from Hacker News

Effects of Latent Toxoplasmosis on Political Beliefs and Values

by he0001 on 2/27/23, 7:18 PM with 54 comments

• by ryanklee on 2/27/23, 9:11 PM

  If it's true that toxoplasmosis is is present in 1/3 - 1/2 of the population, I immediately find any specific findings like this dubious since the scale of confounding factors must be enormous. Yes, they controlled for some, like malnutrition, but that's hardly the whole story.

  It's way more likely that there is something else (maybe many other things!) that explain the correlation.

  It's one of those sexy findings that is probably bullshit.

• by NickM on 2/27/23, 9:49 PM

  Suppose this is accurate; how difficult/expensive is it to get tested for this, and if you have it, is there a cure?

  Regardless of the effects it may or may not have on the brain, the paper mentions that "the differences might be side-effects of long-term mild inflammatory reaction", and for general health reasons I'd certainly prefer not to have permanent long-term mild inflammation.

• by thinkingemote on 2/27/23, 9:31 PM

  Interesting that many scientists now think that any behaviour changes are not due to the parasite controlling the brain (which is how the parasite spreads in rats and cats!) but due to reactions dealing with long term stress caused by the infection.

  One could assume that other long term pain that causes stress could see the same results in behaviours and the associated sex differences.

• by hackerlight on 2/27/23, 9:57 PM

  "responders via an online survey" so there's a self-selection bias. You are selecting the people that chose to seek out a diagnosis of this infection, and such people are probably more neurotic and anxious.

  Also did they control for age, relationship status and number of cats owned? Multiple cats owned is sometimes caused by loneliness in my experience so the causality may be easy to mix up.

• by bondarchuk on 2/27/23, 9:12 PM

  Did not control for cat ownership AFAICT.

• by kurthr on 2/27/23, 9:05 PM

  I'd read this with some interest, but if this citation in the introduction is correct then it's not a small deal.

  "Toxoplasma gondii, the parasitic protozoon of cats, infects about one-third of the human population in both developed and developing countries (Tenter et al., 2000)."

• by t0bia_s on 2/27/23, 11:01 PM

  Flegr, author mentioned many times in article is bizarre Czech scientist who predicted streets full of dead bodies because of covid. You cannot take this man seriously. He also looks funny.

  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaroslav_Flegr

• by kneebonian on 2/27/23, 10:03 PM

  > We measured beliefs and values of 2315 responders via an online survey (477 Toxoplasma-infected) using the Political Beliefs and Values Inventory (PI34). This study showed Toxoplasma-infected and Toxoplasma-free participants of our cross-sectional study differed in three of four factors of PI34,

  s/study/internet poll/g

• by arwhatever on 2/27/23, 9:22 PM

  Extremely poor wording in the first page or so:

  > This study showed Toxoplasma-infected and Toxoplasma-free participants of our cross-sectional study differed in three of four factors of PI34, scoring higher in Tribalism and lower in Cultural liberalism and Anti-Authoritarianism.

  - Is the author referring to the infected or to the free group here?

  > The stress-coping hypothesis suggests that many toxoplasmosis-associated changes, e.g., higher extroversion in infected women and lower in men, or lower suspiciousness of infected women and higher in suspiciousness of infected men (all in comparison to non-infected peers) can be interpreted as gender-dependent stress coping reaction.

  - Using “among infected men/women” in place of “of” would add a lot of clarity here.

  I believe I’ll stop reading the article.

• by Euphorbium on 2/27/23, 11:49 PM

  If this is self report, most people dont know their status of infection.

• by IshKebab on 2/27/23, 9:28 PM

  Is there any way to tell if you're infected?