Day: July 19, 2008

Pop Goes the Media

At the Critical Neurosciences meeting in Montreal, Laurence Kirmayer brought up a great example of how research gets transformed and bastardized by the popular media. Here we have sociological research on the complex dynamics behind delinquency becoming the “biology-causes-everything” story.

The original article is entitled “The Integration of Genetic Propensities into Social-Control Models of Delinquency and Violence among Male Youths” (big pdf; supplementary methods materials here) by Guang Guo, Michael Roettger and Tianji Chi at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill.

As a featured article in the American Sociological Review, the flagship journal of the American Sociological Association, this article had both a press release and an abstract prepared specially for the media. In other words, there were already digested materials ready for the media! No “misreading” of the original paper allowed.

The press release reads “Sociological Research Shows Combined Impact of Genetics, Social Factors on Delinquency,” with a minor highlight that indicates “Study is among first to tie molecular genetic variants to male delinquency.” The first sentence goes: “[this] sociological research… identifies three genetic predictors—of serious and violent delinquency—that gain predictive precision when considered together with social influences, such as family, friends and school processes.”

The media abstract is even clearer: “[The] genetic effects are conditional and interact with family processes, school processes, and friendship networks. ‘A stronger social-control influence of family, school, or social networks,’ the authors explain, ‘reduces the delinquency-increasing effect of a genetic variant, whereas a weaker social-control influence of family, school, and social networks amplifies the delinquency-increasing effect of a genetic variant’.”

Guang Guo goes on in the ASA media release: “Positive social influences appear to reduce the delinquency-increasing effect of a genetic variant, whereas the effect of these genetic variants is amplified in the absence of social controls. Our research confirms that genetic effects are not deterministic. Gene expression may depend heavily on the environment.”

So how does Reuters, one of the premier reporting services in the world, present the article? “Study finds genetic link to violence, delinquency” reads the title. I’ve included the accompanying photo that comes directly below the title. The Reuters piece got posted at Scientific American, Yahoo and other places, while an even worse photo appears at a “European descent” site.

Continue reading “Pop Goes the Media”

Psychopharma-parenting

Ah, Stephen Colbert with his Word. This very funny and, as always, deadpan accurate video came up at the Critical Neurosciences conference I just attended in Montreal. Kelly McKinney, in her talk about the pop phenomenon of the Teen Brain (see PBS and Time), deserves all the credit for finding it!

Vodpod videos no longer available.

more about "Psychopharma-parenting", posted with vodpod

Here’s the transcript of this segment as well as the NY Times article Colbert mentions.

Update: Mind Hacks has provided a good discussion of “psychopharmaparenting”, in particular the alarming rise in the use of antipsychotics and Ritalin with children (often just to pacify them). As Vaughan writes, “The official line is that these drugs are the last resort, because behavioural interventions – specific programmes that teach parents to manage children’s behaviour in a more effective way – are remarkably effective with a large evidence base to back them up.”

Bench and couch: genetics and psychiatry

Vaughn at Mind Hacks has a nice piece on recent research, reported in Nature, on psychiatric genetics: Mental illness: in with the intron crowd. The original article, Psychiatric genetics: The brains of the family, appeared in Nature on 10 July (but it’s behind a subscription wall if you want to see the original — sorry). Daniel linked to Vaughn’s article in the last Wednesday Round Up (#20), but I wanted to make a further brief comment. Vaughn does a really nice job of laying out the key issues, so I’d recommend jumping over there if this brief discussion whets your appetite.

The problem for neuropsychiatry is that genetic links to psychiatric disorders are proving difficult to clearly define. Abbott explains the situation really well:

Finding genes involved in psychiatric conditions is proving to be particularly intractable because it is still unclear whether the various diagnoses are actually separate diseases with distinct underlying genetics or whether… they will dissolve under the genetic spotlight into one biological continuum. Indeed, some researchers suggest that it would be better to abandon conventional clinical definitions and focus instead on ‘intermediate phenotypes’, quantifiable characteristics such as brain structure, wiring and function that are midway between the risk genes involved and the psychopathology displayed.

Continue reading “Bench and couch: genetics and psychiatry”