[HN Gopher] NIH Researchers Identify Brain Connections Associate...
___________________________________________________________________
NIH Researchers Identify Brain Connections Associated with ADHD in
Youth
Author : bookofjoe
Score : 82 points
Date : 2024-03-14 12:03 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nimh.nih.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nimh.nih.gov)
| _fat_santa wrote:
| I've always been a cautious skeptic of ADHD in children. On the
| one hand I know ADHD is a thing and that it legitimately affects
| some children, but on the other hand I realize that alot of ADHD
| symptoms overlap with the general nature of children, especially
| boys.
|
| My wonder is when does it to go from a kid just being a kid to a
| child actually affected by ADHD. Often times it's described as
| just not being able to pay attention but in my personal
| experience I remember finding it hard to focus as a child.
|
| The drugs also scare me. I remember taking Adderall in college to
| help study for tests and crunch on projects but I distinctly
| remember anytime I took one I always wondered how people could
| take it every day, Adderall (and Vyvance) were amazing drugs for
| helping to stay focused, but wow did they f** me up, I remember
| it always felt great at first and by the end of the study session
| I couldn't imagine how people could take it every day because of
| the side effects (especially the lack of hunger). Adults taking
| the drug is one thing but the idea of giving something like that
| to a child profoundly scares me.
| corobo wrote:
| > My wonder is when does it to go from a kid just being a kid
| to a child actually affected by ADHD
|
| The second D - disorder. When it affects the kid's ability to
| learn, socialise, etc
| lolinder wrote:
| The problem is that what is perceived as "disordered" is
| different across time and space.
|
| Behavior patterns that were once totally normal may get in
| the way of living the kind of life that some parents have
| come to _expect_ of their kids--running from school to dance
| to piano to soccer to tutors to therapy to whatever. Are
| these kids disordered because they can 't keep up, or are the
| demands unreasonable?
| user_7832 wrote:
| Or counterpoint- in my case I was helped at home a good bit
| with structure. It wasn't until I was independent at uni
| that this facade started to fall off, revealing "issues".
| corobo wrote:
| Aye same - I did great up until I had to make my own
| structure.
|
| Decent enough in school but dropped out of college twice.
| Fell into an entry level IT job with loads of scripts,
| processes, and procedures but the more I progressed the
| more autonomy I was given and the worse I performed.
|
| Was mostly terrible but occasionally amazing (enough to
| keep my job at least) for ~10 years then bumped into the
| ADHD symptoms at some point, got myself checked out, got
| the diagnosis.
|
| Doing pretty well now (tho never perfect) with medication
| and a stint of cognitive behavioural therapy to help set
| up my own structure. Getting there!
| user_7832 wrote:
| Could you explain what/how the CBT helped? Where I am in
| Europe the default treatment is only medication which
| feels inadequate on its own.
| corobo wrote:
| I think this is where things diverge depending on what
| troubles the ADHD brings you. It's kinda like debugging a
| program except the program is your brain - and yeah in
| the UK it's medication only by default, had to sort out
| the CBT side of things myself when I realised the meds
| were helping but not quite doing enough alone.
|
| I originally went for help with low confidence which
| expanded out to digging into and addressing self-esteem,
| confidence, social anxiety, procrastination, and
| perfectionism.
|
| If I'd taken one general thing from it though it's "do I
| have evidence or is this an assumption?" - if I have no
| evidence (that I'm terrible at my job, I did bad, that
| guy hates me, etc) then I should reevaluate if it's even
| accurate before doing anything with the thought
|
| Writing things down when things go wrong was a big part
| of it too - what's the situation, what led to the
| situation, is it possible to view the situation in a
| better light, if not how can I fix the situation, if I
| can't fix things myself is there anyone that can help me
| with this situation rather than wallowing in it. That
| sort of thing.
|
| As I say I imagine it'll differ from person to person so
| other people may have an entirely different experience
| with it, I'm not sure. Definitely worked for my
| systems/coding flavoured brain though, really was like
| debugging faults in a program. Figure out the underlying
| issue, try a fix, did it work? y/n? If no, try another
| fix. If yes, work on the next problem.
