
Study Linking Autism to 'Male Brain' Retracted, Replaced - howrude
https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/910982?nlid=129068_3901&src=wnl_newsalrt_190327_MSCPEDIT&uac=267659MN&impID=1919559&faf=1
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daenz
A quick look at Simon Baron Cohen's tweet[1] (linked from the article) shows
that this topic seems extremely divisive and inflammatory to people. Is this
retraction and resulting modified study seen as an important victory for
people promoting that there are no differences between the "male" and "female"
brains?

[1][https://twitter.com/sbaroncohen/status/832490232721371136](https://twitter.com/sbaroncohen/status/832490232721371136)

~~~
exelius
I wouldn’t say there are _no_ differences between the “male” and “female”
brain. I do know my brain wasn’t very happy on the hormones I was born
producing — and there’s promising research about how gender identity actually
has a basis in physical differences in brain structure [1] which are
hypothesized to form based on exposure to various hormone levels during
gestation (and which have already been shown to impact gender identity through
the very elevated rates of transition of children of mothers who took the
synthetic estrogen diethylstilbesterol).

But like anything involving gendered characteristics in humans as expressed in
the world, the range of observed behaviors within the two populations overlaps
so much it’s hard to draw meaningful conclusions about any individual by
differentiating the two.

Based on my personal experience and from talking to others who have medically
transitioned, the difference between “inherently male” behaviors and
“inherently female” behaviors can be nearly entirely explained by hormones. As
in, you change hormones and the behavior changes: testosterone tends to cause
elevated anger / aggression while estrogen tends to make people more neurotic
with a wider range of emotional response. That’s it. The rest of the
differences are either personality or environmental / social factors.

[1]
[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-17352-8](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-17352-8)

~~~
opwieurposiu
This "too much overlap to draw a distinction" idea seems silly. The border
between orange and yellow has overlap and can not be precisely defined, and
yet we still can recognize the difference between orange and yellow. Many
statistical techniques have been invented to prevent outliers from biasing
correlations.

~~~
exelius
It’s uncontroversial to say that on average, men are taller than women.

But other characteristics such as nutrition and genetics matter more: the
average German woman (5’5”) is significantly taller than the average Peruvian
man (5’1”).

My point here is that the difference between men and women on most metrics
tends to be more heavily influenced by other external factors.

~~~
kbenson
> the difference between men and women on most metrics

I think that's the problem part of your argument. There's no qualification of
what "most metrics" includes, much less whether that holds true for must
_neurological_ effects (which is more to the point), and that's before we even
get around to discussing the fact that I'm sure there's a bunch of metrics we
don't even know about.

Your statement might be entirely true. Unfortunately I don't know enough to
judge the claims in it, I don't even know if we're at a level where we can
judge the claims, and regardless you didn't provide any evidence to support it
or help with that in any way. I'm not sure how it brings us any closer to an
understanding of the issue.

Edit: rationale on down votes would be appreciated...

~~~
esyir
Because we do known that men and women are neurologically different. There's a
wealth of evidence suggesting so. And considering what we know about sexual
dimorphism, this is completely unsurprising.

~~~
kbenson
I was responding to a comment that said "My point here is that the difference
between men and women on most metrics tends to be more heavily influenced by
other external factors."

Given the topic, I took that as an argument that the neurological differences
are not as pronounced as what is created by external factors, and I was
responding to the lack of evidence provided for that view (which I interpret
as the opposite of the view you suggested).

I actually lean towards your position, but I wasn't trying to express that as
an argument (I'm unqualified to). I was just trying to point out what I saw as
at best very loose reasoning (at least when provided without evidence).

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SubiculumCode
I personally know the author of this paper who conducted these analyses. He is
my office mate.

He discovered his own error that then led to this retraction. The error
involved under-documented statistical code which expected the coding of male
and female (0,1) to be reversed when training a classifier on each group, is
my understanding. He kept the coding of sex the same across both training
regimes. This created erroneous results. He became suspicious about the
results after new applications of the analysis to new dataset produced over
the top beautiful results.

The take is this. The mistake was honest, and way too easy. My office mate is
a superb scientist with the highest integrity. He caught a mistake, and fessed
up to it. This is good science.

Note: I am not part of the group that published this paper.

~~~
jonnycomputer
No doubt doing so came at a real personal cost. He is to be lauded for it.

~~~
SubiculumCode
It did indeed, and I do laud him.

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Gimpei
Looks like it was an issue with a script. I wouldn't be surprised if this
isn't a bigger issue than we know in science. Good scripting practice is not
taught in most programs. On top of that it's not really possible to write
tests for regressions.

~~~
kerbalspacepro
What would a good resource for good scripting practices?

~~~
cmpolis
I think general programming best practices would apply, particularly code
review and planning your code and breaking it up into discrete parts. I have
seen many scripts for research that are 5k LOC of spaghetti that become
impossible to read or adjust.

~~~
kerbalspacepro
We're talking about scientists, not computer scientists. As surely as business
managers and industrial engineers don't need to know the best programming
practices to be good SQL monkeys, surely scientists- neuroscientists at that-
don't need to know general programming practices.

There's got to be a specific set!

------
duxup
>after finding an error in their methodology.

If that's the reason this seems like a non event, as far as some of the
typical gender related internet spats goes.

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pvaldes
Any honest mistake should be welcomed

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drilldrive
I am not too sure about autism being directly a further male brain than the
normative population. As a counter, the number of Male-to-Female transgender
people in the speedrunning community is staggeringly high, and should be given
some thought.

~~~
bellerose
Escapism might just be the case. I know from my own experience gaming was just
a way to focus on something else besides a cruel reality. Eventually moved to
programming and realized later what was happening. I'm sure if life had been
different, I would have done a different career and one that's more social
with the focus in a social aspect.

~~~
drilldrive
Escapism is certainly an aspect of autism. My personal theory is that autism
is akin to really dense hair, in that your mind is less flexible, and thus
themes of constancy arise early in development. This analogy implies both that
an autist would be highly structured in thought, which is Simon Baron Cohen's
pioneering idea, and would be very low in prowess of executive function, as
the mind would be too inflexible to a change in perspective.

~~~
bellerose
I'm surprised you associate it with autism and not gender dysphoria.

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golergka
Has it happened because of scientific or political reasons?

~~~
uasm
> "Has it happened because of scientific or political reasons?"

It's literally in the first sentence:

"The authors of a study that claimed to find a link between typical male brain
anatomy and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have retracted it and replaced it
with a dramatically changed version after finding an error in their
methodology."

~~~
FakeComments
Quoting the actual mistake is more useful, as that sentence doesn’t actually
clarify the question — it’s what they’d say if it were for political reasons,
as well.

> In the letter, Ecker wrote that she and her coauthors had "identified a
> problem with the script that was used for the prediction of biological sex
> in male and female individuals with ASD based on their respective
> neuroanatomy in our original sample."

> That meant that "the probabilities we assumed to be indicative of the
> default (male) category in the female individuals with ASD, as shown in
> Figure 1B of our article, were flipped and in fact reflect the probabilities
> for the category of biological female individuals."

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sannee
> identified a problem with the script

Shitty academia code strikes again. It's sort of unfortunate that most of
academic fields have turned to domain-specific software engineering, which
graduates are woefully unprepared to do properly.

~~~
timwaagh
the real problem is this code never got peer reviewed.

~~~
tokai
The peer reviewers are properly not good scripters as well.

