Paradise Split from LDS Scout Leader charged with several counts of criminal sexual conduct

[Res Ipsa]

The study says it examined the effect of socio-economic status and ruled it out as a cause of the brain changes. It also studied only a single personality trait associated with the changes, and it wasn’t a measure of overall maturity.

The study does not support the conclusions DT is claiming.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

The study says it examined the effect of socio-economic status and ruled it out as a cause of the brain changes. It also studied only a single personality trait associated with the changes, and it wasn’t a measure of overall maturity.

The study does not support the conclusions DT is claiming.

Man, I glossed right over that. Thanks for the catch. Here’s the bits about socio-economics:

Two additional models tested for the interaction of early and current stressors as well as the effect of socioeconomic status (SES) on GMV changes described above. In the first model, the interaction of negative personal early-life events and the adolescent peer environment did not significantly modulate GMV, showing that early and current stress are independently related to neurodevelopmental maturation. In the second model, SES also did not significantly modulate GMV changes. All effects of early and adolescent stressors described previously remained the same in both models.

Socioeconomic Status

SES scores were computed based on education (7-point scale) and occupation (6-point scale) levels for both parents in line with previous reports on this cohort75. The levels of education and occupation for the two parents were first standardized and then summed to create a single score per parent. The final SES score was derived by taking the average score of the mother and father

- Doc

[Res Ipsa]

It was a tough study for me to parse. They selected stressors from two standard sources, but they don’t list what they are. They correlate using a total score, but they don’t report whether there are any parts of the score that were more significant than others. And I probably just missed it, but I wasn’t clear on how the score categories were determined.

And I’m bothered by the small sample size. The paper mentions it, but their explanation looks like hand waving. They used participants in an ongoing longitudinal study, which is good. But there were 116 participants in the ongoing study, only 37 of which ended up in the paper. If there was any kind of pattern to the drop outs, I think that would be a significant problem.

It’s not the author’s fault, as I’m not the target audience, but the use of the term “maturing” was confusing to me. I had to read the paper a couple of times before I understood that they meant some parts of the brain were changing faster than would be normally expected. But the paper didn’t examine what that effect had on the children. And the changes from family stressors were different from the social stressors. So the early accelerated changes didn’t continue all through childhood.

The reporting on the paper was pretty bad, so it would be easy to be misled if DT learned about the paper from an article in popular media.

It’s an interesting paper, and I’d be interested to see it replicated with a larger group.

[IHAQ]

Deleted

[doubtingthomas]

The study says it examined the effect of socio-economic status and ruled it out as a cause of the brain changes.

"However unusual it may seem to students of human development that timing of puberty is affected by prior and contemporaneous social conditions, this notion is widely accepted among scientists who study reproductive development among nonhuman primates and other mammals. In this section, we examine several lines of evidence derived from both human and animal research that support the hypothesis that the timing of maturation is contextually plastic, socially mediated, and accelerated by intrafamilial stress"
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1935336/

"Childhood socio-economic status (SES)... Here we review evidence that experiences associated with childhood SES affect not only the outcome but also the pace of brain development."
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41583-021-00457-5

"In a meta-analysis with over 100,000 participants published in Psychological Bulletin, Stress and Development Lab research demonstrates that experiencing adversity in childhood is associated with accelerated biological aging across three separate metrics of aging - the timing of puberty, indicators of cellular aging, as well as patterns of brain development. "
https://sdlab.fas.harvard.edu/news/stre ... biological

Please note that poverty itself probably doesn't cause brain development to accelerate.

Secondly, from my reading, perhaps I missed it, neither the abstract nor the full story mention the income or economic status of the study’s participants. Finally, you didn’t provide statistics.

Okay. I'll change it to low-income neighborhoods and poor countries. Would that be better? Because poverty itself probably doesn't cause the acceleration.

Do you realise you’ve rebutted yourself?

I need to be more clear and specific.

.

