I feel like this is evidence for the natural experiment interpretation. This means we will get a steady stream of new findings as each maturation window approaches, for decades to come.
It depends on the size of the window. If schizophrenia shows up between 20-25 years later, then the 1 year effects of the quarantine get distributed over that 5 year window, and are much harder to detect above other fluctuations.
It would show up as people with a particular year of birth having a much lower risk than people born one year earlier or later. Since most research includes collecting date of birth, this should be easy to check.
Yes, I meant exactly a 1 year effect and a random 5 year window and I should have spelled that out. Cancer and many autoimmune diseases take years to notice.
And Jim is right that my example is poor because a prenatal effect pinpoints when the exposure must have occurred. But, actually, I believe that such simple studies don’t find an effect for the normal variation in flu (3% some years, 15% others), except for the 1918 cohort. The studies that find an effect rely on asking the mother if she had flu during pregnancy (which has some post hoc problems).
I feel like this is evidence for the natural experiment interpretation. This means we will get a steady stream of new findings as each maturation window approaches, for decades to come.
It depends on the size of the window. If schizophrenia shows up between 20-25 years later, then the 1 year effects of the quarantine get distributed over that 5 year window, and are much harder to detect above other fluctuations.
It would show up as people with a particular year of birth having a much lower risk than people born one year earlier or later. Since most research includes collecting date of birth, this should be easy to check.
Yes, I meant exactly a 1 year effect and a random 5 year window and I should have spelled that out. Cancer and many autoimmune diseases take years to notice.
And Jim is right that my example is poor because a prenatal effect pinpoints when the exposure must have occurred. But, actually, I believe that such simple studies don’t find an effect for the normal variation in flu (3% some years, 15% others), except for the 1918 cohort. The studies that find an effect rely on asking the mother if she had flu during pregnancy (which has some post hoc problems).