Smoking just one cannabis joint raises danger of mental illness by 40%

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CycloWizard

Lifer
Sep 10, 2001
12,348
1
81
Originally posted by: Skoorb
Actually it does, if only a little. Why do you think companies give out gifts?
How does it make me biased?
Use some common sense. Nobody here will read it because it's a waste of time. If I release a 20 page study about how saying the word "jilted" 500 times every day when I wake up ensures that I will never die, are you really going to read that study or just call me a quack and be done with it?
So you're suggesting that saying the word 'jilted' releases mind- or body-altering chemicals? I know weed does. Thus, it's not completely out of the question for someone to suggest that these alterations can potentially be harmful. Hoping that it isn't true doesn't mean that it isn't true. I don't know that it is true, but I also don't know that it's false. I know quite a few potheads and quite a few non-potheads and the rate of mental problems doesn't seem much different between the two groups. However, this a scientific study does not make, so I can't draw any conclusions from my limited anecdotal experience. You, on the other hand, have drawn conclusions from your own limited anecdotal experience though you are perhaps even less qualified to do so.
 

Moonbeam

Elite Member
Nov 24, 1999
72,327
6,040
126
Originally posted by: CycloWizard
Originally posted by: Skoorb
Actually it does, if only a little. Why do you think companies give out gifts?
How does it make me biased?
Use some common sense. Nobody here will read it because it's a waste of time. If I release a 20 page study about how saying the word "jilted" 500 times every day when I wake up ensures that I will never die, are you really going to read that study or just call me a quack and be done with it?
So you're suggesting that saying the word 'jilted' releases mind- or body-altering chemicals? I know weed does. Thus, it's not completely out of the question for someone to suggest that these alterations can potentially be harmful. Hoping that it isn't true doesn't mean that it isn't true. I don't know that it is true, but I also don't know that it's false. I know quite a few potheads and quite a few non-potheads and the rate of mental problems doesn't seem much different between the two groups. However, this a scientific study does not make, so I can't draw any conclusions from my limited anecdotal experience. You, on the other hand, have drawn conclusions from your own limited anecdotal experience though you are perhaps even less qualified to do so.

When it comes to the accurate perception of reality not as we may wish it to be but as it really is, everything you think you bring to the table may, in some sense, be anecdotal. One such thing may be ones own accuracy as a trained observer and another the relative value of ones form of observation as having any pertinent validity. Let us recall that there are mystics around who break into strange lands via psychic death, the letting go of all they previously believed. Perhaps the world in only really real to those fully conscious in the now where the observer and the observed are one.

I think, for most people, if pot started taking them there, there'd need first be a side trip to the the emergency.

Freak out! Oh no, I know this place. This is where I was killed.
 

bamacre

Lifer
Jul 1, 2004
21,030
2
61
I think the original study showed that smoking pot decreases the risk of being a republican, so they came up with a BS study that says its harmful and makes you a psychotic killer.
 

heartsurgeon

Diamond Member
Aug 18, 2001
4,260
0
0
multi-tasking on P&N = smoking a doobie while typing Bush bashing posts (illegal music downloads in the background).

you know who you are!

As for those of you who dismiss this report as nonsense...

The Lancet is the premier medical journal of Britain.

It is on par with the New England Journal of Medicine in the U.S.

The Lancet is a peer reviewed journal, where nothing gets published unless 3 independant reviewers accept the article, and an editorial board reviews and accepts it. This isn't a comic book. Getting a article published in the Lancet is very prestigious, and is very difficult to do.

Oh, yes, I have publish articles in both the Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine.

Truely a highlight of my career!
 
Jun 26, 2007
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I don't doubt it, everyone i know who is a pothead is dumber than a brick shithouse.

When i was a Sergeant i had a few people who you could easily pick out as potheads, one of them went into psychosis a few months into the training, a few months after he stopped smoking.

Luckily he didn't manage to kill anyone but it was more luck than anything else, that incident led to the strict tests we have today.
 

Lemon law

Lifer
Nov 6, 2005
20,984
3
0
There are a lot of studies published in prestigious journals that are later discovered to be bogus when the results don't replicate. And I will give long odds that this will be later discovered to be the case. When its predictions are not borne out in public health statistics, only the gullible are not wary.

And as a disclaimer---no doobies were consumed during the posting of this---and no songs or dances--legal or illegal were viewed or listened to either.