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > Could you explain what/how the CBT helped? Where I am
| in Europe the default treatment is only medication which
| feels inadequate on its own.
|
| Where are you? I can't think of a single place in Europe
| where medication alone is the treatment standard for
| ADHD.
| corobo wrote:
| I dunno to be honest, I don't know of any kids diagnosed
| with ADHD to think of as examples.
|
| Looking back on my own life (diagnosed early 30s, but part
| of the process was looking at how I was in school): I
| struggled to keep up with the bare basics outside of
| lessons - getting ready for school on time, remembering
| books, remembering to tell my parents I/they needed to do
| stuff on specific dates, doing (small amounts of) homework.
|
| On the social front - Billy no mates until college (where I
| met people who were as weird as me), constantly bullied for
| reasons I couldn't figure out, could not work out how
| people managed to make friends. Felt like I'd missed the
| day of school where they taught everyone how to socialise
| and be normal. It was also like my prime directive was
| "don't speak unless spoken to" haha. So damn quiet.
|
| Unless someone directly invited me or gave me permission to
| do an activity that activity was just for other people, not
| for me. Dancing, sports, and pianos weren't even on the
| table lol.
| detourdog wrote:
| This is where it gets weird for me. I certainly can learn but
| school was torture. I had no problems socializing. I'm signed
| up for a neurological exam. I have had a personality exam
| with nothing jumping out.
| digibeet wrote:
| No need to be skeptical of children that are diagnosed. It is
| often (and I am speaking solely about boys, just as you do)
| quite obvious if you are trained in recognising those markers.
| This doesn't mean all are found and the current training is
| severely lacking in recognising symptoms for girls.
|
| Regardless, yes it is often described by others and those who
| are not diagnosed with ADHD as " just not being able to focus".
| This simplification misses out on a whole scala of symptoms and
| experiences.
|
| As for the medication, it is true that it is sometimes
| mis/abused by some students. One thing to realize is that for
| those who have ADHD drugs and the stuff may have completely
| different effects on the person. Uppers making some people
| sleepy for example. Lastly children are often not given those
| drugs you mention but alternative without those side effects.
| thfuran wrote:
| Are you also skeptical of obesity in teens because eating a lot
| is just the general nature of teens, especially boys? Are you
| appalled that diabetics take insulin every day because you once
| injected yourself with insulin you didn't need and experienced
| severe side effects?
| lolinder wrote:
| These comparisons feel like bad faith. This is what they
| actually said:
|
| > I've always been a cautious skeptic of ADHD in children. On
| the one hand I know ADHD is a thing and that it legitimately
| affects some children ...
|
| They explicitly say that they know it affects some children,
| but they're concerned that it's overdiagnosed because the
| symptoms have overlap with normal child development. This
| isn't some kind of uninformed conspiracy theory, it's a
| legitimate concern shared by experts in the field [0].
|
| My fear isn't that experts get confused and mix up real ADHD
| with normal childhood, my fear is that parents expect too
| much of their kids and convince their family doctor (who
| isn't an expert) to diagnose the child and prescribe
| Adderall. That fear is totally compatible with ADHD _also_
| being a real thing that actually needs treatment in other
| children.
|
| [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8042533/
| remotefonts wrote:
| Wait... Which barbaric country is that where a simple
| family doctor can prescribe amphetamines like that? Not in
| my EU country. It's a controlled medication and can only be
| prescribed by psychiatrists.
| nick__m wrote:
| Canada is one of them, my family doctor put me on
| Vyvanse, after seing me for the second time for an
| unrelated problem, because he noted that I was
| alternating between hyperfocus and zoning out when he
| talked to me.
|
| It positively changed my life and I am quite happy that a
| "simple family doctor" can prescribe amphetamines if he
| thinks that it's appropriate.
| thfuran wrote:
| >These comparisons feel like bad faith. This is what they
| actually said:
|
| Taking prescription medication without a prescription or
| the condition it's meant to treat and then using its
| effects on you to decry its use by those with both seems
| like bad faith.
