Do Parasites Make You Dumber?

ScienceNOW ^ | June 29, 2010 | Cassandra Willyard

[shibumi]

DU and Daily KOS.

That’s a pair-a-sites that’ll make you really dumb.

[60Gunner]

Sure they do. Look what the Democrats did to America.

[freeangel]

I rather thought this was about the socialistic system in the US and the dumbing down of schoolchildren in order not to offend the welfare queens’ and illegals’ spawn.

[vetvetdoug]

Babesia is dogs is a nightmare to diagnose. Expensive to diagnose and treat. I was aware of the disease thirty years ago but the last five years the incidence has increased significantly.

[Loyal Buckeye]

[Theophilus]

The universe of predictive relationship (correlations) tends towards infinity.

I would think that a "predictive" relationship requires a predictor. If roosters crowed only on uninhabited planets, no one would claim that they cause the sun to rise. Similarly, if roosters crowed only at noon, no one would claim that they cause the sun to rise. Not every imaginable relationship is necessarily predictive.

Think of it as a Venn diagram where casual relationships are a tiny circle inside a much much larger circle of predictive relationships. Randomly throwing darts at the circle, you're much more likely to land outside the inner circle than inside it.

You can't "randomly" throw darts at a circle. If you are throwing "at" the circle, you are aiming for it and there is nothing "random" about the deliberate act of aiming.

[garbanzo]

Not to belabor this, but I think we're talking different universes. I'm talking the mathematics of what a correlation is (a predictive relationship between two variables as measured by a correlation coefficient) and you're talking something else, I don't know what. You can measure significantly non-zero correlations (the mathematical kind) between an almost infinite set of variables. Only a few of these end up being causal relations.

You can't "randomly" throw darts at a circle.

It helps if you're blindfolded while doing it.

[Theophilus]

Not to belabor this

I don't mind if you don't. I'm learning.

Going back to the original subject of the thread. I think an observed correlation between parasite infection and cognitive ability is not an unreasonable place to start looking for a causal relationship especially considering recent research into the effects of Toxoplasma gondii on behavior. It is certainly safer than throwing darts blindfolded.

[GOPJ]

Or does stupidity make you unhygenic and therefore a host to parasites?

I knew someone would beat me to this conclusion... didn't expect it in the second spot...

[GOPJ]

Have these “scientists” ever heard of control groups?

Maybe they were infected with parasites when young...