Comment by estearum
15 hours ago
Sure here's one revolutionary new finding in that timeframe: that a person's social/cultural environment affects DNA methylation and gene expression for the rest of their lives.
Here's another one: a person's perception of whether they "are" rural is actually a better predictor of their health outcomes than whether they actually are rural. I.e. two neighbors living side by side in suburban America, the one who perceives themselves to be rural will have dramatically worse outcomes than the one who perceives themselves to be urban/suburban.
These are both potentially useful things to know as we try to eliminate extreme health disparities between Americans.
You seem to think we have all the answers though, so what's the answer? How do we do it?
FWIW, the specific cited research where she's trying to quantify the health impacts of living near pollution sources is actually important for e.g. lawsuits where people try to hold corporations accountable for poisoning their children. Any value in that?
> Sure here's one revolutionary new finding in that timeframe: that a person's social/cultural environment affects DNA methylation and gene expression for the rest of their lives.
This isn't revolutionary. But it's a perfect example.
This is a completely derivative conclusion from something I learned in molecular biology as an undergrad. The only "new" thing here is saying that poor people live in environments, since we've known for literally decades that DNA methylation is affected by environment.
> a person's perception of whether they "are" rural is actually a better predictor of their health outcomes than whether they actually are rural.
OK. Great. I'm poor if I think I'm poor. Roger.
> These are both potentially useful things to know as we try to eliminate extreme health disparities between Americans. You seem to think we have all the answers though, so what's the answer? How do we do it?
I don't know! You tell me how your "potentially useful" information provides a solution. Win me over!
>This is a completely derivative conclusion from something I learned in molecular biology as an undergrad. The only "new" thing here is saying that poor people live in environments, since we've known for literally decades that DNA methylation is affected by environment.
It's one thing to theorize a causal relationship, but informed policy-making needs actual data that can only be obtained by legwork. What aspects of the social/cultural environment are we talking about? What genes are being expressed differently? What are their estimated health or economic impacts?
It wasn’t a “theory” (at least no more than any other scientific fact), and telling me that someone found a relationship between two things doesn’t tell me that someone proved the relationship was causal.
But sure, let’s say I accept your (implicit) assertion that this genetic relationship is solid, causal and clear. How does it help solve the problem? It’s a perfect example of research that does nothing except making people feel virtuous for doing the research. Academia is loaded with this stuff, and if you point out that it’s a waste of time and money, you get indignation and faux outrage for having the temerity to “question discovery”.
Y’all keep coming back with “there are always things we don’t know!” as if this is somehow an argument for funding literally any question (and any bad methodology) that someone labels as “science”. It isn’t.
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> This is a completely derivative conclusion from something I learned in molecular biology as an undergrad. The only "new" thing here is saying that poor people live in environments, since we've known for literally decades that DNA methylation is affected by environment.
Yes, just like approximately everything we've learned about cosmology in the last 100 years are completely derivative conclusions from relativity lmao. There's what, <5 things we've discovered that are not completely derivative over 100 years and billions of dollars of research?
> I don't know [how to mitigate health disparities]! You tell me how your "potentially useful" information provides a solution. Win me over!
Huh? I didn't claim to have all the answers lol, you did.
> Yes, just like approximately everything we've learned about cosmology in the last 100 years are completely derivative conclusions from relativity lmao.
OK, cool. Let's not do more of that, then. I just said that I could see the difference between the questions, and that they're not likely to get funding elsewhere, not that we should absolutely fund more black hole space telescopes.
> There's what, <5 things we've discovered that are not completely derivative over 100 years and billions of dollars of research?
No. Not in the same class as "are poor people sicker than rich people", or "does gravity cause things to fall down". Next question.
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