| adastra22 wrote:
| He took prescription medication that was not prescribed to
| him and is now judging the people it is meant for based on
| his own interaction with the drug. A drug that quite
| famously has entirely different effects on the target
| population.
|
| That is either extremely ignorant or bad faith. Either way
| it's below HN's standards.
| improv wrote:
| Diabetes is a biological disease which can be objectively
| proven and diagnosed based on biological tests.
|
| There are no objective biological diagnostic criteria for
| anything in the DSM.
|
| "psychiatric diagnosis still relies exclusively on fallible
| subjective judgments rather than objective biological tests"
| -Allen Frances, _The New Crisis of Confidence in Psychiatric
| Diagnosis_
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Frances
| fsociety wrote:
| I guarantee that you took Adderall IR, and a higher dose than
| those typically prescribed by a doctor. It's like slamming back
| 10 cups of espresso instead of sipping one over a day. And then
| judging people who drink a coffee a day.
|
| Slow release and a therapeutic dose is significantly different
| than slamming back meds in school like that. Therapeutic dose
| means you can't even tell you took the med, until you either
| stop or look back at the day and record how much you were able
| to achieve.
|
| Yes, some doctors are bad and calculate a dosage based on
| weight or other arbitrary means. Good doctors and psychiatrists
| start you on the lowest dose and slowly titrate you up based on
| DSM guidelines.
|
| Lastly, medication for ADHD is something that makes all the
| actual effective treatments do-able. It's a first step not a
| crux.
| samtho wrote:
| > Lastly, medication for ADHD is something that makes all the
| actual effective treatments do-able. It's a first step not a
| crux.
|
| This is a nuance that is lost on a lot of people. Medication
| needs to be taken in conjunction with re-learning how to
| study/organize/prioritize. This actually allows for new
| neuro-pathways to be forged and reinforced in the brain,
| which actually _fixes_ many of the negative effects of ADHD,
| lessening the need for medication over time for many people.
| This effect is easy to observe in children because their
| brains are still extremely very plastic, but it also causes
| people to question why we need to prescribe medication if
| kids just end up "growing out of it".
| mirsadm wrote:
| If you have a child with ADHD you will know. They are
| different.
| kypro wrote:
| Even if true, the problem is those who don't but think they
| do.
|
| I suspect you might also have parents who kinda like the idea
| that there child's behaviour can be explained by ADHD. My
| sister's kid often gets in trouble at school for example, and
| whenever this happens she will try to excuse it by saying she
| has ADHD. I'm not at all convinced given that imo it's far
| easier to explain the misbehaviour with bad parenting.
| mirsadm wrote:
| I don't think you understand. "Bad" behavior is one aspect
| of it but there are many others. Girls also have different
| symptoms (and are severely under diagnosed compared to
| boys). This is not a situation of excusing behavior you
| need to live and deal with a child every single day to
| understand.
| weweersdfsd wrote:
| The problem is that often a child with ADHD may also have
| autism, or various other difficulties (learning disabilities,
| anxiety disoder) that may mask, or have similar symptoms. And
| then you can also have such disorders without having ADHD.
| The same structural differences in brain can cause lots of
| things.
| teamonkey wrote:
| Especially clear if you have one who does and one who
| doesn't.
| permalac wrote:
| Absolutely. Take my two kids, they are wildly different,and
| so equal. One can focus a bit the other is impossible to get
| focused. He gets distracted when doing a wee, is astonishing,
| sometimes I'm speechless.
| user_7832 wrote:
| Iirc adhd is a neurodevelopmental condition. So if a 5 year old
| has similar executive function as the average 5yo he's probably
| fine. But if a 10 yo has a 7yo's levels it's worth looking at.
| And if this same person has this even later to the point where
| it affects life in multiple situations it's a disorder,
| medically speaking. Also, some people (not all) grow out of
| adhd in their adulthood as the brain develops.
