The women in the third group are not there by random selection - rather, they chose to perform the test that would diagnose DS. Women who are strongly pro-life often do not have such tests done, because the main reason to do such testing is to enable the woman to abort an unwanted child.
True, but depends. Doctors tend to (strongly) suggest the test in "higher risk pregnancies" (and if the ultrasound gives reason to worry, ofc) - and in those cases, the insurance will pay (Germany here). Outside the US, very few expecting mothers come with beliefs that strong as to disregard the doc. Hey, it makes sense to be prepared even if you are determined to keep a D! For the hospital, too.
Interesting to hear the fundamentalists trust their "strong believes" so little as to refuse knowing. - In my hometown, a lot of jobs depend on "Downies" (we have the national center here), but yep, Iceland shows the way to go. Germany: Before the new (much better) tests, 60% of DS-pregnancies were aborted - most of the 40% might have been: not tested (and the old tests missed about 17% among those tested).
Huge effects yes, but probably nowhere near as huge as these numbers suggest. Downs Syndrome risk increases dramatically with maternal age, and women who are pregnant at 40 probably have very different political leanings than women are pregnant at 25.
"women who are pregnant at 40 probably have very different political leanings" - plausible, but if anything leaning more "liberal" less "hedonistic". I assume even slightly more non-pregnant women at 40 claimed they would keep the kid than women at 25. Not less.
Another confounding effect is that surely women learn more about Down Syndrome over the course of their pregnancies, so I don't think it's clear from this study what portion of the effect can be attributed to Social Desirability Bias.
Speaking from my own experience (in Switzerland), there is an automatically done blood test (no-risk) for age 35+ mothers . This was presented to us as 99.9% accurate.
The problem is that doctors don't know anything about statistics and probability. If a disease has a 1 in 1000 incidence, then from every 10000 pregnancies tested there will be 10 cases. But also, at 99.9% accuracy, you will get 10 false positives from 10000 tests. That means that even with a 99.9% accurate test, a positive test is still 50/50 between a real case or a false positive. It might well be the case that parents are choosing (or saying they would choose) the abortion route while not being fully aware of the odds of their baby having down's (not fully blaming the doctors by the way, they have enough medical stuff to learn and it's up to the test suppliers to explain the statistical quirks)
Is there some sort of logical fallacy here? Testing for Downs Syndrome entails some risk, so if they know they would not abort there is no reason to test.
I don't really get it - so there is a difference between the two, why should you be pro the one and anti the other? Do you mean to say that talk does not indicate action well? I don't see how that is pro-action unless your aim was discussing only action at the first place.
talk is cheap, Caplan is mostly interested a) in action and b) in the *contrast* between SDB-talk and "revealed preferences" in real life (revealed by action).
The women in the third group are not there by random selection - rather, they chose to perform the test that would diagnose DS. Women who are strongly pro-life often do not have such tests done, because the main reason to do such testing is to enable the woman to abort an unwanted child.
I was going to make this exact comment.
True, but depends. Doctors tend to (strongly) suggest the test in "higher risk pregnancies" (and if the ultrasound gives reason to worry, ofc) - and in those cases, the insurance will pay (Germany here). Outside the US, very few expecting mothers come with beliefs that strong as to disregard the doc. Hey, it makes sense to be prepared even if you are determined to keep a D! For the hospital, too.
Interesting to hear the fundamentalists trust their "strong believes" so little as to refuse knowing. - In my hometown, a lot of jobs depend on "Downies" (we have the national center here), but yep, Iceland shows the way to go. Germany: Before the new (much better) tests, 60% of DS-pregnancies were aborted - most of the 40% might have been: not tested (and the old tests missed about 17% among those tested).
Huge effects yes, but probably nowhere near as huge as these numbers suggest. Downs Syndrome risk increases dramatically with maternal age, and women who are pregnant at 40 probably have very different political leanings than women are pregnant at 25.
"women who are pregnant at 40 probably have very different political leanings" - plausible, but if anything leaning more "liberal" less "hedonistic". I assume even slightly more non-pregnant women at 40 claimed they would keep the kid than women at 25. Not less.
Another confounding effect is that surely women learn more about Down Syndrome over the course of their pregnancies, so I don't think it's clear from this study what portion of the effect can be attributed to Social Desirability Bias.
Speaking from my own experience (in Switzerland), there is an automatically done blood test (no-risk) for age 35+ mothers . This was presented to us as 99.9% accurate.
The problem is that doctors don't know anything about statistics and probability. If a disease has a 1 in 1000 incidence, then from every 10000 pregnancies tested there will be 10 cases. But also, at 99.9% accuracy, you will get 10 false positives from 10000 tests. That means that even with a 99.9% accurate test, a positive test is still 50/50 between a real case or a false positive. It might well be the case that parents are choosing (or saying they would choose) the abortion route while not being fully aware of the odds of their baby having down's (not fully blaming the doctors by the way, they have enough medical stuff to learn and it's up to the test suppliers to explain the statistical quirks)
Luxury Beliefs meet Prediction Markets.
Is there some sort of logical fallacy here? Testing for Downs Syndrome entails some risk, so if they know they would not abort there is no reason to test.
One might be wise to be skeptical of scholarly articles and the actual motives of its authors.
Also, Iceland is a small country with a very homogeneous population.
I don't really get it - so there is a difference between the two, why should you be pro the one and anti the other? Do you mean to say that talk does not indicate action well? I don't see how that is pro-action unless your aim was discussing only action at the first place.
talk is cheap, Caplan is mostly interested a) in action and b) in the *contrast* between SDB-talk and "revealed preferences" in real life (revealed by action).