Starting a blog

Maybe I could use a space to put things up which will be searchable and linkable and which people can comment on. I'll try posting things here and see how it all goes.

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Chromosomal deletions and ADHD

A study in the Lancet seemed to imply that large chromosomal deletions could cause ADHD - children with ADHD were found more often to have such deletions than control subjects. However there is a flaw in the argument because according to the paper the children with ADHD also had lower IQ than controls. It is already known that large chromosomal deletions are associated with intellectual impairment. So a plausible explanation is that by selecting children with ADHD one obtains a sample with low IQ and such subjects can be expected to have more large deletions by virtue of their lower intelligence rather because of any specific relationship between deletions and ADHD. Of course, at one level it is true that ADHD is associated with large deletions. But if the effect is mediated by IQ then this is somewhat different from the notion that "deletions cause ADHD". To test this, one would need to study a sample of subjects with ADHD compared with controls who had been matched for IQ....
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My response to: We must not confuse Trump's bad behavior with mental illness by Allen Frances

http://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2017/08/25/allen-frances-we-must-not-confuse-trumps-bad-behavior-with-mental-illness The title is somewhat misleading because in general mental health professionals are not suggesting that Trump suffers a mental illness, as it is commonly understood. They are suggesting that he does indeed meet the diagnostic criteria for narcissistic personality disorder and that he may well be developing dementia. This is not to use these diagnoses as terms of abuse - they are relevant because they may feed into the legal process whereby it is determined whether or not Trump should be removed from office. Frances' position is absurd. In one paragraph he says that he supports the Goldwater rule and in the next he flouts it. The fact that he does so in order to defend Trump is irrelevant. He is clearly debating the diagnosis of somebody he has never met and adduces various facts in the public domain to support his own thoughts on the subject. I do not support the Goldwater ...
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Aylin's claim that Meacock conclusions are "deeply flawed" is deeply flawed

Aylin and colleagues have written a  public google docs document  to challenge the conclusions of a peer-reviewed study  by Meacock and colleagues. The latter, titled “Higher mortality rates amongst emergency patients admitted to hospital at weekends reflect a lower probability of admission”, seemed to show that the “week-end effect” was an illusion. Although a slightly higher proportion of patients admitted at week-ends die within 30 days, this is not the case if one considers all patients attending A&E. Looking at attendances, the proportion of people who die does not vary between week-end and weekday. The obvious interpretation is that the patients who are admitted at week-ends are the ones who are more likely to die, presumably because they are more unwell to start with. Aylin’s grounds for saying that the conclusions are “deeply flawed” rest on a rather subtle statistical point which is that if one looks at the “risk adjusted relative risk” for direct admissions ...
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