among children in the US and around the world is rising by as much as 800 percent. Health authorities offer no explanations but all of the research centers around childhood vaccinations which are conducted worldwide. Autistic behavior emanates from a change in the brain's output of serotonin, which can be caused by toxic metals or toxins originating in the gastrointestinal tract. This report reveals two major causes of autism: mercury overload from preservatives in vaccines or a sub-acute tetanus toxin infection of the gastrointestinal tract which results from the over-use of antibiotic drugs. Various nutritional measures can be taken by parents of autistic children to prevent or even reverse the symptoms of childhood autism, though most of these practices are overlooked by modern medicine. Vitamin C and chelation therapy with plant-based metal removers, use of natural antibiotics such as oil of oregano which do not result in antibiotic resistance, the consumption of tryptophan-rich foods to boost serotonin levels, the replenishment of good bacteria in the digestive tract, and other nutritional practices are recommended. Premature birth is associated with autism and the use of omega-3 fatty acids from fish or flaxseed oil may prolong gestation and reduce developmental problems among young children. Preservative-free vaccines should only be used and vaccination schedules widened to avoid excessive overload. Certain vaccines may not be necessary.
OMIGOD! This is the kind of bad science that turns parents of autistic kids into basket cases. I don't think they meant any harm -- but by implying that parents have caused their kids' autism by buying cable (and turning this paper into a media event) they are causing serious harm.
Thanks to my geek husband, I was able to find the "she's a witch!" sketch from Monty Python and the Holy Grail on my autism.about.com blog to point out the difference between correlation and cause.
Let me know what you think!!
Lisa Rudy
About.com Guide to Autism
My dad worked on TV's for a living when I was a kid. Consequently, when he came home, the TV was off. So, I didn't watch TV until I was 5 or 6 (I'm not completely sure), and the shows I really watched were on PBS. My point to this - I have Asperger's syndrome. Also, I live in Oregon. Now, I have not RTFA, however, I'm questioning the validity of their study. Does TFA say how large their sample size was?
Zagreus sits inside your head, Zagreus lives among the dead, Zagreus sees you in your bed and eats you in your sleep.
I wish I'd gotten in here sooner. I am officially diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, and I spent most of my childhood without TV. Even though I had to entertain myself in other ways such as reading, and indulging different hobbies (having several obsessive hobbies is in itself an autistic trait) I still turned out the way I did. The only way that TV could affect someone in this way is if they were already genetically or developmentally predisposed to it (or EVERYONE would be autistic, since nearly every kid watches TV in developed countries) Also, it pisses me off when people try to "cure" autism. It's not some disease that I have, it's a part of who I am. If it were possible to remove all of my autistic traits, I wouldn't be the same person after said process was done. Autism is just a different way of seeing the world and interpreting things around me, and even though people mean well, the fact that they would want to override who I am and attempt to make me like they are does kind of insult me.
"It is a denial of justice not to stretch out a helping hand to the fallen; that is the common right of humanity."
This paper will be a bombshell, all right. I'll use it over and over again as I explain to medical students and colleagues that you don't have to have much in the way of actual brains to write a scientific paper. Or, as I said about another paper in journal club once, "the font is nice, and I like the layout of the tables. It's a shame the actual science is such garbage."
You would rather trash talk the paper rather than either doing the necessary research, or teaching that followup research should be done to confirm/debunk the hypothesis. Do you think that, perhaps, this is because the paper suggests it is possible that autism could have been prevented by the parent of the autistic child?
Honestly, even though you make well reasoned points early on in your comment, it is clear that your conclusions are influenced by your situation.
Sorry, you just tickled on of my pet peeves. Just because So-n-so won a Nobel Prize in physics, doesn't mean that he's right if he claims F=m/a. He still has to use science, and in this case even the lowliest undergrad should be able to prove him wrong.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Telephones, household chemicals, new soaps... diapers, creams, etc.. There are a lot of new techologies whose use has increased steadily since the 80's.
Aside from use increasing with autism diagnosis, I failed to find a valid link in the paper (though admittedly I skimmed most of it).
Hell, maybe in the last 20 years our ability to identify autism has just gotten better.
Whooopie, fudge packing is ok then.
I'm not sure why you're getting such hostile replies to your comment, but thank you for posting this. Your comment stands head-and-shoulders above all the modded-5 comments that are just speculating over whether the study is valid without giving any good basis for that speculation. I wish more articles had comments like this.
I am the man with no sig!
Even as a 1/3rd centurion, i find tht stuff boring in 1200ms , watching great documentaries of say, space or
antartica or the amazon or monkeys in tibet, thats 100000% more enhancing and unique compared to random pixel drivel
that idiots at MTV corp generate, yes , your Ashton, your stuff is dull after a short while, even with lots of chemical influences
its still dull, even a rock would find it dull after 6 episodes.
Too many changing colors and frames eventualy become a blur, its still boring , its nothing new. Its not awesome. Its dull. And im sure
even a 2yo finds that out and tunes to animal planet, thinking, what is that ant thinking.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
From the paper: If, for example, one compares the US Department of Education's reported number of school-aged
children diagnosed with autism in 1999-2000 with the similar figure for 2003-2004, one sees that
over those four years the reported number has more than doubled.
Does anybody really think that the rates of autism really doubled in this time period. Isn't it far more likely that the rate of diagnosis simply went up. What would cause parents to become aware of this unusual condition called autism? Maybe they saw a segment about it on TV?
Isn't it simply possible that autism rates are correlated with TV watching because many americans get much of their information about the larger world by watching TV, and therefore the higher the rates of TV watching (determined in this study by looking at cable installation rates and precipitation rates - people watch more TV when it's rainy out ) mean higher rates of awareness of autism as a condition to ask your child's doctor about? So now, instead of being diagnosed as retarded, the child is diagnosed as autistic because the child's parents saw a segment about autism on cable TV on a rainy day.