But when it comes to them dancing girls---I'm easily persuaded.
 

heartsurgeon

Diamond Member
Aug 18, 2001
4,260
0
0
The Lancet probably had experts in the field review the article, and probably had a statistician review the data analysis. This study was done by researchers from 4 British Universities and was funded by the Department of Health....

But I believe Lemmon Law know better than all the supposed "experts" who wrote the article, and the supposed "experts" that reviewed the article, and the editorial panel of the Lancet, comprised of "experts" from a variety of Medical fields.

What do they know!

Hey Lemmon, don't hog the dobbie, pass it along bro...
 

jonks

Lifer
Feb 7, 2005
13,918
20
81
Originally posted by: thraashman
I love how none of you have read the study, just a brief article on it. And you immediately come in to defend your buddy pot. Well I think we can guess who the pot smokers in ATPN are! I don't care what the study says in the end, I've seen enough of the effects of pot on people that I will never smoke it. I really don't want to end up as stupid as those people are.

Yeah, you might end up president!
 

Lemon law

Lifer
Nov 6, 2005
20,984
3
0
Originally posted by: JohnOfSheffield
I don't doubt it, everyone i know who is a pothead is dumber than a brick shithouse.

When i was a Sergeant i had a few people who you could easily pick out as potheads, one of them went into psychosis a few months into the training, a few months after he stopped smoking.

Luckily he didn't manage to kill anyone but it was more luck than anything else, that incident led to the strict tests we have today.

I suspect this will be exactly the bias of the study. The question is not how many potheads
ole John of S. can pick out, the question is how many potheads John misses. But sure enough,
every time he finds a dumb ass who does something dumb while on pot or afterwards--he blames the pot. And smarter pot users don't do dumb things---and hence never get identified
as pot users.

Correlation is not causality---and all human murders started out drinking milk---so should we not feed infants milk.?
 
Jun 26, 2007
11,925
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Originally posted by: Lemon law
There are a lot of studies published in prestigious journals that are later discovered to be bogus when the results don't replicate. And I will give long odds that this will be later discovered to be the case. When its predictions are not borne out in public health statistics, only the gullible are not wary.

And as a disclaimer---no doobies were consumed during the posting of this---and no songs or dances--legal or illegal were viewed or listened to either.

But when it comes to them dancing girls---I'm easily persuaded.

It's in the Lancet, a peer reviewed journal, to the best of their knowledge this study is correct.

Dismissing it because you don't like the claims of the study is like ID fanatics dismiss Evolution studies because they don't fit their preconceived beliefs.

If you have the ability and knowledge to refute their claims i suggest you hand in your peer review.
 

CADsortaGUY

Lifer
Oct 19, 2001
25,162
1
76
www.ShawCAD.com
Originally posted by: bamacre
I think the original study showed that smoking pot decreases the risk of being a republican, so they came up with a BS study that says its harmful and makes you a psychotic killer.

Does that mean those of us who can break through the drug and still be a republican are stronger than the rest? :D
 

Lemon law

Lifer
Nov 6, 2005
20,984
3
0
To answer the following question heartsurgeon-----But I believe Lemmon Law know better than all the supposed "experts" who wrote the article, and the supposed "experts" that reviewed the article, and the editorial panel of the Lancet, comprised of "experts" from a variety of Medical fields.

What do they know!

Evidently they don't know very much if they ignored the ultimate peer review and reality check---namely public health statistics.
 
Jun 26, 2007
11,925
2
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Originally posted by: Lemon law
Originally posted by: JohnOfSheffield
I don't doubt it, everyone i know who is a pothead is dumber than a brick shithouse.

When i was a Sergeant i had a few people who you could easily pick out as potheads, one of them went into psychosis a few months into the training, a few months after he stopped smoking.

Luckily he didn't manage to kill anyone but it was more luck than anything else, that incident led to the strict tests we have today.

I suspect this will be exactly the bias of the study. The question is not how many potheads
ole John of S. can pick out, the question is how many potheads John misses. But sure enough,
every time he finds a dumb ass who does something dumb while on pot or afterwards--he blames the pot. And smarter pot users don't do dumb things---and hence never get identified
as pot users.

Correlation is not causality---and all human murders started out drinking milk---so should we not feed infants milk.?

Ahhh, so you are going to refute my personal experiences along with the study?

How about you quit making an arse out of yourself and just admit that you are no scientist and don't have the required knowledge to refute the study and that i probably know more about my personal experiences than you do?

The potheads are thrown out today, all of them are morons, if you KNOW you are going to be tested then you have to be pretty fucked up in the brain to still go ahead and smoke.

I don't need much more proof than that.
 