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| Many of the people who grew out of it did it not naturally
| but because they were on medication. Medication during
| childhood has been well proven in longitudinal studies to
| reduce the incidence of adult ADHD.
| 2four2 wrote:
| > The drugs also scare me... The idea of giving something like
| that to a child profoundly scares me.
|
| It works differently in people with the disorder. I took
| Adderall as a child and as an adult for adhd. It didn't get me
| wired nor did I have withdrawal symptoms, I simply felt more
| centered and capable of starting tasks. I know that we can only
| draw on our own experiences to judge things, but understand
| that people with this disorder experience the drug completely
| differently than you did.
| tstrimple wrote:
| This was pretty much my experience as well. I didn't feel
| high or up when taking adderall. It was almost unnoticed
| while on it, but reflecting back on what I was able to
| accomplish during the day it clearly had an impact. After
| taking it for close to a year, I just stopped cold turkey and
| had zero issues with any withdrawal symptoms.
|
| My brother has been known to take adderall recreationally.
| Apparently he would crush it up and snort it. He definitely
| gets a high from it. I'm not sure how much the difference in
| our experience is due to the delivery method versus
| differences in how our bodies processed it.
| faeriechangling wrote:
| Hmm, I've become less and less sceptical over time simply
| because I've seen the research on how medicating those with
| ADHD drops all cause mortality enough to extend lifespan by
| several years. It's possible there's overdiagnosis even still
| but I think people overestimate the potential scale of it, 25%
| overdiagnosis seems plausible to me but people act like ADHD is
| just all made up and a way to drug children into being study
| zombies because they act too much like typical children. It's
| profound how often people diagnosed with ADHD, when off
| medication, will just kill themselves accidentally in car
| accidents and drug overdoses far more than the general
| population.
|
| ADHD is not just labelling children with being disordered for
| being children. It's labelling like the most inattentive,
| dysregulated, and hyperactive 5% or so of children. Children
| that act like 5 year olds when their peers act like 7 year
| olds. ADHD has been observed for centuries as well. ADHD in
| women tends to be diagnosed later in life and if you study
| certain subpopulations of women like teen mothers you will trip
| over ADHD and the diagnostic gap narrows with age.
|
| There's also evidence like.. from the OP where we can observe
| neurological differences. I think my main problem with ADHD is
| labelling something that's probably evolutionarily adaptive
| (People with ADHD love having unprotected sex early in life) as
| a disorder and deficit, but this gets into the philosophy of
| medicine.
|
| Dr. Russell Barkley is a good source of information and
| champion of the scientific mainstream view of ADHD.
| pornel wrote:
| There is a huge difference between the common stereotype of
| ADHD (just rowdy children who can't sit still), and actual
| symptoms and diagnostic criteria. The difference is almost as
| comically warped as an image of a "hacker" in media vs actual
| hackers.
|
| ADHD includes many other things like weak short-term memory,
| defunct perception of time, hard to control hyperfocus,
| overwhelming inner monologue, and executive dysfunction that
| makes some tasks physically impossible to start even when the
| person wants to do them. And it comes with a bunch of other
| comorbidities. Doctors diagnosing ADHD also have obligation to
| exclude other causes of the symptoms, like bipolar.
|
| The stimulant medication does not actually cause stimulation in
| people with ADHD. When people have a deficit/insensitivity to
| the neurotransmitters, the meds merely bring them up from a
| dysfunctional level where the brain lacked ability to function
| properly to the normal-ish level.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| I really like that you list a whole lot of things that ADHD
| includes that most people are unaware of, but I wanted to
| call attention to the two that probably had the largest
| negative impact on my own life
|
| Rejection Sensitivity and Emotional Disregulation
|
| I have always been paralyzed by being afraid of failure
| (rejection), and that has kept me from pursuing a lot of
| things in the past
|
| And I've always been prone to anger outbursts, even over
| seemingly trivial silly things. It has damaged so many of my
| relationships and overall left me pretty lonely throughout my
| life. And when the dust settles I'm sitting there thinking
| "Why was I so angry about that thing. I don't even care that
| much about it"
|
| My ADHD diagnosis and medication, starting in my early 30s,
| has almost entirely turned my life around
| weweersdfsd wrote:
| I wonder if the symptoms you described can be also
| explained by being on autism spectrum. And then there's
| generalized anxiety disorder - a common comorbidity with
| ADHD, which could also cause worrying about failure.
