Strange things happen when you apply the statistical methods of economics to medical science. You might say you get dismal science, but that's a bit glib. You certainly get some strange claims — like the contention of three economists that autism may be caused by watching too much television at a tender age. It gets stranger still when you look at the data upon which this argument is based. The as yet unpublished Cornell University study, which will be presented Friday at a health economics conference in Cambridge, Mass., is constructed from an analysis of reported autism cases, cable TV subscription data and weather reports. Yes, weather reports. And yet, it all makes some kind of sense in the realm of statistics. And it makes sense to author Gregg Easterbrook, who stirred the blogosphere this week with an article about the study on Slate, provocatively (and perhaps irresponsibly) titled "TV Really Might Cause Autism."
The alarming rise in autism rates in the U.S. and some other developed nations is one of the most anguishing mysteries of modern medicine — and the source of much desperate speculation by parents. In 1970, its incidence was thought to be just 1 in 2,500; today about 1 in 170 kids born in the U.S. fall somewhere on the autism spectrum (which includes Asperger's Syndrome), according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Some of the spike can be reasonably attributed to a new, broader definition of the disorder, better detection, mandatory reporting by schools and greater awareness of autism among doctors, parents and educators. Still, there's a nagging sense among many experts that some mysterious X-factor or factors in the environment tip genetically susceptible kids into autism, though efforts to pin it on childhood vaccines, mercury or other toxins haven't panned out. Genes alone can't explain it; the identical twin of a child with autism has only a 70% to 90% chance of being similarly afflicted.
Enter Michael Waldman, of Cornell's Johnson Graduate School of Management. He got to thinking that TV watching — already vaguely associated with ADHD — just might be factor X. That there was no medical research to support the idea didn't faze him. "I decided the only way it will get done is if I do it," he says. Waldman and fellow economists Sean Nicholson of Cornell and Nodir Adilov of Indiana University-Purdue were also undeterred by the fact that there are no reliable large-scale data on the viewing habits of kids ages 1 to 3 — the period when symptoms of autism are typically identified. They turned instead to what most scientists would consider wildly indirect measures: cable subscription data (reasoning that as more houses were wired for cable, more young kids were watching) and rainfall patterns (other research has correlated TV viewing with rainy weather).
Lo and behold, Waldman and colleagues found that reported autism cases within certain counties in California and Pennsylvania rose at rates that closely tracked cable subscriptions, rising fastest in counties with fastest-growing cable. The same was true of autism and rainfall patterns in California, Pennsylvania and Washington State. Their oddly definitive conclusions: "Approximately 17% of the growth in autism in California and Pennsylvania during the 1970s and 1980s was due to the growth of cable television," and "just under 40% of autism diagnoses in the three states studied is the result of television watching due to precipitation."
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http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1548682,00.html?cnn=yesHa, this must be a case of the new Bush-type science.
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