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I generally find it interesting that the demographic with concerns and making alternative choices with regards to vaccines and hospital-based childbirth is most often highly educated and likely higher g. The connection with longer breastfeeding and higher IQ interests me as well. I've found in my small group of friends with higher LOG kids that most went well beyond the average 6-9months that other around us were doing... Personally my son was 3.5yrs old when he stopped.
Re: nursing, I can speak to the Canadian data, as I was working on a national donor milk strategy. So-called "extended" breastfeeding (>12 months) skews almost entirely toward university-educated mothers as recently as 2010. The formula culture is so aggressive that, I believe, mothers have to be vehemently pro-breastfeeding to be inoculated against its messaging. DS2 is still heavily breastfed. I can see him nursing to 3 or 4 quite happily and wouldn't stop him if that's the path he chooses.
Re: HK's knowing more than the diagnostician, BTDT. I recall a debate with DS' paediatrician about co-sleeping in which I proved why the assumptions behind the supporting literature she cited were logically invalid and didn't prove what she was attempting to prove. We've had a few of those discussions, but they only happen once per topic, if you catch my drift.
... if we taught basic health and nutrition in public schools we could probably correct some of this. But we don't. And then we send them to the cafeteria to have a giant plate of carbs for lunch, and if they are lucky, a tiny iceberg salad that they can slather in ranch dressing... We basically have left the entire population of the US to their own devices when it comes to basic health...
Ironically, we have left the population to the devices of public schools, which serve nutritionally poor meals, and decide to focus largely on s*x related topics as health, rather than having a comprehensive focus on nutrition and a balance of other habits of body and mind which may encourage lifelong health. (Not that parents haven't tried to change these things. Many also watched in horror as Jamie Oliver was dissuaded by LAUSD as he tried to improve the nutrition of the school menu.)
Originally Posted by epoh
... A more intelligent person is more likely to discover, entirely on their own, what proper nutrition and health is...
Some may learn this while quite young... in their family of origin, from library books, visiting farmer markets, growing a few fruits or veggies at home, and being a helper with grocery shopping where reading nutrition labels and choosing one new healthy food item to purchase on each visit and taste-test at home may prove a big adventure and yield life-long benefits.
I generally find it interesting that the demographic with concerns and making alternative choices with regards to vaccines and hospital-based childbirth is most often highly educated and likely higher g.
I'm interested: are you saying that you think that vaccines contribute to poor health?
The topic is regarding how people of higher intellect contribute to their own care by making more informed choices and thereby have improved outcomes.
The examples I gave are departures from the norm in medical practice and are informed choices that many make after considering the risk/benefit for their own personal medical histories/situations.
The general public doesn't even realize there is a choice most usually and goes along with the norm for their culture or whatever recommendation their health provider makes. It often takes a higher level of intellect to find information, make an evaluation of that information, advocate for a different path, and successfully navigate the pressures exerted by others to choose a more normative route.
My mother for example was pressured heavily by her cardiologist to get a pacemaker. She refused because she did not care for the permanency nor the risks. Instead she opted to travel to a world renowned center for an Ablation procedure by those who pioneered its use. It took much effort to arrange for this and the payment of it by her insurance. Those who choose pacemakers for their ailing hearts rather than ablation are no more "dumb" than those who immunize or choose hospital births if they have made an informed choice based on their own personal circumstances and desired outcomes.
Personalized medicine just like personalized education appear to offer the best potential outcomes to those able to access them. I tend to find any "one size fits all" approach in either domain to be inappropriate for all cirumstances. There is usually more than one option for most any dilemma and I carefully choose providers who allow me to participate in the decision making process as do many higher IQ individuals who operate in a place where there is such a choice.
The topic is regarding how people of higher intellect contribute to their own care by making more informed choices and thereby have improved outcomes.
The examples I gave are departures from the norm in medical practice and are informed choices that many make after considering the risk/benefit for their own personal medical histories/situations.
Yes, you're right. The thing here, though, is that there is a TON of misinformation about the risks of vaccines, and that people don't realize they're reading misinformation. IMO, there is a huge correlation (likely causative) between not vaccinating and people with a certain level of intelligence/education. ETA: meaning, people who know enough to see that some kind of issue has arisen, but not enough to be able to pick through it and assess it based on evidence. Obviously, there are parents whose kids CAN'T be vaccinated for medical reasons like allergies or having leukemia. I'm not talking about them.
I'm talking about people who are taken in by vaccine-autism myths (proven to be not there), vaccine-mercury myths (ethyl and methyl mercury are very different), vaccine-aluminium myths (more aluminium in breast milk), etc. etc. These people tend to be college educated:
Originally Posted by New England Journal of Medicine
...the unvaccinated children were more likely to be male, to be white, to belong to households with higher income, to have a married mother with a college education, and to live with four or more children.