The authors (economists, not pathologists) take as unbiased the statistics on prevalence in the various counties. Yet, as is much discussed, the statistics on prevalence are befuddled because there is a strong recent trend towards diagnosing autism today, in children who in the past would not have been diagnosed. So in looking at the counties with more penetration of television in Washington and Oregon mainly (and some in California), they're looking, as they say, mostly west of the mountains for high-television-availability areas - meaning the culturally modern and trendy populations of Seattle and Portland - and east of the mountains for low-television-availability areas - meaning largely-rural counties where both popular culture and medical practice lag far behind the curve.
This isn't to say that autism isn't a serious and increasing problem; just that this whole study (which doesn't seem to have made it past peer review yet) is likely looking at an artifact of where autism's been looked for, and finding that it's most looked for in those counties where the population has been bombarded with, for instance, cable shows about the epidemic of autism, and how to look for it in your children.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
TV really might cause autism?
Heh. Call me back when it definitely maybe causes autism. Otherwise, don't bother me with these shenanigans.
Dear world,
I'm so tired of studies like this, because they accomplish nothing but to scare people into believing that one thing causes another. Perhaps, parents with right genes, lifestyle, parenting behavior, and environmental factors to have Autistic children are more likely to like TV. So, it's just a coincidence, not a cause and effect connection.
A better study would be one based in science, not statistics, that finds that specificly when A, B, C, and D factors exist, an Autistic child will be born.
Later,
-Slashdot Junky
.
Landfill Mining Co.
Managing the (Un)natural Resources of Tomorrow
More sex, more talking, more reading, more workouts, more movie-going, more hiking, more biking, more everything.
When you interact more with the person you have sex with, then the sex is amazing and therefore you have lots of it, and enjoy it lots. I was more addicted to surfing the internet (ha ha)... that was my way of avoiding the intensity of life.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
My suspicion is that the problem is due to the (over) stimulation of the visual centers in very young children. Have you noticed how incredibly brief the duration of one camera shot is in modern TV? Barely 5 seconds. SECONDS! The point-of-view is constantly shifting from one camera to another, and it's common with children's programming to have a hand-held camera that bobs and sways in order to keep the show "interesting" and increase concentration. Add to that the visual effects and zoom/fades/transitions plus all the audio crap and it's a miracle any child emerges with his brain intact.
Go watch a classic episode of I Love Lucy or The Honeymooner's or The Twilight Zone. It's not uncommon for one camera shot to last four minutes. And at that point in time (I'm thinking 1960s and earlier) it was common to listen to dramas on the radio -- Green Lantern, Lone Ranger, The Strangler, etc. -- so the listener was actively involved in building mental imagery. Kids who have been raised on a steady diet of modern tv don't have the patience for old-fashioned TV or stories (or, for that matter, conversations requiring well-developed listening skills)... it's too "boring." (IMO, their brains aren't well adapted to concentrate for that period of time and they find it tiring and/or difficult.)
...is that the umbrella diagnosis for it has been widened considerably.
I remember watching film from 20+ years ago showing children with autism. At the time, autism wasn't being shy or withdrawn, it was literally spending your entire day doing nothing but spinning a shiny piece of metal in the corner, self injuring and being unwilling or unable to speak at all. These were kids that were completely unable to do just about anything and required constant monitoring and feedback in order to get them to behave in a somewhat normal manner.
Oh, and that whole "idiot savant" thing - that was the rarest of the rare. Usually it meant that the kid had one area where they functioned normally, not exceptionally, and that was in only a few cases. The whole "exceptional at something" case was even rarer. Sorry, no institutions full of "Rain Man".
Then came advocacy, and I'm pretty sure someone there figured out that if more people had autism, then more money would be spent on it. Along came the reports about "Maybe famous person X had autism" and "smart but shy? must be Autism" and lo and behold, the cases skyrocket. Just like the days of "Maybe famous person Y had depression" or "Maybe famous person Z was bipolar", we remove the stigma, but in doing so get people to flock to the disorder because it gives them a label, an excuse, a "this means that I'm really good at X".
Some part of me likes to dream of a day when we remove the stigma from disorders without trying to glamourize them.
Exactly, almost all of the people who are claiming there is no way this study are true either:
1) Have autistic children
2) Are in love with their TV sets
I haven't seen a single post of someone who never watches TV debunking this study.
This wouldn't happen to be red food coloring, would it? I have a friend who had the same problem as a child/young adult. Red food coloring made him quite irritable.
Coincidentially I started the Teleban movement last night before I read this Slashdot article or the autism "relationship".
Please feel free to join my movement, I'm hoping it will become much more powerful than Fox News, and Pat Robertson combined. I will have details on free membership benefits later, and there is no cost or even effort required to participate other than letting me know you want TV banned too. It's all in good fun, and we're saving the children, so please leave a message.
Remember the Teleban motto: Friends don't let friends watch Friends.
Oh You POS
At least, that would explain why most programming suck so much.
I know only two autistic people - yes, it is *that* uncommon - and they don't particularly like to watch TV at all - too much movement and noise I guess, so this whole 'study' is suspect to me.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
May be everyone should move to Arizona ?
Since they are actually testing correlation of precipitation
with autism rate, this is very indirect evidence at best.
If their theroy is true, it would mean that Canada, Sweden,
and UK should all have higher autism rate than say California.
Not to get ad hominem about this, but did you notice that the researchers are
from the Management School and some Policy institute? I would give more
credence if the researhers were child psyhiatrists or medical statisticians.
I think the reverse causality: "autistic kids watches more television"
would explain the data much better.
There are lies, damned lies, and statistics. The paper is based on statistical analysis of precipitation, cable TV adoption, and Autism. Interesting thoughts, but no proof. This is a true scientific look into posible Autism causes. No statistics - actual science., And a facinating read.
Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration, which is why engineers sometimes smell really bad.
Somehow I doubt this will ever make it onto the nightly news. Lawyers everywhere are seeing dollar signs.
isn't that hyperglycemia or somesuch?
