It was an Honor, truly Sir!, to put you on my Recommendations in Substack. I hope it will bring you more readers, but I expect only a few, I am not that influential here, or anywhere else for that matter :)
Wow!. Thanks!. Your Post is great!. I am happy you are writing here in Substack about things you are a recognized expert in.
One thing though, my assessment is it will never be possible to claim empirically nor scientifically anything about mental disorders.
The repetitive obsessive compulsive fiascos of research in anything and everything mental decidedly comes from inappropriate attempts of studying the Mind as if it was a real thing.
It is not, it is a Soul claimed to be attached to a Brain.
The flops in Genetic and Mental stuff "studies" to me is a clear show of UnFalsifiability.
Proving the Mind cannot be studied scientifically, and suggesting people will persist generating new "constructs", new models and even what they erroneously call new "Theories", which I call Magical Thinking Products. Which, Magical Thinking, as such, does not even require causation nor correlations. I have a post of mine to go with those claims of mine. I have several writings here in Substack about Mind Stuff, I even have a guide to them:
1.- There is a Historical Observation, perhaps a Historical Effect on the Rich and Prosperous from People living centuries ago: Their descendants drifted to a lower socio-economic class quite frequently, in a few generations.
There was a term for those descendants: wooden sword Knights. Because they lacked the money to have a metal sword to go along with their inherited nobility titles.
That´s historical evidence Biological Inheritance had no effect on Social Status even Centuries ago. I think the determinant factor was primogeniture practices depriving descendants of wealth, not of their Golden Genes. Those male descendants could not make it back to riches without their Family's´ Wealth, many failed at making money on their own.
And even splitting Wealth Inheritance among several descendants also led to lower class drifting, clearly showing to me their Genes did not work to make them Wealthy, it might actually have been the opposite, but such is hyperbole and speculation because most likely, unlike Guild members, they did not "inherited" nor learned abilities they could use to make money outside their Families: in the Real World...
I have one doubt, which I probably could solve by reading more of your work, or looking somewhere else for the answer, but if you have not done it it might be useful, I am just putting it out there:
1.- What is the heritability of Autism as labeled, or defined nowadays?. You spoke of a 0.1% heritability of ADHD, and it seems relevant to quote the heritability of Autism too, specially because a lot of people claim to have both: ADHD and Autism.
And because there is a lot of debate about Severe Autism in the Discourse, which I imagine is still as rare as 1 in 10,000.
And I have written based on my knowledge acquired during the 90s on Autism, what I guess could be called now Severe Autism. And I think Classical Autism of the regressive kind might actually be several brain disorders with little neuropathological evidence in common, clearly not visible with MRI, although Pediatric MRI was not as developed in the 90s as it is now. Pediatric Neuroimaging since then has made tremendous advances in Pediatric Genetic Brain Diseases, true ones, not mental disorders, clearly. And those diseases: Pediatric Genetic Brain Diseases are extremely rare...
And in Children MRI sometimes requires anesthesia, not mere sedation, and I have seen complications of using it during Pediatric MRI studies.
And by including normal people in genetic research on Autism, might actually have made more difficult to find the causes, even the genetics of Classical Autism, what we now call severe Autism. And such can be a harm of Diagnostic Expansion, leading sometimes to anti-vaccinism, vaccine denial, or vaccine refusal.
Here is my post on my Recollections of Autism in the 90s:
I don't recognize the validity of the heritability concept, or the production of heritability estimates claimed to estimate the magnitude of genetic influences on a characteristic or condition. At the same time, it is a valid question to ask whether "disease genes" play a role in causing autism. I reviewed the genetic evidence in my 2006 book "The Missing Gene," where I concluded that the evidence in favor of genetic influences was weak. I haven't kept up with the autism genetics literature since then, but I imagine I would reach a similar conclusion today.
It was an Honor, truly Sir!, to put you on my Recommendations in Substack. I hope it will bring you more readers, but I expect only a few, I am not that influential here, or anywhere else for that matter :)
Wow!. Thanks!. Your Post is great!. I am happy you are writing here in Substack about things you are a recognized expert in.