|
| I fairly certain I have either ADHD, autism, or probably
| both, and have existing diagnosis pointing to being
| "neuroatypical". But coming up with exact diagnosis seems
| to be pretty difficult, because many other diagnosis can
| explain specific symptoms.
| teamonkey wrote:
| It's possible, sure. There's a blurry line between ADHD
| and autism, and ADHD is often comorbid when diagnosed
| with autism.
|
| I would say, though, that ADHD medication _can_ help with
| rejection sensitivity disorder and help regulate some
| emotional stress on top of the more well-known ADHD
| symptoms. Practically speaking, it doesn 't matter where
| it comes from if it can be treated.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| It definitely is.
|
| For ADHD in particular I think you have to zero in on
| executive function. It does bring along a lot of friends,
| but poor executive function is absolutely the keystone of
| any ADHD diagnosis
|
| If you don't struggle with that, then you can probably
| safely eliminate it as a suspect... Or at least put it
| much lower on the list
| itp wrote:
| Thank you both for adding these comments. I'm older than
| you, mid-40s now, and I'm _just_ starting to get treatment
| for ADHD after a lot of unnecessary struggles.
|
| I'm sure that people like the root of this thread mean
| well, but at the same time that attitude is exactly what
| kept me from receiving treatment or care when I was
| younger.
| lawlessone wrote:
| I have started on Ritalin in my 30's.
|
| I have to say the first time I took I suddenly felt very calm.
| Noises from neighboring apartments, dogs barking, children
| outside playing ceased to be annoying distractions.
|
| I took 5mg to be precautious. And spent hours doing an overdue
| cleaning my room / apartment. And i felt ok doing it when
| normally i'd feel irritated. Normally i'd have trouble deciding
| where to start this, but with this i just started.
|
| I started properly paying bills. To be clear i had the money to
| pay these bills. But i would always tend to leave them until I
| was getting notices to remind me.
|
| Vyvanse was interesting though. It made me a lot more
| assertive, when most people would describe me as the opposite.
| I liked that but it was double edged sword. I stopped because I
| was working as sales assistant in a shop and I found I was
| getting just a bit too angry at belligerent customers.
| rayiner wrote:
| We've been prescribing amphetamine salts since the 1950s, and
| Adderall specifically since the 1990s. It's extremely well
| studied at this point.
|
| Obviously we don't give kids the doses college students might
| take for cramming. Stimulant sensitivity varies quite widely in
| the population--a dosage that might be appropriate for a
| particular child may make an adult feel "wired." But there's a
| lot of science showing that Adderall in appropriate doses is
| neither habit forming nor do people develop a resistance to it
| (which is what typically causes escalating usage).
| fatnoah wrote:
| > My wonder is when does it to go from a kid just being a kid
| to a child actually affected by ADHD
|
| That's the multi-billion dollar question. From grades K-3, my
| son got straight A's and was a typical "boy" in the classroom.
| Occasionally not the best at paying attention, but no big deal.
|
| Fourth grade was another story. He'd come home exhausted, and
| cry himself into a nap nearly every day. Not coincidentally,
| that's what the academics shifted from pure memory, associative
| reasoning, and recall to tasks that also required planning and
| executive function. That, plus the expectations of better
| ability to sit still and pay attention were just too much.
|
| We eventually paid the big $$$ for a full, two-day neuro-psych
| evaluation. It was eye-opening for both my wife and I. For me,
| it showed how differently my son's brain was working, and for
| my wife it shined a light on her undiagnosed ADHD.
|
| We did resist giving our son medication, and waited until he
| decided that he wanted to try it (16 years). It made an amazing
| difference in his ability to study and stay on task, but it did
| come with the weight loss and a serious 4-6pm crash every day,
| though those effects seemed to mitigate over time.