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
, almost all of the people who are claiming there is no way this study are true either:
1) Have autistic children
2) Are in love with their TV sets
I haven't seen a single post of someone who never watches TV debunking this study.
OK. This study is and absolute load of crap. I watch about 1 hour of TV per month, and have no autistic children. Happy now?
You're making EXACTLY the same type of error as the study does. You assume that because no one posted against the study claiming to not have autistic children or not watch tv, then this implies that the study must be true. There is no connection between the two. Correlation does NOT imply Causation! Just because fat people drink Diet Coke, it does NOT mean that Diet Coke is fattening.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Is there something that makes you two retarded, or were you born that way? If he hadn't mentioned that he has an autistic child, what would you do to invalidate his criticism then? Point out that he's just an M.D. while you have a B.A. in Latin?
As a statistician with no particular interest in autism I actually can't find sufficient information here to say that there's much of interest here, except to say that more data should be collected and then of course once enough information has been established to propose experiments that they be conducted. Would I suggest that from these findings? No, there's nothing convincing-enough for me to suggest looking for grants. They can certainly use Cornell's resources however Cornell sees fit to let them.
OK so we're way past the Industrial Revolution in 1980. What else was going on in our country around this time? Additives to food (Aspartame was approved in 1981 and is claimed to cause ADD, a form of autism)? Pollutants in the air (was there a sudden rise in air travel)? Lurking variables are everywhere.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
My first Psych professor also published this book http://www.amazon.com/Use-Misuse-Statistics-Gregor y-Kimble/dp/0134361962 "How to Use (and Misuse) Statistics" that is so good that it was a textbook for one of the statistics classes my dad (a micro-economist) had when he was in grad school.
Imagine that -- a "scientist" (psychologist, often considered not even a "hard science") literally wrote the textbook used to teach statistics to the folks you thought would be "more likely" to properly carry out the research in this study.
Stop trying to claim conclusions based on the small sample size of your personal experiences.
Umm. If there is a cause and effect relationship here, isn't it likely it is the other way around?
I've seen an autistic kid zone out in front of a TV before, when it wasn't even turned on. And another autistic kid completely obsessed with playing the same Styx song over and over again on his record player.
So, grad students, professors, and statisticians, at CORNELL UNIVERSITY, don't know what they're talking about?
No, simply put: he's a scientist and you're not. I don't care WHERE the study was done, it's still a load of crap. Now if you want to go on "believing" in it because the Almighty Cornell said it, then this is called religion, not science. You should see some of the crap that comes out of Harvard! Oh yeah, a lot of good research gets done. A lot of bull gets published too. That's why critical thinking is such an important skill. And peer review processes are necessary.
But hey the study was done at CORNELL UNIVERSITY. Amen brother.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
...and here we have another M.D. who thinks he knows something about science. I wish medical schools would concentrate less on memorization and more on critical thinking skills, especially with respect to statistical studies.
This is a spectacularly good example of really stupid statistical games.
In actuality, the paper is a good example of the way in which social research can take advantage of natural experiments.
I only skimmed it...
Then why write with such unwarranted authority and in such certain terms about its contents and conclusions?
Aside from the basic methodologic errors (confusing correlation with causation, adopting a highly questionable proxy indicator without validating it, and spending almost no time ruling out confounding factors or tainted data), there remain the dozens of smaller tactical problems...
They made none of the errors you list. I would like to think you might have realized this had you bothered (as I did) to actually read the paper, but based on the evidence of your post, I would be reckless to assume that.
OK. So where are the "personal responsibility" idiots?
PBI1: "Arr.. arr.. arr... I'll be goddamned before I let anyone tell me that watching TV is bad even if they claim to back it up with science. It's junk science I tell you! Junk science! I had an uncle who watched 200 hours of TV a day for 95 years and he lived to be 1000 years old. So don't you go telling me what's good for me or not! PERSONAL REPONSIBILITY!! I'm smart enough to know what's good for me and if watching TV till my eyes rot causes a few minor health inconveniences later in life, I'm not going to worry about it"!
PBI2: " Bah! Those insane jackbooted thugs are really part of the big anti-gun lobby. Nothing but the nanny state!! They want to disarm us as well as take away our right to do whatever pleases us! They know that by suing the very moral, good and profitable television networks they can do evil and immoral things, like giving people free e-Checks on their cars using OUR stolen money! It's my money goddammit and I'll spend it any way I want! So what if it goes to network television thanks to advertising dollars at the cost of other people's kids? I certainly don't want the nanny state telling me that TV is bad for me or my kids, or that the money I invested in all those networks over the years will get funnelled into paying for something as evil as some nanny state project project. Flithy liars all want my money goddammit!!!"
So anyone want to refute me as I KNOW I speak the truth...
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Gah! All reporters, please repeat after me! "Correlation is not causation" "I will not speculate about things I am unqualified for" "I will summarize the data without injecting my own conclusions". Good, now keep saying that, while I find another press corps to take over for you.
Thank you. As a parent with an PDD child (on the Autistic Spectrum) I can tell you this study is a bunch of garbage.
Since I have never owned a television set, I really never watch at home at all. When I visit people who have TV, I try to avoid any room where it's on, mostly because the droning, non-stop sound irritates me. I watched an episode of the Simpsons at my parent's house sometime in the last decade because I had heard it was entertaining. It was, but not enough to have a television in the house. I haven't watched another full program or episode of anything since the early 1980s. The last time I wished I had access to a television was in 1987 when there was an earthquake in the Bay Area and I wanted to see some pictures without waiting for the next day's newspaper.
I can watch DVDs on my computer, and I've watched part of a couple, but I can acquire information so much more rapidly by reading than watching and listening to video sources. Video is too slow for my brain!
Does anybody really think that the rates of autism really doubled in this time period. Isn't it far more likely that the rate of diagnosis simply went up. What would cause parents to become aware of this unusual condition called autism? Maybe they saw a segment about it on TV?