One thing though, my assessment is it will never be possible to claim empirically nor scientifically anything about mental disorders.
The repetitive obsessive compulsive fiascos of research in anything and everything mental decidedly comes from inappropriate attempts of studying the Mind as if it was a real thing.
It is not, it is a Soul claimed to be attached to a Brain.
The flops in Genetic and Mental stuff "studies" to me is a clear show of UnFalsifiability.
Proving the Mind cannot be studied scientifically, and suggesting people will persist generating new "constructs", new models and even what they erroneously call new "Theories", which I call Magical Thinking Products. Which, Magical Thinking, as such, does not even require causation nor correlations. I have a post of mine to go with those claims of mine. I have several writings here in Substack about Mind Stuff, I even have a guide to them:
https://federicosotodelalba.substack.com/p/beauty?r=4up0lp
Nice piece with a lot of information.
Oh, I forgot something:
1.- There is a Historical Observation, perhaps a Historical Effect on the Rich and Prosperous from People living centuries ago: Their descendants drifted to a lower socio-economic class quite frequently, in a few generations.
There was a term for those descendants: wooden sword Knights. Because they lacked the money to have a metal sword to go along with their inherited nobility titles.
That´s historical evidence Biological Inheritance had no effect on Social Status even Centuries ago. I think the determinant factor was primogeniture practices depriving descendants of wealth, not of their Golden Genes. Those male descendants could not make it back to riches without their Family's´ Wealth, many failed at making money on their own.
And even splitting Wealth Inheritance among several descendants also led to lower class drifting, clearly showing to me their Genes did not work to make them Wealthy, it might actually have been the opposite, but such is hyperbole and speculation because most likely, unlike Guild members, they did not "inherited" nor learned abilities they could use to make money outside their Families: in the Real World...
I have one doubt, which I probably could solve by reading more of your work, or looking somewhere else for the answer, but if you have not done it it might be useful, I am just putting it out there:
1.- What is the heritability of Autism as labeled, or defined nowadays?. You spoke of a 0.1% heritability of ADHD, and it seems relevant to quote the heritability of Autism too, specially because a lot of people claim to have both: ADHD and Autism.
And because there is a lot of debate about Severe Autism in the Discourse, which I imagine is still as rare as 1 in 10,000.
And I have written based on my knowledge acquired during the 90s on Autism, what I guess could be called now Severe Autism. And I think Classical Autism of the regressive kind might actually be several brain disorders with little neuropathological evidence in common, clearly not visible with MRI, although Pediatric MRI was not as developed in the 90s as it is now. Pediatric Neuroimaging since then has made tremendous advances in Pediatric Genetic Brain Diseases, true ones, not mental disorders, clearly. And those diseases: Pediatric Genetic Brain Diseases are extremely rare...
And in Children MRI sometimes requires anesthesia, not mere sedation, and I have seen complications of using it during Pediatric MRI studies.
And by including normal people in genetic research on Autism, might actually have made more difficult to find the causes, even the genetics of Classical Autism, what we now call severe Autism. And such can be a harm of Diagnostic Expansion, leading sometimes to anti-vaccinism, vaccine denial, or vaccine refusal.
Here is my post on my Recollections of Autism in the 90s:
https://federicosotodelalba.substack.com/p/my-recollections-of-autism-in-the?r=4up0lp
I don't recognize the validity of the heritability concept, or the production of heritability estimates claimed to estimate the magnitude of genetic influences on a characteristic or condition. At the same time, it is a valid question to ask whether "disease genes" play a role in causing autism. I reviewed the genetic evidence in my 2006 book "The Missing Gene," where I concluded that the evidence in favor of genetic influences was weak. I haven't kept up with the autism genetics literature since then, but I imagine I would reach a similar conclusion today.
Thanks. I imagine characteristic or condition refers to mental characteristic or condition, certainly not to my by Dumbo ears. :)
Although I would not be that surprised, maybe I yanked my ears too much inside my mother´s womb...
Which could explain why one is more forward facing than the other...