Comments on: Prisons Are Built With Bricks Of Law And Brothels With Bricks Of Religion, But That Doesn’t Prove A Causal Relationship http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/prisons-are-built-with-bricks-of-law-and-brothels-with-bricks-of-religion-but-that-doesnt-prove-a-causal-relationship/ In a mad world, all blogging is psychiatry blogging Fri, 24 Jul 2015 23:11:24 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=4.2.3 By: Anonymous http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/prisons-are-built-with-bricks-of-law-and-brothels-with-bricks-of-religion-but-that-doesnt-prove-a-causal-relationship/#comment-162563 Mon, 01 Dec 2014 06:32:16 +0000 http://slatestarcodex.com/?p=3228#comment-162563 Neither this post nor any of Scott’s posts seem to me like the Last Psychiatrist.

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]]> By: Zanzard http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/prisons-are-built-with-bricks-of-law-and-brothels-with-bricks-of-religion-but-that-doesnt-prove-a-causal-relationship/#comment-162558 Mon, 01 Dec 2014 05:56:16 +0000 http://slatestarcodex.com/?p=3228#comment-162558 Maybe I’m not the first to say this, but this particular post sounds a lot like the posts of the blog The Last Psychiatrist.

This is a compliment, by the way. I really like that blog (even though there’s very rarely any new posts there).

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]]> By: Patri Friedman http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/prisons-are-built-with-bricks-of-law-and-brothels-with-bricks-of-religion-but-that-doesnt-prove-a-causal-relationship/#comment-162452 Sun, 30 Nov 2014 08:21:15 +0000 http://slatestarcodex.com/?p=3228#comment-162452 I think fisking of a popular nrx blogger who makes random false sweeping generalizations is useful. Usually his statements are about global cultural trends that are not so instantly disprovable by data. I feel like your post could get some people who care about truth, but never bothered to look into Jim’s accuracy, to realize that he just makes stuff up.

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]]> By: Anthony http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/prisons-are-built-with-bricks-of-law-and-brothels-with-bricks-of-religion-but-that-doesnt-prove-a-causal-relationship/#comment-161070 Mon, 24 Nov 2014 20:38:05 +0000 http://slatestarcodex.com/?p=3228#comment-161070 So both the original study and most of your examples are not counterexamples of “correlation implies causation”. In some cases, they directly imply causation, you’re just (deliberately) reversing the causation. In others, there’s a very good case that there’s an underlying causal factor.

It may even be worth reporting that suicidal people actually do seek psychiatric help, in rough proportion to how suicidal they are. It would be distressing but believable that there was no correlation between seeking psychiatric help and being suicidal.

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]]> By: Anonymous http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/prisons-are-built-with-bricks-of-law-and-brothels-with-bricks-of-religion-but-that-doesnt-prove-a-causal-relationship/#comment-160755 Sun, 23 Nov 2014 22:25:01 +0000 http://slatestarcodex.com/?p=3228#comment-160755 Yes, it is problematic, but what do you mean by “literal”? Do you mean “conventional”? I think that the literal meaning is cause: A is the subject of the verb; A is acting.

Most of the examples of “increase” in this article, whether Scott’s words or quotes, are of the form “patients with increased A.” These examples have less ambiguity, but I think it is still worth the simple change of “patients with higher A.” There are a few cases with the more ambiguous but harder to correct “A increases B.” The proper form is “Conditioning on A increases B.” That is still active, but the technical word “condition” comes with the caveat that it is not about cause. But I don’t expect anyone to adopt this simply because it is more words.

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]]> By: Paul Torek http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/prisons-are-built-with-bricks-of-law-and-brothels-with-bricks-of-religion-but-that-doesnt-prove-a-causal-relationship/#comment-160746 Sun, 23 Nov 2014 21:37:15 +0000 http://slatestarcodex.com/?p=3228#comment-160746 OK now I feel stupid for reading this post after the open thread post, but, my wife’s set of references contains two that are weakly related to your question:

I think forced committment is an overused tool and would be glad to get some evidence backing me up.

“Community treatment orders” aren’t the same thing, or as drastic, as commitment, but one plausible hypothesis that gets a boost from those studies would be that forced treatment tends not to work.

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]]> By: RCF http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/prisons-are-built-with-bricks-of-law-and-brothels-with-bricks-of-religion-but-that-doesnt-prove-a-causal-relationship/#comment-160744 Sun, 23 Nov 2014 21:33:48 +0000 http://slatestarcodex.com/?p=3228#comment-160744 It seems to me that the phrase “A increases the risk of B” is problematic. The literal meaning of it is merely that A and B are correlated, but the apparent meaning is that A causes B.

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]]> By: RCF http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/prisons-are-built-with-bricks-of-law-and-brothels-with-bricks-of-religion-but-that-doesnt-prove-a-causal-relationship/#comment-160741 Sun, 23 Nov 2014 21:30:00 +0000 http://slatestarcodex.com/?p=3228#comment-160741 But that’s precisely the point: if it’s the fear and internalized homophobia that causes suicide, rather than homosexuality itself, then that an argument for trying to reduce homophobia.

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]]> By: RCF http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/prisons-are-built-with-bricks-of-law-and-brothels-with-bricks-of-religion-but-that-doesnt-prove-a-causal-relationship/#comment-160737 Sun, 23 Nov 2014 21:20:59 +0000 http://slatestarcodex.com/?p=3228#comment-160737 Calling “privelege” a typo is a bit of an abuse of the word “typo”. “Typo” is not just another word for “misspelling”.

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]]> By: Nikias The Random Blog Commenter http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/prisons-are-built-with-bricks-of-law-and-brothels-with-bricks-of-religion-but-that-doesnt-prove-a-causal-relationship/#comment-160364 Sat, 22 Nov 2014 21:55:36 +0000 http://slatestarcodex.com/?p=3228#comment-160364 The authors of the study are absolutely on board with this, saying that “observational studies such as the present one cannot establish causality, but merely associations”, and their conclusion is that “not only people with a history of of psychiatric hospitalization, but also those receiving only psychiatric medication, outpatient treatment, or emergency room treatment should be monitored more closely”.

That’s not even a conclusion. It ignores the cost of additional monitoring both to society and the monitored person.

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