THE PSYCHOLOGIST : Most illnesses are a combination of symptoms. We should look at the symptoms one at a time

Most illnesses are a combination of symptoms. We should look at the symptoms one at a time

My heading above is a simplified version of the heading below. And I agree in principle with the propositon it expressees. And the conclusion they draw from their survey data supports that proposition.

But it doesn't! The correlations they report are abysmally low so the findings actually DISPROVE what they set out to show

And that happens all the time in medical research. I have documented it many times. What amazes me is that such crazy studies regularly get reported in top medical journals, as they did below. I am glad that I have lived to 80 so that I can continue to point such follies out -- as there is clearly an acute shorage of sanity about the matters concerned.

The sad thing is that Google has search-blocked me so that my critical comments will only ever become known to regular readers of this blog. Criticism is essential to science but Google don't seem to care about that

Polygenic Scores and Networks of Psychopathology Symptoms

Giulia G Piazza et al.

Abstract

Importance

Studies on polygenic risk for psychiatric traits commonly use a disorder-level approach to phenotyping, implicitly considering disorders as homogeneous constructs; however, symptom heterogeneity is ubiquitous, with many possible combinations of symptoms falling under the same disorder umbrella. Focusing on individual symptoms may shed light on the role of polygenic risk in psychopathology.

Objective

To determine whether polygenic scores are associated with all symptoms of psychiatric disorders or with a subset of indicators and whether polygenic scores are associated with comorbid phenotypes via specific sets of relevant symptoms.

Design, Setting, and Participants

Data from 2 population-based cohort studies were used in this cross-sectional study. Data from children in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) were included in the primary analysis, and data from children in the Twins Early Development Study (TEDS) were included in confirmatory analyses. Data analysis was conducted from October 2021 to January 2024. Pregnant women based in the Southwest of England due to deliver in 1991 to 1992 were recruited in ALSPAC. Twins born in 1994 to 1996 were recruited in TEDS from population-based records. Participants with available genetic data and whose mothers completed the Short Mood and Feelings Questionnaire and the Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire when children were 11 years of age were included.

Main Outcomes and Measures

Psychopathology relevant symptoms, such as hyperactivity, prosociality, depression, anxiety, and peer and conduct problems at age 11 years. Psychological networks were constructed including individual symptoms and polygenic scores for depression, anxiety, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), body mass index (BMI), and educational attainment in ALSPAC. Following a preregistered confirmatory analysis, network models were cross-validated in TEDS. Results Included were 5521 participants from ALSPAC (mean [SD] age, 11.8 [0.14] years; 2777 [50.3%] female) and 4625 participants from TEDS (mean [SD] age, 11.27 [0.69] years; 2460 [53.2%] female). Polygenic scores were preferentially associated with restricted subsets of core symptoms and indirectly associated with other, more distal symptoms of psychopathology (network edges ranged between r = −0.074 and r = 0.073). Psychiatric polygenic scores were associated with specific cross-disorder symptoms, and nonpsychiatric polygenic scores were associated with a variety of indicators across disorders, suggesting a potential contribution of nonpsychiatric traits to comorbidity. For example, the polygenic score for ADHD was associated with a core ADHD symptom, being easily distracted ( r = 0.07), and the polygenic score for BMI was associated with symptoms across disorders, including being bullied ( r = 0.053) and not thinking things out ( r = 0.041).

Conclusions and Relevance

Genetic associations observed at the disorder level may hide symptom-level heterogeneity. A symptom-level approach may enable a better understanding of the role of polygenic risk in shaping psychopathology and comorbidity.

June 2024 JAMA Psychiatry. DOI: 10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2024.1403

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Background

The essence of conservatism is caution. The essence of Leftism is anger

This blog is written solely by John Ray, who has a Ph.D. degree in psychology and 200+ papers published in the academic journals of the social sciences. It does occasionally comment on issues in psychology but is mainly aimed at giving a conservative psychologist's view on a broad range of topics. There are very few conservative psychologists.

The blog originated in Australia and many (but not most) posts discuss Australian matters. Australians have an unusually good awareness of events outside their own country. Australian newspapers feature news from Britain and the USA not as an afterthought but as a major part of their coverage. So Australians do tend to have a truly Western heart, which is the reason behind the old name for this blog. So events in Australia, Britain and the USA all feature frequently here, plus occasional coverage of other places, particularly Israel.

A primer in American politics for non-Americans:

SCOTUS is the Supreme Court of the United States, the highest court in the land

The "GOP" stands for "Grand Old Party" and refers to the Republican party. The GOP is at present center/Right, while the Democrats have been undergoing a steady drift Leftwards and now have policies similar to mainstream European Leftist parties.

The ideological identity of both parties has however been very fluid -- almost reversing itself over time. In the mid 19th century, the GOP was the party of big government and concern for minorities while the Democrats advertised themselves as "The party of the white man" -- an orientation that lasted into the mid 20th century in the South. The Democrats are still obsessed with race but have now flipped into support for discrimination AGAINST whites.