1. Something is WRONG with your child when they are autistic. You know there is because she/he doesn't act normally. A minimally responsible parent figures out what it is.
2. The medical condition of autism is well-defined. It doesn't just visit the child like a common cold. http://www.nimh.nih.gov/publicat/autism.cfm and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autism
3. "retarded" is not a medical condition. That is the social term for a host of developmental problems.
people watch more TV when it's rainy out
This is the West. It doesn't rain much... There's no excuse for watching more TV other than babysitting your child for you. I'll go further than that and say there is no reason for children to watch television until at least 5. But this means parents have to raise their children. So it's an unpopular opinion.
Please consider your opinions in this matter as poorly constructed as the science you claim is flawed.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
I'm pretty sure my tube steak doesn't cause autism. Just the occasional gag.
My sister opened a computer store in Hawaii. She sells C shells by the seashore.
The GPP has to be given some credit - it's probably the most well-informed, qualified, "I actually RTFA", rational comment I've ever read on slashdot.
Quoth the GPP:
In other words: You, Mister M0nstr42@BlogSpot, are a retard.Oh great, the Autism voodoo people are out in force today. There is no evidence to back up these claims. The writer simply cobbled together various pieces that could be manipulated to support a view completely not based on fact.
It is, too! /. ... my life is like over!!
...
...
How I long for the days that I could slump on the sofa, pull my dirty socks up, open a 6-pack and watch StarTrek. Now, ever since the Cornell study hit
Next thing, this might even mean more children, or, even a grey Volvo station car!
But seriously, those people from Cornell ought to think before they publish stuff: think about all those Happy Homes they may be breaking up because of their study, implying TV does us so much "damage" !!
I have a hyperactive 15,5 months' old daughter. The ONLY thing that can keep her distracted for the odd 7-10 minutes (give Dads a break) is watching the TV commercials: maybe for their music, the colors, the agitated voices, or -I suspect- some vile subliminal messages put there by ad agencies that must awaken the latent shopping instinct in young females!
NOW WHAT AM I TO DO with this 33" tall, 2-legged and 8-fisted professional demolition crew, who runs around the house, Roadrunner and Coyote in one, while only breaking stuff (she's really *into* laptop computers, packs of Camel filters, GSM phones and Daddy's clean socks...), now that TV has become a No-No -????- Heeelp!!!
...
Now I can't refrain from thinking... So maybe autism isn't such a bad thing? I mean, the RainMan guy did quite a job for himself in Las Vegas, didn't he?
But seriously: I'm worried about the TV thing, like any Dad would be. It can't be a surprise that I want only the best for my little girl, so here's some serious doubts coming into play. What if TV were really a threat to her growing up a healthy and smart individual, do sports, get her degree (out of spite I now say: not bloody likely at Cornell!) and be Happy?
When I turn on the TV set for her --and there's hell to pay if I don't-- (she watches about 1,5 hours a day, listening -while playing- to another 2...), I really do it to entertain her, to keep her mind busy.
Maybe it's time I taught her the Noble Art of Slashdotting ?? She's been ramming away on her own (Acer mechanical) keyboard for some time now, not only to give Daddy's poor Pbook a break, but she's showing true talent...
Would you guys like to get your comments moderated by a 15,5 months old?
* Signal 15... "Ceterum censeo Microsoftem esse delendam." Cheers cq. BRgds: DrS aka UNIXmafia@ribeco.net
We're on Slashdot because we're bright.
So didn't some of you get picked on by Mauler the school bully, so you retreated to a club after school, then your room to watch TV while programming/gaming?
Young kids like "action". TV delivers "action", including the ads, at a higher pace than "sitting on the couch chillin". Fine, you finished your hour playing soccer in the yard, then it became time to do **something**.
The brighter kids probably went for computer games, the more average ones settled for three hours of TV with their friends. (Because TV is social, right? Didn't you invite Johnny from next door, after you asked Mom?)
Now that we're all older, all these comments are rescripting childhood.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
1. First the timing of more cable with the increased diagnosis of autism may be a coincidence. For a one-or-two year-olds, cable doesn't mean more to watch. There's almost no programming for that age, unless there is a round-the-clock Teletubies channel I've not heard about.
2. They may be confusing cause and effect. I worked with austistic children. They're not stimulated by contact with other people like ordinary children, but they are often attracted by repetitive patterns of light of the sort a small child might find on TV. As a result, the parents might have been more likely to put them in front of a TV as a pacifier.( And that might have even made the child's autistic tendencies worse.) In such a case, TV was not so much the cause as a diagnostic sign.
I'll see if the authors deal with those problems in their paper. It's hard to believe that they don't.
And TV addicts shouldn't get all in a dither about this. At most, this just means that parents shouldn't put little baby Johnny down in front of a TV. It's not going to turn a 22=year-old into an austitic.
--Mike Perry, author of Untangling Tolkien
*sigh* correlation != causation
Definitely Wapner.
So, my cigarette packs had a big warning: "Correlation Does Not Imply Causation" on them. I thought it was a good joke, by philosophy joke standards anyway.
It's worth noting that lung cancer rates only exploded post-WWII. People had been smoking for thousands of years, but lung cancer was a relative unknown.
The change was that some years before manure, which had been used for fertilizer on the tobacco plants, was requisitioned for the war effort (gunpowder, explosives or whatever). Tobacco companies had to switch to Rock Phosphate to fertilize their plants. They liked it because their tobacco plants grew quicker & bigger, with less labor invested in gathering animal dung.
You don't hear much about the downfall: rock phosphate has low levels of natural radioactivity. Tobacco plants concentrate radioactive ions in their leaves... A dose or two of rock phosphate isn't much for concern, but when applied to the same fields year after year, the radiation levels in the plants have become significant.
