Is an Economist Qualified To Solve Puzzle of Autism?

[question everything]

The Wall Street Journal

Is an Economist Qualified To Solve Puzzle of Autism?
Professor's Hypothesis: Rainy Days and TV May Trigger Condition
By MARK WHITEHOUSE
February 27, 2007; Page A1

In the spring of 2005, Cornell University economist Michael Waldman noticed a strange correlation in Washington, Oregon and California. The more it rained or snowed, the more likely children were to be diagnosed with autism. To most people, the observation would have been little more than a riddle. But it soon led Prof. Waldman to conclude that something children do more during rain or snow -- perhaps watching television -- must influence autism. Last October, Cornell announced the resulting paper in a news release headlined, "Early childhood TV viewing may trigger autism, data analysis suggests."

(snip)

Ami Klin, director of the autism program at the Yale Child Study Center, says Prof. Waldman needlessly wounded families by advertising an unpublished paper that lacks support from clinical studies of actual children. "Whenever there is a fad in autism, what people unfortunately fail to see is how parents suffer," says Dr. Klin. "The moment you start to use economics to study the cause of autism, I think you've crossed a boundary." Prof. Waldman, who thinks television restriction may have helped rescue his own son from autism, says many noneconomists don't understand the methods he used. His paper recommends that parents keep young children away from television until more rigorous studies can be done. "I've gotten a lot of nasty emails," he says. "But if people aren't following up on this, it's a crime."

Such debates are likely to grow as economists delve into issues in education, politics, history and even epidemiology. Prof. Waldman's use of precipitation illustrates one of the tools that has emboldened them: the instrumental variable, a statistical method that, by introducing some random or natural influence, helps economists sort out questions of cause and effect. Using the technique, they can create "natural experiments" that seek to approximate the rigor of randomized trials -- the traditional gold standard of medical research.

(snip)

But as enthusiasm for the approach has grown, so too have questions. One concern: When economists use one variable as a proxy for another -- rainfall patterns instead of TV viewing, for example -- it's not always clear what the results actually measure. Also, the experiments on their own offer little insight into why one thing affects another. By suggesting that something within parents' control could be triggering autism, Prof. Waldman has reopened old wounds in the realm of autism research, which is littered with debunked theories linking the disorder to the family environment.

(snip)

Over the years, attempts to understand the affliction have been tough on parents. One of the earliest, the "refrigerator mother" theory, blamed autism on a lack of maternal affection. Popularized by celebrity psychologist Bruno Bettelheim, the theory survived from the 1940s until the late 1960s, virtually demonizing mothers of autistic children until more-careful studies failed to support the idea. More recently, a scare about measles vaccinations stirred anxiety, but large studies have shown no link to autism. Most researchers now recognize that heredity plays a central role in autism, and they are making progress in identifying the genes responsible. They're also looking into the possibility of interaction with environmental factors, both in the womb and after birth.

Some experts think that in reaction to the discredited theories the pendulum has swung too far away from the family. "The discussion of the role of the family, and social interaction within the family, is virtually taboo," says Anna Baumgaertel, a developmental-behavioral pediatrician at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. She says some of her autistic patients have been heavy video and TV watchers since birth -- a factor she thinks "may lead to autistic behavior in susceptible children, because it interferes with the development of 'live' auditory, visual, and social experience."

(snip)


URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB117131554110006323.html (subscription)

[John Q. Citizen]

1. i wonder what the autism rate is among the Amish, or other groups who go

TV less is?

[barb162]

6. that;'s a good one!

[WorldResident]

2. Is this economics or statistics?

n/t

[question everything]

4. stats, probably

from above: instrumental variable, a statistical method

[frankenforpres]

14. we've coopted that, buddy

to our professions detriment

[Dr.Phool]

3. Economics is not even a real science.

Even the Nobel Committee will admit that. Even though they award a prize in that catagory. It's all hypothesis, and no workable, provable theory involved.

[barb162]

7. Supply , demand curves, monopoly models, etc are all workable

and provable.

[WorldResident]

8. I argue many "liberal" points based on economics

Just to list a few:

1. Universal health care - our current model encourages uninsured people to pursue treatment in the emergency room or the hospital, which increases the cost of care and decreases the efficiency of care.

2. Minimum wage - in a non-perfectly competitive market, a price floor can serve to increase production.

3. Unionization - in a non-perfectly competitive market, a bilateral monopoly can serve to increase production and equity.

4. Immigration - a labor market without barriers will serve to promote greater efficency and specialization.

[barb162]

10. I certainly don't agree with 2 and 4

2 on its logic and 4 just isnlt liberal. The higher wage earners forced out of jobs or being forced into bankruptcy doesn't do a society as a whole any good.