Taejin

Moderator<br>Love & Relationships
Aug 29, 2004
3,271
0
0
I know my post will probably get lost with everyone else's but -

Does anyone else think that they mean it will increase the chance of you developing mental illness by 40% compared to your ORIGINAL chance?

So, for example, if your average chance of developing into a crazy is 1%, smoking cannabis will increase it to 1.4%? That's a 40% increase =).

I didnt see any posts stating this - this is how I interpreted their article.
 

bamacre

Lifer
Jul 1, 2004
21,030
2
61
Originally posted by: CADsortaGUY
Originally posted by: bamacre
I think the original study showed that smoking pot decreases the risk of being a republican, so they came up with a BS study that says its harmful and makes you a psychotic killer.

Does that mean those of us who can break through the drug and still be a republican are stronger than the rest? :D

Keep smoking until Obama looks good. :D
 

Moonbeam

Elite Member
Nov 24, 1999
72,327
6,040
126
Originally posted by: Taejin
I know my post will probably get lost with everyone else's but -

Does anyone else think that they mean it will increase the chance of you developing mental illness by 40% compared to your ORIGINAL chance?

So, for example, if your average chance of developing into a crazy is 1%, smoking cannabis will increase it to 1.4%? That's a 40% increase =).

I didnt see any posts stating this - this is how I interpreted their article.

You got it I thing.
 

Lemon law

Lifer
Nov 6, 2005
20,984
3
0
What you are saying Taejin is 100% correct---and if your posted hypothetical numbers of 1 and 1.4% was in fact correct, the public health stats would show that exact increase
with minor variations due to chance. And a good study would show not only that but a statistical confidence interval stating what is the chance the reported numbers could be merely be due to random chance. And not an effect of the variable being measured.

In general, unless you have at least a 95% confidence its not due to random chance, the study would not even be accepted as something worth publishing. But sometimes the numbers are actually there in some initial study, and only much later will it be discovered that there is a deliberate or accidental flaw in the methodology of the study. And when the flaw is removed, subsequent replication experiments will no longer support the initial conclusions. Or as heart surgeon will tell you, its frequent in medical science to have a small clinical trial, as a quick and dirty initial test, thats shows promising numbers, and when a larger study is done the initial results may or may not pan out. Even though the methodologies of the pilot trial look good initially, other tests such as double blind tests and much larger numbers will be what later decides what may have met earlier peer reviews for a pilot study.

But even with public health problem rates of 1 and 1.4 %, the differences would stick out like a sore thumb in statistical analysis given the large numbers. And when those predicted results don't show the predicted increases given other good statistics, its gotta ring some real alarm bells. And yes, I do have a social science background and do know something about these kinds of questions.---and why peer review results don't always pan out. It will in fact take years to test this study if the numbers can be even be worth initially supporting. But when the predicted results ain't happening in the real world--common sense and the long odds are---as as Click and Clack put it--- its boooooooogus.
 

Taejin

Moderator<br>Love & Relationships
Aug 29, 2004
3,271
0
0
Originally posted by: Lemon law
What you are saying Taejin is 100% correct---and if your posted hypothetical numbers of 1 and 1.4% was in fact correct, the public health stats would show that exact increase
with minor variations due to chance. And a good study would show not only that but a statistical confidence interval stating what is the chance the reported numbers could be merely be due to random chance. And not an effect of the variable being measured.

In general, unless you have at least a 95% confidence its not due to random chance, the study would not even be accepted as something worth publishing. But sometimes the numbers are actually there in some initial study, and only much later will it be discovered that there is a deliberate or accidental flaw in the methodology of the study. And when the flaw is removed, subsequent replication experiments will no longer support the initial conclusions. Or as heart surgeon will tell you, its frequent in medical science to have a small clinical trial, as a quick and dirty initial test, thats shows promising numbers, and when a larger study is done the initial results may or may not pan out. Even though the methodologies of the pilot trial look good initially, other tests such as double blind tests and much larger numbers will be what later decides what may have met earlier peer reviews for a pilot study.

But even with public health problem rates of 1 and 1.4 %, the differences would stick out like a sore thumb in statistical analysis given the large numbers. And when those predicted results don't show the predicted increases given other good statistics, its gotta ring some real alarm bells. And yes, I do have a social science background and do know something about these kinds of questions.---and why peer review results don't always pan out. It will in fact take years to test this study if the numbers can be even be worth initially supporting. But when the predicted results ain't happening in the real world--common sense and the long odds are---as as Click and Clack put it--- its boooooooogus.