With that said, I Don't smoke, never have, and Don't encourage it. If I did smoke, I would buy organic tobacco (American Spirit, for example) and roll my own, or perhaps "stuff my own", into a pre-rolled paper w/ a filter, like my college roommate did. It's cheaper, much much healthier to boot, and you know exactly what you're inhaling (that's a reference to cigarette companies putting all sorts of weird chemicals in their products).
Search for 'radioactive tobacco' for more information.
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
Nothing at all to do with the fact that the valley is home to hundreds of toxic superfund cleanup sites.
They dumped enough toxins into the ground water around here before they moved all chip production to China to kill everyone on the planet many many times over.
But I'm sure that's not it, nope.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
My son has high functioning autism and his symptoms showed long before he started watching tv. Rates are increasing because there is better diagnosis information available to the doctors-origionally they were clumped as mentally disabled or retarded. To say TV is causing autism is a farce IMHO. We have actually used video games to increase my sons ability to cross over midline. He is very proficient playing games. There is real science going on now that has located a gene that may be the link to why it happens. They are trying to manipulate that gene into mice to see what different outside influences trigger autism. They will test mercury in that study since it has been used in vaccines for babies. Yes they "concluded" that it is not causing autism in other studies but why did the manufacturer of the vaccine get congress to make a law excluding manufacturers from liability? There is too much misguided studies on autism-I feel the gene route will be the one that will give the best answers.
"First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win."
-Mahatma Gandhi
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."
-Arthur Schopenhauer
I don't know the historical scale of vaccination, but I do know that 50 years ago we didn't inject infants and children on a regular schedule with doses of Thimerosal, a type of mercury. Perhaps it was the late 70's/early 80's when mass-vaccination really started to take off.
There are a lot of reports by parents who directly observed changes in their kids following the injection of one vaccine or another. I, for one, think that this a much stronger correlation than "tv causes autism".
Follow the money, and we'll know why autism is so prevalent. Pharmaceuticals are facing billions of dollars in lawsuits - is it any wonder they find some shills to laugh and ridicule what will likely, someday soon, be considered obvious?
Another quote:
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
Much as I think TV is suitable only for folks with water on the brain, it's important to remember that a statistical correlation (which is what this is) does not mean that TV causes autism, or that autism causes TV. It's easy to imagine a scenario in which autistic children simply watch more TV because one of the main symptoms of the disorder is difficulty interacting with others. That said, it is a fascinating bit of data, and one that means we better find out what staring at TVs _does_ cause (if anything) before there's nobody left with a normal brain to do it.
"I'll go further than that and say there is no reason for children to watch television until at least 5"
I guess you don't have kids, eh? While I wholeheartedly agree that in an ideal world, no toddler should be watching TV, there are moments when you just have to do it. I.e. you pick up the kid from daycare, he's screaming cause he's hungry, and you have to make him dinner - quick.
He wants to be held, and you can't really cook with half a hand left, nor is it advisable to be dangling the child in front of the stove with two burners on.
So then, you have a choice: Builder Bob for 10-15 minutes, or takeout for dinner every night. I think we all know which one is worse.
"If you could only see what I've seen with your eyes..." - Roy Batty
Researchers show that there is a correlation between the effort spent on the cable network and the effort spent on detecting autism spectrum disorders.
If he hadn't mentioned that he has an autistic child, what would you do to invalidate his criticism then? Point out that he's just an M.D. while you have a B.A. in Latin?
My post would have been largely the same. I would have pointed out that he made good points, but all they prove is that the study was done poorly, not that the study is incorrect. As a researcher, he should advocate that the research be done correctly rather than write off the concept simply because somebody did a poor job studying it.
While that would be true, it would be a general effect. There's no reason to believe doctors would diagnose autism more often in patients with access to cable tv.
Correllation does not equate causation. That's all that needs to be said about this experiment.
Who would have thought that plunking a child in front of a television for hours on end would condition that child to become an extreme introvert?
Read his comment again. He never claimed the conclusions was incorrect.
I have twins, a boy and a girl, age 1 year and 2 months (or so). We made a conscious decision to raise them without television, at least before the age of two.
To date, their TV watching has consisted of the following:
- About half an hour total of little bits of a Richard Scary videotape someone gave us, with songs that we sung along with (we're a music-focused family);
- About ten minutes of teletubbies as an experiment (that helped us discover that our child care provider had occasionally shown them teletubbies, something we suspected when our daughter became obsessed with a teletubbies book all of a sudden);
- The aforementioned teletubbies viewing, which makes up about half an hour a day total (we're looking into another child care provider now that we know about it.)
So yeah, it's possible to do it, but it isn't easy when you use daycare providers (luckily we had a nanny for the first year, so this half an hour a day of TV is a short-term thing.)
I just skimmed the report.
Despite stating that there is a statistically significant correlation, the do not report it.
There is no Risk Ratio, no Odds Ratio, no confidence interval provided in the abstract, results, conclusion or data set.
The confidence interval they used was 10%. This is the same fraud used by the EPA to make second hand smoke seem dangerous.
This is a report to make some epidemiologist a name. IT IS PURE HOGWASH.
God: "I don't leave footprints!"
I wish medical schools would concentrate less on memorization and more on critical thinking skills, especially with respect to statistical studies.
Indeed, that is a pleasant thought. I've been there and it is, of course, buckets 'o memorizing. It has to be 90+% that way, though, because (as one of my professors said), "Medicine is the business of knowing." Just having the information is way more important than being able to think about it. All the critical thinking in the world won't get you a solution if you don't have the required knowledge.
Once, at the end of rounds, we were asked to calculate the % decrease when something went from 30 to 21. Child's play for a numbers-oriented person (like me), right? Not really... some other students (at least two of whom I knew to be AOA) appeared to be memorizing 30, 22, and 70. Apparently just sticking those numbers in their huge Oracle brains was easier than doing the math!
The GPP is not a scientist, he's a physician. There is a HUGE world of difference. As a biochemist, I am amazed by the sloppy thinking that most medical professionals exhibit - they may have learnt to diagnose, but they certainly know very little about science and scientific practices.