[gravity]

15. Economics states the facts

Whether they are a good thing or bad thing is up to the policy makers to decide.

And I disagree with 2 too.

[WorldResident]

17. This site explains point 2 much better than I can

http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/~jkennan/palgrave.htm

The argument that a monopsony might find it profitable to increase employment in response to minimum wage regulation is exactly analogous to the argument that a monopoly might find it profitable to increase output in response to maximum price regulation.

[barb162]

20. I hate to tell you, but I have seen liberal economists who

would disagree with that. I am always "taken" with economic studies which don't take into account all variables and factors that will influence a study.

[WorldResident]

16. Are you talking about 2 or 4?

Number 2's a bit hard to understand, but essentially if a monopoly is paying a lower wage because it doesn't want to give everybody else a raise just to hire one more worker, and thus is employing less workers than it otherwise would, a minimum wage removes this incentive. Thus, a company does not have to worry whether paying $7.25/hour to a worker who can produce $10/hour is uneconomical because it would have to raise wages for all the other workers.

[gravity]

19. I disagree

A monopoly would pay for a worker as long as their marginal cost is less than the marginal revenue he/she generates.

Minimum wages doesn't increase production and might actually decrease it in some cases. Minimum wages are however needed when there is an excess labor supply which drives down wages from too many people competing for a limited number of jobs.

[barb162]

21. I can't quite figure what 2 stated and haven't read your other post

yet. Four, though, is something that Bush would argue is good. It's not liberal at all. Destroying higher wage earners, say, construction workers, by replacing with low-wage earners by breaking unions, benefits the buyers of buildings and those that use them. It benefits the low wage warners who were working at even lower previous wages. It hurts like hell the workers and families losing their high paying jobs and lowers the pay scale on average of all workers. Instead of propsperity and people being able to afford a certain standard of living, there is a rush to third world standards of living. Not good.

Read "Why Asia will Eat our Lunch." When all the high paying jobs here are gone to India and China, tell me how I should really like that the US becomes a third world country begging for scraps from China. "Efficiency" as used by the heads of business these days ends up in destroying societies. I notice China only uses capitalism against the US. It doesn't apply free trade capitalism when it comes to its own markets. China carefully protects its markets. Same thing with corporate pay. If those corp. chieftains were so concerned about efficiency and market value for stockholders they wouldn't be paying themselves 400 times what the average worker makes. It's all become a bit cannibalistic. Efficiency as used in economic or financial lingo these days is all just an excuse to take whatever "they" can get at the expense of the schnooks who have been wormking their asses off and watching their jobs disappear to third world countries.

I will now excuse myself and offer apologies to the OP for getting off topic

[NashVegas]

26. It Is the Science of Creating Wealth

And I don't think we're better for it.

[barb162]

5. I wonder where it rains or snows a lot, there is more autism

Places such as the rainy side of Kauai or the Alaska coast or Seattle. If the kids are in watching TV in those areas, do they have a higher autism rate? How about places where it is super cold such as Fairbanks or northern Canada or Siberia where the kids are in a lot during the really cold winters? But maybe this economist shouldn't be talking about TVs as much as video games.

I can't get into the rest of the article for other than what is posted here.

[question everything]

9. I have often wonder about previous generations

I do not remember, growing up, having heard of autism, or just having kids around with these problems. But then, we played outside, not sat in front of a TV or a computer.

I suspect that the kids in places that you mention used to play in the basement, not sitting in front of a TV.

I will PM you the entire article

[barb162]

12. Thank you for the PM

The Bruno Bettleheim reference in the article shows there were autistic kids before TV became big. They probably weren't diagnosed as carefully back then before TV but they were there. They probably had to be severe cases though to be noticed.

[barb162]

18. This says a lot for me

"Criticism quickly arose, illustrating some of the perils of the economists' approach. For one, instruments are often too blunt. As Prof. Waldman concedes, precipitation could be linked to a lot of factors other than TV-watching -- such as household mold -- that could be imagined to trigger autism. At best, his data reflect the effect of television on those children who changed their habits because of rain or snow, not on those who did it for other reasons such as a desire to watch educational shows.

"It is just too much of a stretch to tie this to television-watching," says Joseph Piven, director of the Neurodevelopmental Disorders Research Center at the University of North Carolina. "Why not tie it to carrying umbrellas?""

They identified autism in the very early 20th century. Of course it was around for way before that as it was just being confused with schizophrenia. It's too much of a stretch for me to tie in TV watching with something that was around for decades/ centuries before TV. I also don't believe autism is increasing. The docs are just getting better at identifying it and its many forms.

[PADemD]

24. Previous generations were not exposed to ultrasound in the womb.

Has anyone ever looked at ultrasound exposure as a possible cause of autism?