Yeah, I have a degree in Biochemistry. After being exposed to a lot of scientific papers, one realizes that in order to get a good handle on what a study is suggesting, one must first thoroughly analyze the study's methodology. I've noticed a lot of people who don't have the same experience with scientific papers or studies (ie laymen) tend to overexaggerate or underexaggerate a study's claim.
 
Jun 26, 2007
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Originally posted by: Phokus
Andrew Sullivan beats down hearsurgeon hard:

http://andrewsullivan.theatlan.../07/the-pot-study.html

Thank god for TRUE conservatives like Andrew Sullivan and not authoritarian retards like heartsurgeon.

That's like reading the ID stuff that is supposed to refute Evolution, the man doesn't have the knowledge to refute it and therefore does a piss poor job of it.

There will be peer reviews, look out for them instead.

Since when is it authoritarian to report the ills that drugs cause?

I'd agree that all drugs should be free to both sell and use but society should not be responsible for any of the costs of their use, if you want to smoke pot you should be required to tell your employer and you'd have to have your own kind of medical insurance that takes that into consideration so that costs don't skyrocket for everyone else.
 

Lemon law

Lifer
Nov 6, 2005
20,984
3
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As John of S asks---Since when is it authoritarian to report the ills that drugs cause?

And the short answer is that there is nothing wrong with reporting such ills if that can be justified---but reporting something that likely is not true is ALWAYS BAD.

And to turn your question around---there are some arguable medically beneficial results from cannabis use. Notably in the areas of combating nausea from chemotherapy and in reducing problems with glaucoma if memory serves me right. And politicizing science and not being honest in scientific inquiry is a giant error. So not reporting those results would be equally wrong in terms of a risk reward problem.

But this is a politically charged issue---but the same criteria that I and others post ARE THE GOLD STANDARD FOR EVALUATING ALL SUCH STUDIES.

AND WHAT THE OP REPORTED CAN'T MEET THAT GOLD STANDARD and DEFIES THE PREDICTIVE REALITY TEST. But its remotely possible that a later better study will reach the same conclusion. Until then, assume bogus.
 
Jun 26, 2007
11,925
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Originally posted by: Lemon law
As John of S asks---Since when is it authoritarian to report the ills that drugs cause?

And the short answer is that there is nothing wrong with reporting such ills if that can be justified---but reporting something that likely is not true is ALWAYS BAD.

And to turn your question around---there are some arguable medically beneficial results from cannabis use. Notably in the areas of combating nausea from chemotherapy and in reducing problems with glaucoma if memory serves me right. And politicizing science and not being honest in scientific inquiry is a giant error. So not reporting those results would be equally wrong in terms of a risk reward problem.

But this is a politically charged issue---but the same criteria that I and others post ARE THE GOLD STANDARD FOR EVALUATING ALL SUCH STUDIES.

AND WHAT THE OP REPORTED CAN'T MEET THAT GOLD STANDARD and DEFIES THE PREDICTIVE REALITY TEST. But its remotely possible that a later better study will reach the same conclusion. Until then, assume bogus.

You are a better judge on what is real and not real than the scientists that conducted this study?

I thought peer review was the golden criteria of which all studies are measured but obviously you know more than the entire scientific community?

Before you start judging this study, have you even read it?

You haven't, have you?
 

Lemon law

Lifer
Nov 6, 2005
20,984
3
0
Well John of S. who asks---Before you start judging this study, have you even read it?

You haven't, have you?

As a matter of facts I said one thing in my initial answer to this post.

a. That without bothering to really research the study, it can't be correct if it fails the predictive sniff test. Ands when it fails to account for the real world public health statistics---its the end of story.

b. But the more I learn about the study, its based on the results of 35 other past studies. And if any ONE of those studies is biased, alas poor Yorick, its all trash. And its unclear if the peer review is examining the question of is are the overall study methodology correct given you assume all 35 previous studies as valid or what.

c. And like the tobacco question, that is certainly borne out in public health stats, you get into a entirely different set of problems when we try to separate the ill effects of nicotine from the delivery system of a cigarette. Lots of real quality scientific questions to ask without relying on this garbage study.

d. And you may or may not assume I am a MJ advocate. When in fact I am not. And have worked counselling young people not to use cannabis. But the one thing that really hurts me is when they seize upon publically discredited studies such as this. And then assume if one such study can't be supported by facts, all the rest will be the same. Its an equally bogus argument---but very hard to sell to someone else not willing to have an open mind and want to over simplify a complex problem.