Now, I can't comment on the paper (I haven't read it), but TheMohel shouldn't have commented either - he has barely read it (in his words, he skimmed it), and he really has jumped to conclusions based on an incomplete understanding of the research. That does not bode well for his ability to actually determine whether something is scientfically accurate or not.
Additionally, I should warn you never to take the viewpoint of someone on Slashdot over the experts in the field who peer review papers.
nt
Correlation does not imply causation.
Now with more sodium!!
That sounds plausable to me. I didn't watch much TV growing up (I'm 26) and virtually none from the time I went off to college at 18 till I moved into my current apartment that has basic cable - in Bavaria, with only one English language channel, CNN. I watch very little now.
:) ("Dear, could we not watch so much football?" - comment he made when I insisted on watching Germany's matches this summer. He booked OPERA TICKETS during the semi-final with Italy!)
I find TV back in the States to be almost painful to watch due to the quick shots and quick shifts in subject. Cable news is way more annoying than it was when I was in high school - Fox News might be the most visually annoying - the logo constantly spins in front of a waving flag graphic. (to say nothing of the content and delivery!)
More interesting than this, though, is my boyfriend, a 33 year old mechanical engineer who has never lived in a house with a TV. His parents are quite well-educated and well-off; they chose back when they were first married not to have a TV in the house with their kids. It seems like my boyfriend has an extremely long attention span, shockingly little knowledge of popular culture but knows plenty of things that have nothing to do with mechanical engineering to talk about. I also take a far greater interest in the Bundesliga and the German national soccer team than this particular German male does
His parents bought a TV two years ago. It is fairly small and put up on a random shelf in their living room. The room is set up more like what we'd think of as a parlor, with the chairs and couch positioned around the coffee table, and most of them do not afford a good view of the little TV. They finally agreed to buy one because his mom, a retired German high school English teacher, wanted to watch the BBC to keep her understanding up and his dad wanted to see a certain long-running astronomy show.
My boyfriend seems to barely be able to tolerate any sort of TV. He'll watch movies and documentaries on DVD, but that's it. He put up with my interest in Germany's World Cup games when he was over.
Based on this experience and my own ambivalence towards TV, I'm pretty sure that I won't let my theoretical children watch broadcast TV or anything much like it until they're around 10, if then. My boyfriend and his little sister seem to be able to focus better and carry on bigger hobbies than most people in our general age group.
My little brother watched WAY more TV than I did. When my grandparents gave us a TV for Christmas, it went into his room because I had my uncle's hand-me-down TRS-80 Model 4. He might have spent too much time in front of the TV even if he hadn't gotten his own, but I don't think he would have spent as much.
Grüß Gott aus Bayern!
It's time we stop making up diseases for people who are different than the majority. Yes, it's nice to have something to blame all your problems on, but we all could say we have some "disorder" like ADD or Aspergers Syndrome. You are not special. In fact, it seems you are actually quite normal in scapegoating something to make you feel better about yourself.
What, exactly, do you think is WRONG with you that needs treatment? (And no, none of those differences you mentioned above need treatment anymore than the average challenges people deal with in their lives. We just don't have some syndrone to blame it on.)
Read my comment again. I didn't say he said the conclusion was incorrect. I said his conclusion was incorrect. His conclusion was that the paper should be used to line trash cans and talk shit to his students about rather than to raise the call for some proper research into the subject.
Vaccinations have also been suspected as a cause for the increase in Autism. I would be curious to know about any correlation between economic standards (cable TV) and health care (child vaccinations).
. html
I understand that for many people vaccinations are thought to be beyond question but when I listen to professionals who suspect vaccinations as a cause of autism I find they make a compelling argument. Some of my agreement comes from experiences I had being physically ill myself.
I was once treated with antibiotics for several years continuously(for Lyme disease that went undiagnosed for 2 years). I was surprised to learn what a stressed immune system can do to cognition. I would have cyclic herxheimer reactions that lasted for weeks. During those weeks I had many times where people could speak to me and I could see their lips moving but not be able to "unscramble" what they were saying. Dyslexic reversals were common. I could drive through red lights, not recognize old friends, lose all sense of time. I was seriously out-of-synch with what anyone would consider "normal perception"
Now I was 25 when all this hit me (and lasted for 5 years). If I had been a child I am sure I would have been developmentally disabled.
I think many people have a discrete and mechanical view of the immune system. As if all that activity takes place separate from the mind. I can tell you an immune system under stress/off-balance can cause powerful changes in cognition etc.
One aspect of the recent rise in autism cases is the rise in "regressive autism" - the manifestations of which some professional have linked to vaccines.
The segment of children with "regressive autism," the form where children develop normally for a period of time then lose skills and sink into autism, most commonly at 18-24 months of age, is increasing at a phenomenal rate. I am seeing several children in the same family affected, including in the last week four cases of "autistic regression" developing in four-year-old children after their MMR and DPT vaccination. In the past, this was unheard of."
This testimony was given by Mary Megson, MD on April 6, 2000 at Senate hearings on autism and vaccinations.
http://www.westonaprice.org/moderndiseases/autism
The researchers that conduct these kinds of studies usually aren't completely stupid--they usually go through great lengths to control for such variables. The fact that somewhere in the paper, they may also illustrate their claim with appealing one-liners doesn't change that fact.
So, unless you have read and reviewed the entire paper and can make a reasonable argument, you have no business calling this "bad science". Your remarks are actually just an example of "spectacularly bad public debate".
I have twins, a boy and a girl, age 1 year and 2 months (or so). We made a conscious decision to raise them without television, at least before the age of two.
That statement would be funny if it weren't so sad. I would think simple common sense would tell parents not to put kids younger than school age in front of a TV.
Something else that's happened in recent years is that mothers are becoming mothers much later in life. It's also been shown medically that new mothers in late 30's/early 40's have a higher chance of having autistic kids.
So... What control was put in place in his study to eliminate children with older mothers from the study?
