James Heckman and many co-authors write,
a sample of rhesus monkeys…subject to a randomized early rearing protocol to show evidence that the lack of a secure attachment relationship early in life has detrimental consequences on physical and mental health later in life.
How will liberals say that this result bolsters their views? How will conservatives say that this result bolsters theirs?
May 4 2012
From Sean McMeekin's The Russian Origins of the First World War:To assume that Russia really went to war on behalf of Serbia in 1914 is naive. Great powers do not usually mobilize armies of millions to protect the territory of minor client states. To take an obvious example from recent history, it beggars t...
May 3 2012
If you had asked me how I would have expected Ron Paul to do in debating Paul Krugman, I would have said that Krugman would score a TKO. He would rack up points in each round and dominate. This isn't because I agree with Krugman. But I do think he's a brilliant economist. Ron Paul, on the other hand, although I thi...
May 3 2012
James Heckman and many co-authors write, a sample of rhesus monkeys...subject to a randomized early rearing protocol to show evidence that the lack of a secure attachment relationship early in life has detrimental consequences on physical and mental health later in life. How will liberals say that this result bolster...
READER COMMENTS
Eric Falkenstein
May 3 2012 at 8:42am
Is that any different than the famous Harry Harlow studies from the 1950s?
Further, I think Bryan Caplan noted the Judith Rich Harris argument that while environment generally doesn’t matter, a really bad one does.
RPLong
May 3 2012 at 8:59am
Liberals: “It takes a village to raise a child!”
Conservatives: “The problem with society is the breakdown of the traditional family!”
Andrew
May 3 2012 at 9:18am
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stephen
May 3 2012 at 9:48am
My (predicted) bolstered view: people trust a proxy more when the results confirm their priors.
Ryan
May 3 2012 at 9:48am
Liberals will attribute the lack of relationship as culture and call for more intervention in the lives of the poor.
Conservatives will see as confirmation that the institution of marriage must be upheld for the greater good.
Jon
May 3 2012 at 10:14am
The study of behavior suffers from similar problems as macroeconomics…..the nonlinear interactions between genes and environment are numerous and hard to define. So researchers “assume a sphere” and simplify in order to prove their hypothesis. look at the methods! The vast majority of family interaction in this country has minimal overlap with “experimental” group..these researchers push the environmental effect as hard as they can to prove what? Increased diarrhea? this is data driving public policy? Pretence of knowledge strikes again.
Quantifying effects sizes in real world settings is very hard, too hard in most settings to drive efficient public policy. It’s very hard for academics who depend on peer status to admit “I really don’t know very much about this wonderfully complex system I’ve spent my whole life studying”
Hunter
May 3 2012 at 11:26am
Steve Suomi, the senior author on this paper was a student of Harlow’s so the work follows on Harlow’s findings. It also follows on the work of Anda and others who have shown in massive, real world, samples (10k+), that adverse childhood events contribute to the incidence of adult disease with dose responsive effect sizes ranging from 50-4000%. You might be surprised to know how much family interaction in this country does fall into the category that produces adverse childhood events, the answer is: most of it. It could, and has been argued that this is the biggest public health issue facing the developed world.
The study of behavior is complex, but it does not suffer from the same problems as macro-economics, you can do controlled behavioral experiments. There is a lot we don’t know, but this is not a study that I suspect is going to be falsified, given that it is modeling on a small scale what we already know on a large scale, is happening in both humans and animals.
Politically I think that liberals will view this as a public health issue (it is) to be fixed with some sort of governmental intervention (there are now 30+ years of studies on this that demonstrate there are effective ways to do that). Modern, big government social conservatives may well agree with them if it is framed as a family strengthening exercise, a lot will depend on how much it becomes a political football. Libertarians will probably hate this, and try to do intellectual somersaults to argue that no intervention is justified, I know I have, but I don’t have much faith in my conclusions, the data in this case are much stronger than those I have seen in any science/policy context I can recall (certainly stronger than anything in macroeconomics, AGW or low fat diets).
Malcolm Kirkpatrick
May 6 2012 at 1:24pm
(Hunter): “…adverse childhood events contribute to the incidence of adult disease… You might be surprised to know how much family interaction in this country does fall into the category that produces adverse childhood events, the answer is: most of it…liberals will view this as a public health issue (it is) to be fixed with some sort of governmental intervention (there are now 30+ years of studies on this that demonstrate there are effective ways to do that).”
ORLY? “Family interaction” compared to what? Why not count as “neglect” surrendering children to the care of total strangers? In Hawaii, juvenile arrests FALL in summer, when school is NOT in session. Juvenile hospitalizations for human-induced trauma fall when school is not in session.
Roland Meighan
“Home-based Education Effectiveness Research and Some of its Implications”
Educational Review, Vol. 47, No.3, 1995.
Clive Harber
“Schooling as Violence”
Educatioinal Review, p. 9 V. 54, #1.
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