As compared with parents of vaccinated children, significantly more parents of exempt children thought their children had a low susceptibility to the diseases (58% vs. 15%), that the severity of the diseases was low (51% vs. 18%), and that the efficacy and safety of the vaccines was low (54% vs. 17% for efficacy and 60% vs. 15% for safety). Moreover, parents of exempt children were more likely than parents of vaccinated children both to have providers who offered complementary or alternative health care and to obtain information from the Internet and groups opposed to aspects of immunization. The most frequent reason for nonvaccination, stated by 69% of the parents, was concern that the vaccine might cause harm.
I suspect that vaccine refusal for personal (rather than legitimate medical) reasons is an example of bad decision making in precisely the way that Bostonian's article noted. Plus, I also think there's an element of not recognizing one's own incompetence there.
Yes, hubris-- and I think that people with moderate LOG are probably the most susceptible to that particular blind spot. They seem to all believe that an afternoon at Google University makes them instant experts. Those of us with the best research skills are the MOST prone to it, honestly. I've done it myself.
Or they regard ANYONE who embraces the mantle of "expert" as being more or less equivalent, and at the same time, falling prey to confirmation bias and the bias of risk perception. I think that the curve for both phenomena is parabolic.
I see evidence of that in the blog post, truthfully. It's an anecdote being USED as data. Glad the outcome was good, but fundamental attribution error, much?
I do also think that there is a differential there in two ends of the "very bright people" spectrum. This is something that my DH and I have been discussing a lot recently-- that is, that some of the very bright people that we know view the world through a lens that doesn't seem...
well--
it doesn't seem empirically based, but belief/experientially- based.
Those people in particular are very prone to placing anecdote on an equal footing with data. In fact, I've not encountered too many of them that actually comprehend completely that there is a fundamental difference between the two things.
Then there is correlation fallacy, which MOST people are quite vulnerable to when considering anecdotes. What is a bit scary is that I've known quite a number of healthcare professionals in this category. They know what they know because it FEELS true to them, and to them-- that is the same thing as BEING true. I tend to avoid healthcare professionals like that, for whatever that is worth. Not that I think they are bad, precisely, but my worldview and theirs is fundamentally incompatible, and it's only going to lead to trouble.
Also, most of us-- and by 'us' I mean both the population at large and also us here-- simply aren't equipped to be "experts" at whatever we turn out attention toward. Only those with dangerous arrogance actually believe that they are.
I'm not cut out to be a theologian, artist, or historian. I'm not going to delude myself into thinking that I could be. I dabble, and it's fun. But I'm not very well-equipped to swim in the deep end there. KWIM?
... an anecdote being USED as data... prone to placing anecdote on an equal footing with data. In fact, I've not encountered too many of them that actually comprehend completely that there is a fundamental difference between the two things.
Agreed! Even on this forum, some prefer to collect personal stories not in addition to scientifically conducted, controlled research (as found in articles on the Davidson Database and elsewhere) but in place of research. Conflation of anecdotes and data = anecdata.
there is a TON of misinformation about the risks of vaccines...
However the presence of the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services attests that some families have suffered ill effects from vaccinations. (link- )
Families with a personal connection to someone affected may tend to be more wary than a family with no such personal anecdote.
I just want to drop into this two good reasons for people making choices that don't look "good" to other people, as a warning against smugness:
1) RCTs are a very blunt instrument. What you're interested in is the (Bayesian) probability of a given action having a given outcome for you, given everything you know about yourself - not the frequentist probability of it having that outcome for a randomly selected member of a group you're in.
2) The crude outcome usually measured is not the only aspect of the outcome of interest to you; you're interested in all aspects of the outcome, including your anticipated regret, which is tied up with your own situation and psychology and not well second-guessed by others. For example, given a treatment that reduces the chance of death by not much, but increases its uncertainty and, if it fails, has the prospect of reducing the quality of life in the last months, do you take it? The choice is so personal and contingent that probably few of us know what our own answer would be, never mind what someone else's should be.
Email: my username, followed by 2, at google's mail
However the presence of the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services attests that some families have suffered ill effects from vaccinations. (link- )
Families with a personal connection to someone affected may tend to more wary than a family with no such personal anecdote.
You have a point, but unfortunately, your point can also lead to fears about vaccinating if people don't have the correct information.
For example, that site says that roughly 2 billion doses of vaccines were administered in the US between 2006 and the present time. In that same period, ~4,000 petitions were filed at the VICP and ~1,400 were compensated.
Even if you use the larger number (petitions filed), the rate of serious injury was only 1 in 500,000 doses. If you use the claims that were compensated, it goes to about 1 in 1.4 million. Either way, vaccines are pretty safe. Especially when you compare to paralytic polio happening to 10% of people with that disease or neurlogical complications of measles (seizures, encephalomyelitis, or SSPE) in up to 2+% of cases. My sister ended up in a measles-induced coma before there was a vaccine. It happens, and it can be serious. As in, she's probably lucky to have survived it.
So I'll take the one-in-more-than-a-million risk. And so should anyone who's paying attention. But again, this is an area where people are susceptible to misinformation and where they often don't realize what's happening.
