I came across a study that reports:
We surveyed an entire class of high-functioning young adults at an elite university for prospective major, familial incidence of neuropsychiatric disorders, and demographic and attitudinal questions. Students aspiring to technical majors (science/mathematics/engineering) were more likely than other students to report a sibling with an autism spectrum disorder (p=0.037). Conversely, students interested in the humanities were more likely to report a family member with major depressive disorder (p=8.8×10−4), bipolar disorder (p=0.027), or substance abuse problems (p=1.9×10−6).
Since my older daughter majored in engineering and the younger in humanities, that must mean that our family has a good chance of developing a fairly good set of neuropsychiatric disorders, no?
Odd. My oldest son (who suspects he may be bipolar) in majoring in environmental science (alas, not at Case), and my youngest has Asperger’s syndrome. My youngest expressed interest in a medical career, but is also very interested in (and talented at) art.
I majored in economics, one brother majored in computer science and the other in sociology. What does that say about my family’s mental…
Oh look, shiny!
Yeah, I was an engineering major, while my sister majored in fashion. My husband and his siblings have degrees in engineering, art, and health sciences.
This would seem to predict that siblings would be likely to major in the same fields of study, and I’m curious if that’s been shown to be true. A quick search on Google Scholar isn’t giving me anything, but I also may not know the right kinds of keywords for searching social science papers.
Thanks, “Tis, I literally LOLed!
This is probably nonsense (I didn’t look at the data and the statistics for myself) but I found it to be hilarious!
(Yes, my Ph.D. is in mathematics…)
Agree with Ollie. It kinda screams cherry picking. One wonders just how many disorders they considered in order to get ones with reasonable p-values.
Are these p-values reasonable? They seem pretty low to me.
It’s not so much the p-values that bother me, as in my own research I’ve gotten some surprisingly low p-values, too.
What bothers me is that research like this immediately tends to provoke people to incorrectly think the following: “Majoring in a technical field CAUSES autism spectrum disorders.” I can already hear some uninformed people thinking twice before choosing a technical field, lest they want to doom their family to potential neuropsychiatric illness! There are so many myths about autism that I wish the authors would have preempted this kind of fallacious thinking.
I think the researchers did a nice job of supporting previous research by identifying a trait that people may not commonly associate with ASDs, but lots of heritable traits correlate with autism spectrum disorders. Thus, I personally don’t find their research too surprising.