| faeriechangling wrote:
| >We did resist giving our son medication, and waited until he
| decided that he wanted to try it (16 years)
|
| I sincerely think this is a good thing to do and gives people
| a healthier relationship to mental health than being coerced
| into taking drugs with harsh side-effects.
| ryandvm wrote:
| > They found that youth with ADHD had heightened connectivity
| between structures deep in the brain involved in learning,
| movement, reward, and emotion (caudate, putamen, and nucleus
| accumbens seeds) and structures in the frontal area of the brain
| involved in attention and control of unwanted behaviors (superior
| temporal gyri, insula, inferior parietal lobe, and inferior
| frontal gyri).
|
| So... ADHD is a symptom of an overly integrated brain.
|
| Not going to lie - I've always been kind of fond of my mild ADHD.
| There's something enjoyable about being interested in
| _everything_ going on around you (or in your head). It just
| happens to be a liability in schools or jobs where you 're only
| supposed to be doing "just this one thing".
| qpingo wrote:
| All quirky fun and games until you realize you can't do high-
| paying jobs that requires consistent focus. Which is not really
| a problem unless you want a family or to live in nice parts of
| cities.
| techcode wrote:
| There's a lot of high-paying tech jobs that can be playing
| into ADHD (and other not neuro typical brains) strengths and
| focus thats more like running 42 1km "sprints" than mostly
| consistent pace 42km marathon.
|
| Things that come to mind are data science/analysis, debugging
| and fixing outages (finalizing follow up RFO might be hardest
| part ), security/hacking (hopefully white hat)...
|
| And basically whatever else one personally finds interesting
| to dig into deep and/or wide.
| whoknowsidont wrote:
| >All quirky fun and games until you realize you can't do
| high-paying jobs that requires consistent focus.
|
| This is not a good understanding of ADHD. People with ADHD
| have hyperfocus tendencies, and this in fact can apply to
| their job while they ignore everything else.
|
| That is to say extremely successful people might be that way
| BECAUSE of their ADHD, not in spite of it. A programmer who
| devotes the majority of their life to learning their craft,
| or an artist who spends all their attention on their next (or
| first) hit album.
|
| But it's an even worse understanding of what high-paying jobs
| actually require.
| oldstrangers wrote:
| This tracks with my own theory on ADHD. It often times feels
| like a super power when it isn't ruining your life. If you
| manage it, it's remarkable. Left to its own devices, it's
| debilitating. When I was younger I tried to medicate the issue
| away, and then eventually came to the realization that I was
| doing more harm than good. So I learned to appreciate myself as
| just "different" as opposed to "dysfunctional".
|
| Perhaps there's some evolutionary advantage to these 'mental
| disorders' that'll make sense when they're more fully formed in
| another few hundred years.
| el_benhameen wrote:
| Have you found a good method for self-management?
| Mkengine wrote:
| Not OP, but for me the following combination works great:
|
| - Obsidian for knowledge management to help with the
| forgetfulness - Todoist to get the daily stuff done and
| personal project management - Timetree to coordinate with
| my wife and be able to plan ahead more than a week - any
| alarm app for the critical stuff the next day
| light_hue_1 wrote:
| This is a no-op paper. They found nothing useful. Maybe an
| inkling of something extremely weak. Maybe. Certainly nothing
| that should be popularized, taken up by the media, or used to
| make any decisions about anything.
|
| The kicker is:
|
| > Effect sizes were small (largest peak d, 0.15).
|
| To put that into language more people here would understand, it's
| like publishing a paper where your classifier gets 52% accuracy
| on a binary task (this is the zeroth order equivalent of a
| Cohen's d of 0.15), but you run it over so many ADHD patients
| that your confidence interval for that 52% accuracy is very
| small. Most people would still ignore it because it's likely
| still noise from other small confounds.
|
| That is a paper that you should not put your name on. I certainly
| would not. Their effects are also more like 0.11 not 0.15; the
| largest peak misrepresents all of the rest of the results.
