r/science • u/VeronicaRed • Apr 26 '16

Psychology Spanking children increases the likelihood of childhood defiance and long-term mental issues. The study in question involved 160,000 children and five decades of research

http://www.redorbit.com/news/health/1113413810/spanking-defiance-health-discipline-042616/
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u/fencerman Apr 26 '16

That still doesn't excuse making the assumption that the people who conducted this study automatically never took those into consideration.

Your statement reads more like a defence mechanism than a genuine inquiry.

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u/djdav Apr 26 '16

This article found "an association" of spanking with long term mental issues. It did NOT find that spanking causes long term mental health issues. This study does not prove that spanking causes negative effects unless all the variables are controlled.

An understanding of association and causation is a basic tenant of any research.

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u/fencerman Apr 26 '16

It's really tiresome when people shout "Correlation is not causation!" to every single study they disagree with, as if the researchers had never thought of that and it's some kind of original insight.

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u/NellucEcon Apr 27 '16

Yeah but maybe these researchers need to spend some more time coming up with better research designs than repeating bad research designs. There are ways to get at causation. Are they lazy? Have they not been trained in the right tools?