It is important to note the definition of autism has changed to be more broad. Also, clinicians have become much better at diagnosing autism. Both of those facts should be considered when comparing autism rates over time.
Please don't infer I believe that autism rates are not increasing, that autism is not a serious issue, or that the study came to the wrong conclusion.
Rucker
Yes, I have children, and cooking with one hand was the order of the day while she was young.
How about giving the kid a cabinet down-low that she/he can reach put banging/clanging pots/pans/things in there and let her/him go at it while you cook?
Kid screaming?
Well, why is that? She/he is telling you something. (like hunger) Distraction only makes the problem worse. As a parent -you- are supposed to be allowing the kid to let that out and emotionally contain him/her while it's happening. This builds up the capacity for the child to contain/process his/her own emotions. TV does not do that.
Speaking as a parent, there are a million ways around the problem for most parents. TV is the laziest.
Caveat: I am definitely a flawed person, so I do some wrong things as a parent too. Letting my kid watch a meaningful amount of television per week is not one of them.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
nah, hypoglycemia is the fancy name for low bloodsugar. I do get that after eating sugar, but that's an effect of the hyperinsulism. ;)
Manuals are your last resort only
Remember that if two things are corralated with each other does not mean that one caused the other! Remember!
A site cowboyneal will like http://www.freewebs.com/atpa/
My son was diagnosed with Autism at age 4. We had suspect autism a little before that. He is exteremly bright gives my 6 year old a run for her money when we do flash cards. Due to a series of events I cut my TV off 6 months ago. I figured it was a distraction for me and my kids and we would be better served doing something else rather than watch TV together. In this past 6 months my son has come leaps and bounds in development. Most of this period was during the summer so I really can't credit his school entirely with the improvements. But with no TV he interacts much more with his sister and I. He has even started to become conversational a huge improvement. 1.5 years ago he didn't say 3 words. He didn't know numbers, colors, letters, shapes or anything kids his age were doing. He didn't play with other kids and he didn't interact with anyone including me and his mother. He knows all that stuff and more now. The social aspect is the real challenge but he plays with other kids now even if he he doesn't always play right.
As to the point of over-diagnosis of autism, I agree. Autism isn't really a neurological disfunction as it is a set of common behaviors displayed by slow learners. I fully believe my son will be integrated in to regular school in the next 1-2 years. It has been a hard road and we have all worked hard but it is really paying off. But I do miss football...
"To Err is Human To Forgive is Divine neither of which is Marine Corp Policy"-My SNCOIC
Its very hard to establish a causal relationship here. Especially since you cannot test this in a laboratory and pass an ethics commitee (given it is likely children will be harmed) It would be very safe to say, as a precaution until we have more evidence... DO NOT let your toddlers watch tv, almost to none at all until they are 5-6 or preferably OVER 12 years of age, for more than one reasons. Yes its an easy way to keep your kids "busy", but would you really want the TV to raise your kids?
You are, of course, correct. It will be interesting to see how this study fares under proper review, as opposed to the idiots spouting nonsense here.
he's a physician. There is a HUGE world of difference.
I guess that as a physician, I'm not a scientist either then.
they certainly know very little about science and scientific practices.
Care to clarify this statement? Amazing how our entire career is built on the scientific method, our knowledge comes from clinical trials, our daily work involves hypotheses (the diagnosis) which we then test (via labs or clinical exams) in order to treat our patients, yet we seem to know nothing about science.
Additionally, I should warn you never to take the viewpoint of someone on Slashdot over the experts in the field who peer review papers.
And I would warn you to a) not believe everything you read on the internet, ESPECIALLY on slashdot, and b) don't expect a rebuttal which consists merely of a personal attack on the person you argue with to carry much weight.
There was a paper a while back that correlated country music with heart disease. You call this science? Should I advise my male patients over 40 with high LDL and C reactive protein that they can't listen to country music either?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
TheMohel wrote:
>
> As a pediatrician trained in child development (and the parent of an autistic teenager)
Ahem.. I notice you're not an epidemiologist nor a statistician. So what was it again that gave you any kind of authority on judging the paper on the merits of its epidemiological or statistical methods?
This paper is a good example of nothing other than a poor understanding of what a correlational and regressional analysis can be used to conclude.
The authors repeatedly use the word "trigger" in reference to their correlational data.
They try to indicate that, while autistic kids might be more likely to watch TV, autism can't cause precipitation, and precipitation is related to TV watching, so therefore TV watching causes autism. This monumental leap of faith is used to justify the fact that they are incorrectly ascribing cause when all they have is a relationship. And, of course, there is the terribly minor fact that they don't have any actual data on the television habits of the children.
I think this paper will provide for the doctor an excellent example of what not to do with your correlational data.
I've peer-reviewed papers. I've written peer-reviewed papers. Does this make me a scientist? Does the fact that I wrote those papers in developmental pediatrics with the assistance of a large number of colleagues make me more or less a scientist?
I agree that you can't take a Slashdot reader's word for anything, but I don't ask you to take my word for it. Or rather, I do, but only after I pointed out the most egregious errors. Inadequate proxying for unmeasurables and failure to consider confounders are fatal flaws in a paper, and it doesn't take an "expert" to point them out. That's the cool thing about science - there's no High Church that determines reality. One really nifty piece of data can put a stake through a hundred years' worth of speculation, and there's no way to salvage it.
In the case of the paper in question, they nicely summarized their points in the header and I based my original comment on a review of that summary. I have now had the time to completely read the paper now, and it didn't get better on my complete read. But I don't expect you to believe that either. I just wanted to point out that I consider myself both a physician and a scientist, and while I agree that the two are not proxies for each other, they're not mutually exclusive either.
I think that TV doesn't cause autism, but autistic kids like/watch TV more.
3. "retarded" is not a medical condition.
It's not?
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Looking over the paper, it smells suspiciously to me like someone with an ax to grind, who incorporates bias into their conclusions.
