Comments on Natural Variation - Autism Blog: Precipitation Rates vs. Population Density in Penn...

I have a theroy that perhaps you could research: I...

2007-08-15T11:57:00.000-07:00

I have a theroy that perhaps you could research: Is it in the water?
I have heard that a protien inbalance in the brain causes problems with snapses connecting, leading to autism and perhaps altimers (excuse spelling).
How is the prevelence reletive to how people recieve drinking water in PA?
One municipalities treated sewage discharge is another municipalities drinking water. (downstream on the river).
Detergents contain syntetic protiens. Polymers are used in wastewater treatment. could injestion of drinking water, containing trace amounts of this, cause neurological problems?
mhedin@ch2m.com

Anonymous,I think you are over playing the rainfal...

2006-11-03T17:49:00.000-08:00

Anonymous,

I think you are over playing the rainfall - population density relationship, it (at least to me) just does not seem that plausible that yearly fluctuations in rainfall within a region would be related to fluctations in population density or availability of autism specialists in any significant way (and since the authors used a fixed-effects model to take into account regional variations in autism rates, examining the precipitation - population density relationship on a purely geographic basis is not relevant).

In the cable subscription analysis, the confound is easy to follow. That is, something like 'availability of specialists' is not time-invariant and could easily be a confound for cable subscription rates in a county.

Now, in the rainfail analysis, the researchers indicate they also did a time-based and a regional analysis with fixed-effects. The big problem I have with this is that the prevalence of autism by birth year cohort does not fluctuate as much as rainfal from year to year. See, for example, this graph of annual precipitation for Oregon. In fact, these fluctuations I think are pretty damning evidence against the rainfal correlation. Their regional correlation must have been strong, and the confound is clear there. On the time-based correlation, I'm highly skeptical there was one, and if there was, it must have been very weak and coincidental. The thing is that it appears that in many states in the US annual precipitation has been in a slight upward trend since about 1990, and that's probably all the time-based correlation is.

I don't think the paper claims there's a correlation with the fluctuation in precipitation from year to year with fluctuations in the incidence of autism. In fact, there are no such fluctuations in the prevalence by birth year cohort for the most part.

I think you are over playing the rainfall - popula...

2006-11-03T10:53:00.000-08:00

I think you are over playing the rainfall - population density relationship, it (at least to me) just does not seem that plausible that yearly fluctuations in rainfall within a region would be related to fluctations in population density or availability of autism specialists in any significant way (and since the authors used a fixed-effects model to take into account regional variations in autism rates, examining the precipitation - population density relationship on a purely geographic basis is not relevant).

Since the time period hypothesised to be important is 0-3 years, the rainfall fluctations graph for California might be more relevant as a three year moving average (and of course would have less fluctuation).

Regardless, a relationship between population density and cable subscription rate is enough in itself to cast serious doubts on any TV-autism hypothesis. I am hoping that the study authors will be able to include population density as a explanatory variable in a meaningful way, it will be very interesting to see how this all falls out.

Finally, after all the knee-jerk reactions it is refreshing to see a serious and well reasoned critique of the study. I hope that the study authors take your critique very seriosuly.

I've posted images modeling annual precipitation v...

2006-10-24T14:00:00.000-07:00

I've posted images modeling annual precipitation vs. population density in the entire U.S.

Melissa & Teri,I'm sure there will be anecdotal ac...

2006-10-23T07:25:00.000-07:00

Melissa & Teri,

I'm sure there will be anecdotal accounts both ways, and that really doesn't tell us much. For example, my son has a low attention span even for TV shows. He starts watching something, but loses interest very quickly, so in the end he probably watches less TV than a non-autistic child.

They need to follow-up this study with one that controls for the likely time-dependent confounds. And they need to do studies with different types of designs.

My severely autistic son did not start watching TV...

2006-10-22T20:00:00.000-07:00

My severely autistic son did not start watching TV until he was about nine years old. He was diagnosed when he was two.

It is hard to see how his autism could be caused by the TV when he didn't even watch till seven years after he was diagnosed.

Joseph,Thank you for the link. I read the critique...

2006-10-22T19:40:00.000-07:00

Joseph,
Thank you for the link. I read the critique. It seems spot on. While the analysis is skewed, I do think the hypothesis--that TVs trigger, cause, exacerbate--autism is worthy of further research.

Observing my son (purely anecdotal) has at least proven to me a corrolation between more "spaced out" behavior when watching TV. Of course, that might be able to be said about all children--neurotypicals as well as autistic.

Sean Nicholson, who is the stats person in the res...

2006-10-22T09:29:00.000-07:00

Sean Nicholson, who is the stats person in the research team, replied and made some good points. I'll just summarize the discussion here as it develops.

He noted that (1) in figure 7 of the paper, Los Angeles, Alameda, and San Diego counties had relatively low cable subscription in the early 1970s. I replied that there's no corresponding graph of prevalence by county to compare, and added:

"I have data on caseloads from 1992 publicly available by request from CDDS. I went and checked the Westside Regional Center (in LA) and the Reginal Center of the East Bay (where Contra Costa is). I took the 14-17 and 18-21 age cohorts, and divided their caseloads by the corresponding Cerebral Palsy caseload. The ratios where 0.041 and 0.035 for WRC and 0.021 and 0.022 for RCEB. In other words, I'm pretty sure the LA area had a higher prevalence of autism in the 1970s birth year cohorts compared to Contra Costa county, which is inconsistent with your graph of cable subscription rates."

