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by holub008 1532 days ago
Seriously, has the bar sunk this low? I was certain the authors would express caution in interpreting causality, but alas: "Our results suggest that some sexually transmitted parasites, such as T. gondii, may produce changes in the appearance and behavior of the human host".
2 comments
folli 1532 days ago
T. gondii is not a sexually transmitted parasite. Or am I missing something?
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holub008 1532 days ago
I was directly quoting the article and am not a domain expert. It is interesting to see some commenters here state that it isn't an STD. It appears this is an open question.

https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/190/3/386/5905708 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24986706/

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folli 1531 days ago
TIL. Thank you, this is news to me.
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lupire 1532 days ago
> may

That is expressing caution.

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holub008 1532 days ago
Perhaps it's because I don't frequent the literature, but I interpret that as "T Gondii. may [provided by our level of statistical certainty in MANCOVA] produce changes". Otherwise, what's the point of performing a statistical analysis? Moreover what's the value of any assertion if it can be guarded by an unbounded-uncertainty keyword "may".
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ascar 1532 days ago
I think that's a classic case of reading between the lines and making implications where one shouldn't. If I'm using words that state uncertainty, it is because I am not certain, but only say it is a possibility. A research result that shows there is a correlation is already interesting without establishing or confirming causation. Their wording is exactly saying that. Without that paper we wouldn't even know there is a correlation!

How else would you like them to state that without being overly verbose?

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holub008 1532 days ago
> How else would you like them to state that without being overly verbose?

"Our results suggest that some sexually transmitted parasites, such as T. gondii, may be correlated with appearance and behavior of the human host."

I appreciate your viewpoint. I would counter it by saying that there are two sources of uncertainty here: choice of model & sampling variance. It's my opinion that in scientific writing, one should be precise with which source of uncertainty they are guarding. If I'm allowed to group these together, why can't I make a similar statement of causation of any old spurious correlation - when obviously my model is bad?

Considering this example again - isn't it arbitrary that the authors get to choose which hypothesis (among many, like attractive people being predisposed to own cats) they get to claim "may" be demonstrated?

Similar line of discussion: https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2015/04/04/thinking-p...

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ascar 1531 days ago
> "Our results suggest that some sexually transmitted parasites, such as T. gondii, may be correlated with appearance and behavior of the human host."

But that is a different statement. They say that they found correlation and there may be causation. You say there may be correlation, a much weaker claim.

> Considering this example again - isn't it arbitrary that the authors get to choose which hypothesis (among many, like attractive people being predisposed to own cats) they get to claim "may" be demonstrated?

Of course it is arbitrary. But that was their hypothesis and you have to start with some hypothesis, no? They gathered data to establish correlation between the infection and attractiveness. They didn't gather data for anything else, so I think it's pretty reasonable to say we found correlation and further research might be interesting to see if there is causation.

Literally the next sentence says "Taken together, these results lay the foundation for future research".

If you go beyond the abstract and into the actual article, they are pretty careful to just list possibilities for the observed correlation. They certainly could have stated that it might just be spurious correlation there, but I don't blame them too much. These articles are supposed to be concise and not verbose and especially the abstract is supposed to be as concise and short as possible.

I agree with your general premise and the linked article though. It should be a given to consider that and ideally also state it in the article.

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