Was Pope Urban VIII the first Warmist? Below we see him refusing to look through Galileo's telescope. People tend to refuse to consider evidence— if what they might discover contradicts what they believe.

Global warming

Calibrated in whole degrees. Larger graph here

Climate scientist Lennart Bengtsson said. “The warming we have had the last 100 years is so small that if we didn’t have meteorologists and climatologists to measure it we wouldn’t have noticed it at all.”

The term "Fascism" is mostly used by the Left as a brainless term of abuse. But when they do make a serious attempt to define it, they produce very complex and elaborate definitions -- e.g. here and here. In fact, Fascism is simply extreme socialism plus nationalism. But great gyrations are needed to avoid mentioning the first part of that recipe, of course.

Two examples of Leftist racism below (much more here and here):

Beatrice Webb, a founder of the London School of Economics and the Fabian Society, and married to a Labour MP, mused in 1922 on whether when English children were "dying from lack of milk", one should extend "the charitable impulse" to Russian and Chinese children who, if saved this year, might anyway die next. Besides, she continued, there was "the larger question of whether those races are desirable inhabitants" and "obviously" one wouldn't "spend one's available income" on "a Central African negro".

Hugh Dalton, offered the Colonial Office during Attlee's 1945-51 Labour government, turned it down because "I had a horrid vision of pullulating, poverty stricken, diseased nigger communities, for whom one can do nothing in the short run and who, the more one tries to help them, are querulous and ungrateful."

Defensible and indefensible usages of the term "racism"

The book, The authoritarian personality, authored by T.W. Adorno et al. in 1950, has been massively popular among psychologists. It claims that a set of ideas that were popular in the "Progressive"-dominated America of the prewar era were "authoritarian". Leftist regimes always are authoritarian so that claim was not a big problem. What was quite amazing however is that Adorno et al. identified such ideas as "conservative". They were in fact simply popular ideas of the day but ones that had been most heavily promoted by the Left right up until the then-recent WWII. See here for details of prewar "Progressive" thinking.

R.I.P. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet deposed a law-defying Marxist President at the express and desperate invitation of the Chilean parliament. He pioneered the free-market reforms which Reagan and Thatcher later unleashed to world-changing effect. That he used far-Leftist methods to suppress far-Leftist violence is reasonable if not ideal. The Leftist view that they should have a monopoly of violence and that others should follow the law is a total absurdity which shows only that their hate overcomes their reason

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a war criminal. Both British and American codebreakers had cracked the Japanese naval code so FDR knew what was coming at Pearl Harbor. But for his own political reasons he warned no-one there. So responsibility for the civilian and military deaths at Pearl Harbor lies with FDR as well as with the Japanese. The huge firepower available at Pearl Harbor, both aboard ship and on land, could have largely neutered the attack. Can you imagine 8 battleships and various lesser craft firing all their AA batteries as the Japanese came in? The Japanese naval airforce would have been annihilated and the war would have been over before it began.

FDR prolonged the Depression. He certainly didn't cure it.

WWII did NOT end the Great Depression. It just concealed it. It in fact made living standards worse

Joe McCarthy was eventually proved right after the fall of the Soviet Union. To accuse anyone of McCarthyism is to accuse them of accuracy!

The KKK was intimately associated with the Democratic party. They ATTACKED Republicans!

People who mention differences in black vs. white IQ are these days almost universally howled down and subjected to the most extreme abuse. I am a psychometrician, however, so I feel obliged to defend the scientific truth of the matter:

The average African adult has about the same IQ as an average white 11-year-old and African Americans (who are partly white in ancestry) average out at a mental age of 14. The American Psychological Association is generally Left-leaning but it is the world's most prestigious body of academic psychologists. And even they have had to concede that sort of gap (one SD) in black vs. white average IQ. 11-year olds can do a lot of things but they also have their limits and there are times when such limits need to be allowed for.

America's uncivil war was caused by trade protectionism. The slavery issue was just camouflage, as Abraham Lincoln himself admitted. See also here

Did William Zantzinger kill poor Hattie Carroll?

Did Bismarck predict where WWI would start or was it just a "free" translation by Churchill?

Leftist psychologists have an amusingly simplistic conception of military organizations and military men. They seem to base it on occasions they have seen troops marching together on parade rather than any real knowledge of military men and the military life. They think that military men are "rigid" -- automatons who are unable to adjust to new challenges or think for themselves. What is incomprehensible to them is that being kadaver gehorsam (to use the extreme Prussian term for following orders) actually requires great flexibility -- enough flexibility to put your own ideas and wishes aside and do something very difficult. Ask any soldier if all commands are easy to obey.

A good article on Leftist hate

The real history of social Darwinism

Some personal memoirs

Memoir highlights

THE PSYCHOLOGIST

Most illnesses are a combination of symptoms. We should look at the symptoms one at a time

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