bubosquared | (no subject)

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(no subject)

Aaaaand for your WTFuckingF link of the day: The Feck? There are no words, people, NO WORDS!

I'm trying to figure out my travel arrangements for Escapade, despite the Virgin website being down for maintenance. My basic problem is now getting from here to Heathrow as cheaply and quickly as possible. (Virgin only fly from there, and every other possibility I tried either cost twice as much as Virgin, or had a ten-hour layover in Frankfurt.) Any suggestions?

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I didn't say anything about overall risk factors - I'm talking about the genetic component.

The data is taken from twin studies, looking at the chance that one twin will be an alcoholic if the other twin is. For male monozygotic twins the chance is 77%, but for dizygotic twins it's 54%. Since dizygotic twins are genetically no closer related than normal siblings, the difference must be due to genetic factors. For female monozygotic twins the chance is 39%, and for dizygotic twins it's 42% - within the margin of error that's basically the same number, therefor there's not likely to be any genetic component in female alcoholism.

What were the circumstances of that study? What other factors did they take in account? What was the alpha-factor? *curious*

I have no idea, it was mentioned without references during the lecture I had a couple of hours ago. It's a fair bet that it's a reputable study - she made a point of mentioning the other ones which were a bit new and/or tenuous.

Er. Well, I can't really know, but I've always made it a point to be rather suspicious if I don't get any details... People have a way of contradicting themselves, not to mention make mistakes. Especially if they don't actually know what genetic basis there is supposed to be, exactly.

I'm not sure I understand you, here. These studies are not trying to show specific genes, just that there is a hereditary component, versus a purely environmental effect.

True. But I've always been thought that if there's no obvious (reasonable) biological explanation, you should be wary of results. Because what is the chance that there's some kind of coincidence? What's the chance someone's messed up the causal component?

Well, these types of studies are very well established, and work well. Monozygotic (MZ) twins should have very similar environments, and dizygotic (DZ) twins should also have very similar environments. Differences between them should be larger down to genetic factors.

I'll ignore the 'coincidence' thing, because that's why they make us learn a lot of stats stuff. There's significance tests and all that - the differences there are certainly significant, and it's not like this will be done with five pairs of twins.

Again, I don't understand that last part. It doesn't seem to make sense.

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