He further noted that (2) the study uses what economists refer to as (county) fixed effects specification. "That means we control for differences between counties, including population density," he added, noting that population density does not vary significantly from one year to the next. I replied as follows:

"The paper says you control for *time-invariant* county characteristics. Granted, population density might not vary considerably from one year to the next, but "population density" is just a proxy for the real likely confounds, which among others could be "awareness" and "availability of autism specialists" -- and these are not time-invariant by any means. Note that the largest autism prevalence increase occurred simultaneously with the largest availability of information increase in history, i.e. the internet revolution."

Finally, I noted several additional problems with the study:

1) Figure 2 of the paper shows that the biggest increase in cable subscriptions and VCRs was in the 1980 to 1990 timeframe. That does not coincide with autism.

2) Precipitation can vary considerably from year to year, but there are no significant bumps or valleys in graphs of autism prevalence by birth year cohort. See this graph of precipitation in California as percentage of average.

3) There is not necessarily equivalence between diagnoses of autism across counties. This basically can lead to a comparison of apples and oranges.

(I will post updates if he replies)

Dear Authors of the TV/Rain-Kid autism hypothesis,...

2006-10-21T22:26:00.000-07:00

Dear Authors of the TV/Rain-Kid autism hypothesis,

Were you entirely serious in proposing this hypothesis? I keep feeling like someone is going to yell, "April Fools!" or maybe "Psych!"

Is there longitudinal data on how many households use the Internet and for how many hours per day in Pennsylvania? I would think that kids might watch videos even where there isn't cable and that the hours of TV watching would be uniform across the state even where there is no cable, there still might be free old fashioned tv air waves, and as I said there's always video tapes.

Thanks, Joseph. Have you contacted the authors of ...

2006-10-21T14:40:00.000-07:00

Thanks, Joseph. Have you contacted the authors of this paper with the ridiculously simplistic view of autism?

I did, and invited them to comment. I didn't mention the ridiculously simplistic view of autism :)

The reason they have that spike of autism up near ...

2006-10-21T14:37:00.000-07:00

The reason they have that spike of autism up near Erie is because they have 3 times as many people who belong to Yahoo! groups in Erie. Diagnosis of autism is strongly correlated with people who use Yahoo! groups... OK, well, it probably might be...

They probably eat a lot of fish that contains PCBs there, or they fry their fish in hydrogenated oils and serve their own autism-fries, even if they don't have so many fast food restaurants.

Thanks, Joseph. Have you contacted the authors of this paper with the ridiculously simplistic view of autism?

Wikipedia has a much better modeling of population...

2006-10-21T14:00:00.000-07:00

Wikipedia has a much better modeling of population density in Pennsylvania.

I think it's very much expected that areas with hi...

2006-10-21T13:25:00.000-07:00

I think it's very much expected that areas with higher degrees of urbanization have higher rates of cable subscription. That's why I didn't even spend time on that.

Where does the connection of higher cable subscrip...

2006-10-21T13:09:00.000-07:00

Where does the connection of higher cable subscriptions come in to play with your analogy?

not exactly...

2006-10-21T12:28:00.000-07:00

not exactly...

It's also important to realize that any correlatio...

2006-10-21T12:26:00.000-07:00

It's also important to realize that any correlation involving the administrative prevalence of autism is going to be by definition an ecological correlation, where the units of study are regions or similar aggregates. That's not the same thing as an individual correlation, where the units of study are, well, individuals. You can't automatically infer individual correlation from ecological correlation.

Would you say the Windham et al. (the Bay Area study) uses ecological or individual correlation? What she did was take a group of autistics selected at random from around the Bay Area, and compared with a control group. But I noted that the autistics she chose would be more likely to come from regions of higher prevalence than from regions of lower prevalence, so the urbanization confound still applies with that methodology. I even gave her an example, since that wasn't a clear explanation:

As an example, suppose region # 1 has a total population of 10,000 children and a prevalence of 30 in 10,000; suppose region # 2 has a total population of 20,000 children and a prevalence of 60 in 10,000. You'd find 30 autistic children in region #1 and 120 autistic children in region #2; that's a 1:4 ratio. Your controls would have a 1:2 ratio.

It rains an awful lot in the Faroe Islands, they w...

2006-10-21T12:04:00.000-07:00

It rains an awful lot in the Faroe Islands, they watch far less television, and autism rates are comparable.

It's also important to realize that any correlatio...

2006-10-21T10:52:00.000-07:00

It's also important to realize that any correlation involving the administrative prevalence of autism is going to be by definition an ecological correlation, where the units of study are regions or similar aggregates. That's not the same thing as an individual correlation, where the units of study are, well, individuals. You can't automatically infer individual correlation from ecological correlation.

For example, you'd probably find a fairly high correlation between the percentage of Muslims in a county and the percentage of Jews in that county (an ecological correlation, where it's county totals that are being analyzed). But the individual correlation between Islam and Judaism is precisely -1.00 since being a Muslim and being a Jew are mutually exclusive. The ecological correlation simply reflects, you guessed it, urbanization; both Muslims and Jews in the US live mostly in urban areas. As you can see, an ecological correlation can have a completely different sign from the "underlying" individual correlation.

BTW, Washington state is easy. Seattle is known as...

2006-10-21T10:38:00.000-07:00

BTW, Washington state is easy. Seattle is known as the city where it rains a lot. The eastern side of the state is both dry and quite uninhabited apparently. Oregon has a similar pattern. High population density near the coast, with high precipitation; low population density in the eastern side of the state, where it's very dry.

But I don't have a map modeling autism prevalence in those two states.

California precipitation does not apparently correlate very well with autism prevalence -- just at a glance from my recall of the CDDS data. Namely, the area of highest prevalence (LA) is not the area of highest precipitation. The area of highest precipitation, Redwood Coast, has nearly the lowest autism prevalence in the state.