Comment by SideQuark | Hacker News Reader

Comment by SideQuark | Hacker News Reader

> The most rigorous evidence comes from a 2018 whole-population study tracking nearly half a million children born in Western Australia between 1980 and 2001. Of those, 1,870 developed schizophrenia, but not one of the 66 children with cortical blindness did.

1870/500,000 * 66 = 0.247

Not a single blind child getting it is the most likely outcome, and this is called "the most rigorous evidence"?

It didn't protect rats in a study https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09209...

There sure is a lot of reported cases of all sorts of blindness with schizophrenia, constantly shrinking the pool of types of the two, making this conjecture constantly shrinking https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4246684/

It also seems the Australia study does not quite say what the article claims it does - a follow-up study: https://jmsgr.tamhsc.edu/the-lack-of-comorbidity-between-ear...

Too bad this article simply doesn't mention all this. Of course the article will get less clicks with a less wild title.

Doesn't the article address some of that in the next paragraph, which includes a link to a study from 2013?

> That sample of blind children is small, but the pattern holds across more than 70 years of evidence: not a single congenitally blind person with schizophrenia has ever been reported. The protection seems to be specific to cortical blindness, which is caused by damage to the brain’s visual cortex.

I believe that also addresses the discrepancy between the 2014 study you linked and the article. That 2014 study you linked is noting that it does happen with other kinds of blindness. I haven't been through the whole 2014 study (or the 2013 one, for that matter), but it does say

> As the case-reports presented in this section show, only congenital/early cortical blindness—the type of blindness that occurs when bilateral lesions of the occipital cortex deprive the individual from vision (Cummings and Trimble, 2002, p. 110)—seems to confer protective effects.

Isn't that saying the same thing the article does. What am I missing?

> but the pattern holds across more than 70 years of evidence

No, those are also stupidly small samples. Look at the papers I listed.

> That 2014 study you linked is noting that it does happen with other kinds of blindness

Yes, from 1950 till 2014, as more and more kinds of blindness were found with schizophrenia, the type of blindness has been dwindling to smaller and smaller classes, ensuring there is not enough predictive power in the claims. Again, look at the papers I listed. ALL of this is covered.

> Isn't that saying the same thing the article does.

The article says lots of nonsense, like the most likely outcome of data is somehow the best evidence for an unproven claim. It implies the Australia study says a thing it DOES NOT SAY. Is this not enough bad reporting to question the accuracy of the article?

> What am I missing?

Simply look at the papers I posted. They are right there for you to read. The article is click bait trying to claim there is some surprising scientific claim that HAS NO SCIENTIFIC PROOF.

Yeah the article is terrible. There was a much better one on schizophrenia a while back called The Insanity Virus https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-insanity-virus-02-16990

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