A new paper in PLOS One claims to have found a biological mechanism by which a genetic variation causes certain people to be less able to detoxify BPA (and maybe other chemicals), and that the resulting buildup of these chemicals lead to the cluster of correlated neurological differences we know as autism. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0289841
Will this paper stand up to scrutiny for one year, in my judgement? Market resolves YES, in one year, other papers cite this one favorably and there are no convincing debunkings. Resolves NO if the theory is debunked. Resolves N/A if there's basically no further discussion of this alleged finding.
I will not bet in this market.
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@traders there are 4 papers citing this one. None are critical but none really actively confirm the findings either. By the literal criteria I stated I guess this would be a YES but I'm worried that those criteria are not good and, in worlds where BPA does not in fact cause autism, we could easily see the same set of citations.
Taking arguments for ~48h before resolving. Leaning YES.
@MattLashofSullivan @traders Update: after thinking more, I am now leaning towards N/A. I think the small number of citations we have seen are basically equally likely in worlds where BPA does cause autism in the way the authors claim, vs doesn't.
The main problem is that PLOS One doesn't have a big enough impact factor to get a lot of people interested in doing a replication.
@MattLashofSullivan @mods I can't resolve this N/A myself, "negative payouts too large."
I checked with my wife who is more scientifically on it than me, and she agrees this pattern of citation isn't much evidence for or against the results being true.
Can a mod please resolve N/A?
@MrLuke255 yes, their theory is that some genetic mutation in people who ultimately develop ASD causes them to be worse at clearing BPA, and that the BPA toxicity is what actually leads to the symptoms we know as ASD. So it's mutation -> greater sensitivity to BPA -> autism.
@MrLuke255 i mean, i think it would be a very unusual use of the word "autism" to mean "genetic deficit in detoxifying BPA" rather than "cluster of correlated neurological differences". I think I want to leave the title alone, but I will edit the description to be more clear.