[gravity]

11. Economists can speculate what causes autism

People are just overreacting to one study.

Who cares? He is an economists who thinks he came up with a link between television and autism. If he is wrong discredit him based off on science, not because it might hurt someone's feelings. This is ridiculous.

What if more investigating did find a link between TV and autism?

[frankenforpres]

13. i dont like IV analysis n/t

[politicat]

22. I must say that I want to see the numbers.

Autism is actually pretty interesting to study from a statistical perspective because we do have really good statistical numbers on past cases. (There weren't as many, because we tended to diagnose differently even 20 years ago, so they were studied heavily.) We do know that there is a behavioral stimulation link (autistic kids often have issues handling over or under stimulation), and TV is a nasty bugger for that. TV might exacerbate a genetic predispostion the way TV's predecessor (open fires, which have the same flickery, in-motion qualities) just didn't. Or it might be a red herring as a causative agent.

I'm not sure, though, if we're looking at an Ice Cream and Murder (correlation) issue or a causative issue. Just to speculate, I could easily see that the issue is not TV, but a lack of oh... Vitamin D at a critical stage of brain development due to a lack of sunlight at the right time. The TV just happened to be the background issue, a red herring. Or it could be related to the fact that more kids survive more childhood illnesses today than they did even 55 years ago, and are less likely to end up blind or deaf thanks to scarlet fever or ear infections, or institutionalized due to brain damage suffered during a meningitis outbreak or, or, or.... (Child mortality before the age of 5 has dropped significantly, and kids really don't die of disease very often anymore.) When we factor in the fact that kids with autism spectrum disorders also have a tendency to something co-morbid or to more generalized immune deficiencies, I can see where an argument could be made that the reason we missed diagnoses 30 or 50 years ago is because the kids simply didn't survive early childhood. (We'd have to look at child mortality records very carefully, so do recall that this is just speculation and maybe will become someone else's doctoral project.) Alternately, it could be that kids need to be exposed to something as infants or toddlers -- maybe playground sand or wood bark mulch or zwieback coated in dog hair or grandpa's overshoes -- that confers some sort of functional immunity through an immune response. Allergies and autism aren't strangers (though they're not necessary for each other) so maybe the rise of allergy issues and the rise of autism diagnoses are linked. We know that kids who have to spend more time indoors are more likely to develop mold and dust allergies, and people who live in wet areas are more likely to be exposed to molds, and new construction is FAR more mold-prone than older houses were, so maybe it's a result of an environmental allergy that would go away if we'd go back to building with plaster instead of gypsum and building houses that breathe better. Maybe it's that children need exposure to older children, teenagers, young unmarried adults, the middle aged, retired and elderly for some sort of socio-neural pathing that we don't understand at all. Maybe our issue is cultural, because we segregate people by age rather than keeping core communities of mixed age together. There's a lot of factors to raising a healthy child, and genetics are a small part of it; exposures are a part; stimulation is a part and the greater culture is a huge part.

And no, I am not blaming the parents. If it turns out to be a Vitamin D deficiency, they can't be blamed for not doing something they didn't know to do. They can't control what their kids do or don't come in contact with beyond a small, rather pyrric subset. We're only going to learn what works through trial and error and statistical study and a lot of documentation. But to get to the bottom of the ASD issues, we have to do a lot of very serious study that will have to encompass every aspect of an ASD child's life. And getting offended if some study says that zwieback and TV and rain are correlated with rising autism rates is just a waste of getting offended. We have to look at the numbers because statistical epidemiology is a damn good tool for ferreting out previously unknown connections.

[earth mom]

23. This is THE STUPIDEST theory I've EVER heard!

People with Autism think "in pictures" and that's why they are DRAWN to computers, t.v. and video games since it's often how they learn about life. The bozo economist who came up with this ridiculous hogwash seriously needs to get a clue AND do his homework. :eyes:

Thinking in Pictures
http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Pictures-Other-Reports-Autism/dp/0679772898/ref=sr_1_2/104-7174775-8599133?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1173168086&sr=8-2

[mmonk]

25. Insane bullshit by enemies

of the disabled.

[LeftishBrit]

27. No. An economist is not qualified to solve the puzzle of autism.

Moreover, autism usually manifests itself in the second year of life (though it may not be diagnosed till later) - pretty early for something that could be attributed to TV and video watching.

I don't think that excessive TV watching is good for children; but it doesn't cause autism. What is possible is that autistic children, due to their difficulties with social interaction and verbal communication, and their liking for repetitive perceptual stimulation, may choose to watch more television than other children. Thus, it may be the autism that causes the excessive TV watching rather than the TV watching that causes the autism.

[PVnRT]

28. Causality/correlation

Not demonstrated. Next.