|
| What they did is aggregate so much data that even a small
| inconsequential difference between groups that may account for
| nothing at all, that would go away with slightly different
| controls for confounds, becomes statistically significant.
|
| A lot of the comments here drawing conclusions like, ADHD is
| about an overly integrated brain or whatever are really
| frightening. This means nothing. Science communication at its
| worst.
| bookofjoe wrote:
| What does "no-op" mean?
| bookofjoe wrote:
| >That is a paper that you should not put your name on. I
| certainly would not. Their effects are also more like 0.11
| not 0.15; the largest peak misrepresents all of the rest of
| the results.
|
| >What they did is aggregate so much data that even a small
| inconsequential difference between groups that may account
| for nothing at all, that would go away with slightly
| different controls for confounds, becomes statistically
| significant.
|
| >A lot of the comments here drawing conclusions like, ADHD is
| about an overly integrated brain or whatever are really
| frightening. This means nothing. Science communication at its
| worst.
|
| Here are the paper's authors' affiliations:
|
| Office of the Clinical Director, NIMH, Bethesda, Md. (Norman,
| Shaw); Section on Neurobehavioral and Clinical Research,
| Social and Behavioral Research Branch, National Human Genome
| Research Institute, NIH, Bethesda, Md. (Sudre, Price, Shaw).
|
| It's hard for me to believe that the authors should not have
| put their name on this paper.
|
| Do you have a background and credentials as valid?
| light_hue_1 wrote:
| > Do you have a background and credentials as valid?
|
| I do. But we live in a world where people write you letters
| for promotion, review your grants, etc. Using your own name
| to say these things in public is bad for your career. So
| I'd rather not.
|
| Plenty has been said in scientific publications about how
| junk like this leads to most papers being false, how we
| shouldn't do statistics this way, etc. Scientists know, but
| it hasn't been communicated to the public yet.
|
| That being said, the beauty of science is that you don't
| need to see my CV.
|
| A basic understanding of what Cohen's d is, or a simple
| translation (with some heavy assumptions) into accuracy as
| I provided, is enough to see that the paper is total trash.
| They found nothing, but they found it at huge scale, so the
| p value was very small.
|
| By no-op I mean that it contributes nothing and means
| nothing. It's a waste of time for everyone. In a world were
| bean-counting publications wasn't how science was measured,
| I'm sure the authors would never have considered even
| writing this up worthwhile, never mind submitting it.
|
| The term comes from assembly which often has a no-op
| instruction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOP_(code)
| Something that does nothing (although, that nothing may be
| critical depending on the instruction set).
| Implicated wrote:
| Waste, space/time/etc.
| bookofjoe wrote:
| I still don't understand how "no-op" translates to "Waste,
| space/time/etc." Help!
| tech_ken wrote:
| "No operation"; in machine language it's an instruction that
| doesn't do anything, in broader tech lingo it's something
| that's moot or which requires no work. Commenter is basically
| saying that nothing actionable can be concluded from the
| paper's findings.
| cpburns2009 wrote:
| No-op is computer jargon for "no operation". It comes from
| CPUs having instructions (or commands) that do effectively
| nothing. Programming languages sometimes use the no-op term
| for functions (or procedures) that are placeholders that do
| nothing. These placeholder functions can be replaced later
| and perform some action. TL;DR: A "no-op" is something that
| does nothing, or as used by the parent, a paper that doesn't
| contribute anything.
| rmbyrro wrote:
| https://chat.openai.com/share/37623c40-fe0e-4a5a-a973-75b7c8...
|
| ChatGPT gave me a more balanced view to understand OP's
| criticisms. Sharing if anyone would like to read a more
| dispassionate (machine) version.
| improv wrote:
| As mentioned by light_hue_1:
|
| > Effect sizes were small (largest peak d, 0.15).
|
| It also doesn't look like they considered what effect a daily
| prescription of ADHD medications might have on brain connections
| versus the inherent condition itself.
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