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Morendil comments on Is latent Toxoplasmosis worth doing something about? - Less Wrong Discussion

23 Post author: jsalvatier 17 November 2011 05:04PM

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Comment author: Morendil 17 November 2011 05:42:47PM 5 points [-]

My wife got a routine test for toxo during her first pregnancy, and we had a bit of a scare when that came back positive; she needed an amnio, months of antibiotics, regular monitoring. Of course being French we already had a high base rate, but we were also cat people back then.

Just how large are those statistically significant effects, would be my first question. How well replicated the studies, my second. I wouldn't bother doing much about something that is small or somewhat anecdotal.

Comment author: jsalvatier 17 November 2011 05:59:24PM *  5 points [-]

From this paper

Consistent and significant differences in Cattell’s personality factors were found between Toxoplasmainfected and -uninfected subjects in 9 of 11 studies, and these differences were not the same for men and women.

and

Those with latent infection performed significantly more poorly (analysis of covariance, P = 0.011) and appeared to lose their concentration more quickly, although the effect of the infection was modest and explained less than 10% of the variability in performance. Similar results were recently obtained in 2 (unpublished) studies performed on 439 blood donors and 623 military servicemen.

Explaining ~10% of the variance actually seems fairly high to me.

Comment author: Morendil 18 November 2011 01:28:32AM 5 points [-]

Explaining ~10% of the variance actually seems fairly high to me

How high is the sky? That is, 10% of the variance might be a lot, but what is the variance like? In other words, what magnitude of effect should you expect from getting cured of toxo? How many IQ points would that get you? (Or whatever scale matters to you...)

Comment author: jsalvatier 18 November 2011 03:26:57AM 0 points [-]

That's true, I'm not sure.

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