For one thing, it does not directly measure number of hours of television time watched by children, but infers the amount based on level of income and labor in a community - not for households, but for a wide area. It ignores that there might be other factors besides television - for instance, that families where the parents work longer hours in certain income groups might be less likely to pay attention to their kids, or give them healthy attention when they do... or that income groups capable of affording cable television (especially in the early years of cable) might be more likely to seek assistance when their kid began demonstrating signs of something wrong.
Linking TV watching to autism rates by the methodology used seems a bit sloppy to me. The conclusion hinted at by the survey seems a little irresponsible scientifically.
The only thing these statistics really show is that diagnosis of autism increased when the incidence of people working certain numbers of hours for certain wages increased, which also corresponds with an increase in the number of homes having cable television.
For one thing, I was a small child _before_ cable television, and every kid I knew had to practically be chased away from the television. There were cartoons on every afternoon, and cartoons and educational shows on in the morning until well after kids went to school. When I would _get_ to school in the morning, we were all set down in front of "Captain Kangaroo" until class was ready to start.
Don't get me wrong. It's not like I _like_ television. I've been known to write "Kill Your TV" in the dust on SUV's. I don't own a television, and haven't for years. If I even want to watch a movie DVD, I have to watch it on someone else's TV. When I do accidentally look at a television, the sheer crassness, unethical and stuporific advertising, crappy news reporting, and unwholesome memes that indicate that bitchy, stupid, greedy people are cute and funny all make me pretty nauseous.
If there _is_ a link between television and autism, poorly-crafted, biased studies will only obscure finding that out, and make people suspicious of any legitimate studies done on the subject. And if TV is _not_ really a precipitator of autism, stuff like this can attract attention _away_ from better work that might get down to more legitimate causes for it.
I _don't_ think television is that good for kids, especially in high enough doses that they don't actually interact with other human beings, or if they spend more time with the television than with their families. I think that can stunt people's social and emotional growth, as well as filling their heads with the idea that they need to buy into the latest rampant consumer craze. I don't think that's healthy for _adults_ either.
TV isn't really bad for kids, when I think about it. It's lack of real, participatory interaction between people, and when infotainment takes the place of education. It's when kids learn their values from television instead of from people (not that all the values on Sesame Street are bad... but come on... who should be showing your kid that stuff... you or the TV?)
But I digress... by which I mean rant.
My point is that this study looks, to me, like poor science, and jumping to conclusions, possibly to pander to anti-television interests, or "child safety" interests. My problem with that is that bad science leads to bad information and bad decisions. And lots of the "child safety" interests strike me more as "giant panic clubs" instead of actually doing any kids any good.
Maybe it's just me.
Coyote
Besides, perhaps, the obvious fact that finding a single smoking-gun "cause" and a single magic-pill "cure" would be another cash cow for some enterprising greedy entrepreneur?
Exactly, almost all of the people who are claiming there is no way this study are true either:
How about the people that have no opinion on whether the conclusion happens to be correct, but are saying that the study does not support the conclusion? The study is crap. I don't care if they were trying to show sex causes children, whether the conclusion happens to be right does not mean that their methodology is correct or that it supports the conclusion.
Learn to love Alaska
Consider all of these points:
- Autism, by its definition, must have had symptoms that appeared before age 3. So we're talking small kiddies here.
- Families with small children don't get out much, and it has nothing to do with the weather. It has more to do with the fact that putting together a diaper bag, getting Junior into his carseat, dealing with the fact that Junior is probably going to miss a nap or meal and become very crabby, and finding a place to go that is actually small-kid-friendly can be a royal pain in the neck and mommy and daddy are tired. Funny how "catching up on some sleep" tends to win out with parents of small children.
- People from Northern European countries tend to have more neurological disorders (Multiple Sclerosis, etc.)
- People from Northern Europe settled in parts of the country whether the weather sucks (Upper Midwest, etc.)
Things that make you go "hmmm", eh?I wonder how autism rates in the US compare with Canada whether the weather perennially sucks.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
Autism rates are still going up.
Looks like I just refuted your strongest argument.
Sucks to be wrong, doesn't it?
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
Hey, guys! Might I mention that causation does not imply causation? I'm sure it hasn't already been said before, and certainly not several dozen times!
I mean, yeah, it's a good point, and I wish it were obvious to more people, but it doesn't really need to be stated a bajillion times in the same thread... especially since it's obviously already obvious to all of us, given the number of people who have pointed it out.
Thanks for saying that. We bought the first two seasons of House M.D. on DVD. On thing I keep noticing is that these doctors have to read a lot. You don't see it on the show but you know it is going on in the background or they wouldn't be able to spout off a whole lot of conditions related to symptoms.
I keep thinking there should be a program with every symptom know to man. Start going through the checklist and it starts giving you possible conditions with error bars for symptoms that may not have started yet and the probibilty of things that might be asymptomatic. There might be but I haven't seen it.
Anyway medical stuff is about knowing first and thinking second.
Ascii artist &
Implying that TheMohel claimed the "study was incorrect" and proceeded to "write off the concept."
The two actions are not mutually exclusive, and both together are entirely reasonable. In fact in this case, it's almost required to point out the flaws before you call for a new study. Unless you enjoy it when people conclude you're a raving lunatic more interested in protecting his own emotional interests than evaluating the study objectively.
Unless you enjoy it when people conclude you're a raving lunatic more interested in protecting his own emotional interests than evaluating the study objectively.
I don't know about enjoying it, but in my experience most people are more interested in protecting their emotional interests than evaluating anything objectively. This is doubly true on Slashdot (check the games and politics sections for evidence). It is hard not to conclude that this is the case with this poster, since he was quick to refer the peer reviewers as "on drugs" even after admitting to not having read more than the abstract. If you have some reason that he would view the path from A to B as "pretty obvious," well, all I can say is that you are considerably less cynical than I.
"Retarded" used to be a medical term, but they dropped it when it became a societal one.
My new blog