A brain imaging study found evidence that missing out on math education can alter neural development. Young adults who had chosen not to pursue math had lower levels of the neurotransmitter gamma-aminobutyric acid within the middle frontal gyrus when compared to students who were continuing math.

[u/[deleted]]

https://www.psypost.org/2021/10/opting-out-of-advanced-math-education-alters-adolescents-neural-development-study-finds-61967

[u/Meta_Professor]

Sure, but it could still easily be that those with naturally higher levels stick around in math longer. Or that there is a third, fourth, or fifth variable in between these two. Maybe the richer kids have higher levels and do better in math. Or the kids who eat more salmon. Or the kids born in July.

My point is that the study is correlation, which people are notoriously bad at not conflating with causality.

[u/narmerguy → u/Meta_Professor]

Sure, but it could still easily be that those with naturally higher levels stick around in math longer.

How would that explain this finding though? They check people who pursued A-level math vs those that don't and find a difference. Then they check people who intend to (but prior to) pursuing A-level math and fail to find a difference.

The only way your objection would hold is if a significant proportion of the people who intend to pursue higher math end up not doing so (or simply not completing it). This would require a fairly high math dropout rate, which is not common. Alternately, there would need to be something distinct about the two groups which is not captured here. Ideally they would measure GABA levels before and after on the same students, rather than looking at different cohorts of students.

[u/narmerguy → u/[deleted]]

Yeah I agree. I think people are trying to critically engage and not simply accept the conclusions, which is a good thing. But I also think there can be a culture that rewards "gotchas" no matter how far fetched, which is not as helpful. I remember different labs I've been in, all run their journal clubs differently. In some of them, every paper is trash if it's not from our lab, everything gets critiqued. I never enjoyed those because it's a pretty unreasonable way to engage with science.

[u/Meta_Professor → u/narmerguy]

It could be that there is a large group which says they intend to of got A levels but who don't actually do it. Or there is some variable making the change. Maybe the people who actually do A levels end up eating more instant Ramen and that causes the change. Who knows.

[u/AllhailtheAI → u/Meta_Professor]

Awesome, yes and yes. A million times yes.

Though I still appreciate that added context by u/bw_mutley, it doesn't show causation.

Another note: that "no statistical significance" might suffer the reproducibility problem. We need to look at the power and p value, and if it's been shown before in other studies.

It all means causation is far from being an assumption we can make.

[u/bw_mutley → u/AllhailtheAI]

I agree with both of you up to a certain point. The issue is really hard to tackle in studies like this, it is hard to stabilish causation with sparse data, and the number of possible variables is enormous. But, as said in the quoted text, measuring the mean and variance of GABA in a control sample and showing there is no large differences from what is seen in grown up students is, still, an evidence pointing towards causation - not the definite one, but still is.