[Res Ipsa]

More than being clear, you need to stop cherry picking snippets out of studies and drawing conclusions that aren’t supported by the study itself. For example, here’s what you quoted from an article on one of the three newest studies you cited:

"In a meta-analysis with over 100,000 participants published in Psychological Bulletin, Stress and Development Lab research demonstrates that experiencing adversity in childhood is associated with accelerated biological aging across three separate metrics of aging - the timing of puberty, indicators of cellular aging, as well as patterns of brain development. "

What you didn’t quote was the next two sentences:

Importantly, however, these effects were not observed for all types of early adversity. Only exposure to violence or experiences that involve a significant threat to the child were associated with this acceleration in the aging process. Experiences involving deprivation, like neglect, or poverty did not predict this acceleration.

That’s a classic cherry pick, which led you to reach a conclusion that is the opposite of what the paper itself concludes.

You are also ignoring the sections of studies that talk about how tentative the findings are, treating the findings as established facts when the authors themselves do not. The first on the three new studies you cite includes a lengthy section on the paucity of studies in this field, the difficulties involved in conducting studies, and how tentative their conclusions are. This is a relatively new field of study, and the authors take great pains to communicate that much more work is needed, with more diverse study subjects, before any firm conclusions can be drawn.

I’m not suggesting that you are intentionally cherry picking. It looks like the kind of confirmation bias we are all vulnerable to. If I were to guess, I’d guess that all this research has something to do with explaining your experience with dating the younger Mexican woman you’ve mentioned. If my guesses is correct, then you’re really misusing these papers. The papers deal with averages, but typically involve wide range of distribution. The can tell you about the tendencies of the average group member, but cannot explain a single individual. This would be a fatal flaw in your approach, regardless of how many studies you find that you think support a theory you’ve formulated. Tweaking the phrasing of your conclusion doesn’t address this basic problem in your reasoning.

[doubtingthomas]

I’m not suggesting that you are intentionally cherry picking. It looks like the kind of confirmation bias we are all vulnerable to.

You are doing the same thing.

Only exposure to violence or experiences that involve a significant threat to the child were associated with this acceleration in the aging process.

And low-income areas and countries don't have higher rates of violence and child abuse? "Experts say the stress that families living in poverty face is likely contributing to high rates of child abuse"

And the aging process in that study observed involved 1.puberty 2. cellular aging 3. brain development.

I’d guess that all this research has something to do with explaining your experience with dating the younger Mexican woman you’ve mentioned.

Yes.

This would be a fatal flaw in your approach, regardless of how many studies you find that you think support a theory you’ve formulated. Tweaking the phrasing of your conclusion doesn’t address this basic problem in your reasoning.

You know very well it is hard to prove things in science. Just look at the mess in nutritional science.
I was sharing some studies, and here is what we do know "For some that could be as early as age 18 or as late as age 30. But the average is around 25 years of age."
https://wexnermedical.osu.edu/blog/brain-myths

So wouldn't it be reasonable to assume that a large percentage of the 18 year olds live (or lived) in low-income areas? Or do you think at 18 is just an anomaly like someone claimed earlier?

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

So, you were dating a girl around 18-years-old?

- Doc

[doubtingthomas]

What the chart doesn’t support is the conclusion that the 18-30 year old women aren’t having sex with 18-30 year old men. We’d need more information to reach that conclusion.

Let me put it differently.

A lot of women over 26 are getting with men in their 30s, but not enough young men in their early 20s are getting with younger women to make up for the difference.

Would that make more sense?

The missing information is the average number of partners. Without that, we can’t conclude anything about whether the women were having sex with men over 30.

So, I think there are likely several factors that resulted in the
divergence in numbers. To reach the conclusion you’ve argued for, I think we’d need to have more data, including changes in the age differentials between people having sex over time.

Women getting with the top guys and women over 26 dating older men explains the difference.

Yes, I think there is some data.

The article itself suggests three explanations that I think are consistent with the research published by South & Lei: lower participation in the labor force, men living longer with their parents, and technology, specifically video games. All of those sound plausible.

Yes, but South & Lei blame reduced sociability. Guys with no friends or a girlfriend won't go out to drink and won't get their own apartment because no one would help them pay the rent.

[Marcus]

Women getting with the top guys…

What do you mean by this?