Which of these interventions will I rate highest on v2 of Biodeterminist's Guide To Parenting?

resolved Apr 20

I am working on an updated version of Biodeterminist's Guide To Parenting, which I will post sometime in the next few months. Below, I've listed some interventions I'm considering. Right now, one of these seems most promising (if that changes, I'll figure something out). Your job is to guess which one that will be. I can't prevent other people from adding new options, but keep in mind I will not be evaluating them and they have no chance of winning.

Supplement with choline

Scott Alexander

Chosen

24%

Eat plenty of oily fish

23%

Use an air filter

20%

Natural vs. Caesarian birth

10%

Activated alumina water filter

Supplement with Vitamin D

Avoid touching receipt paper

Supplement with nicotinamide mononucleotide (for fathers)

Supplement lutein and zeaxanthin

1.7%

Use abdominal decompression device

1.3%

🏅 Top traders

#	Name	Total profit
1	Lazy Student	Ṁ1,573
2	Courtney Grimm	Ṁ537
3	Eric Miller	Ṁ516
4	Alex Power	Ṁ469
5	Simulan Terra	Ṁ422

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Lorenzobought Ṁ20 of Natural vs. Caesaria...Buying a random one near the bottom since apparently the market is wrong

Lazy Studentsold Ṁ0 of Use an air filterJust spent most of the rest of my fake money betting against air filters. (Quite annoying that I have to do it by buying all the other options, by the way; there should be a shortcut provided for this.) Scott specifically said he's relying on the literature, and the literature for air filters looks mediocre at best. By the way, as for fish oil tablets, they don't exactly "fail". Here is a meta-analysis of 21 randomized controlled trials (in contrast, there's only 1 RCT for air filters, which was negative): https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.3109/14767058.2015.1072163?casa_token=tU7CG0KB-ZkAAAAA:6i56IfMrHRlIAsPwp_DOI68OYTALM03qlvW4_qh-80KuomiHxTAwhb83HHZi-CMNoPNEXi_vwTqT "Twenty-one studies comprising 10 802 pregnant women were included. Dietary fish oil was associated with a 5.8-day increase in gestational age of the newborn, a 22% reduced risk for early preterm delivery (risk ratio [RR] = 0.78, 95% CI: 0.64–0.95, p = 0.01) and a 10% reduction in preterm delivery (RR = 0.90, 95% CI 0.81–1.00, p = 0.05). Fish oil supplementation was associated with higher infantile birth weight (51.23 g), birth length (0.28 cm) and head circumference (0.09 cm), and a 23% lower risk of low birth weight. " Now, these p-values aren't that great and I didn't read the underlying studies; I also don't see a funnel graph checking for publication bias. Perhaps there are also competing meta-analyses, I didn't check that carefully. But this is not exactly failing, not obviously anyway.

Account deletion requestedbought Ṁ20 of Natural vs. Caesaria...this, unlike some other, seems to have clear and obvious path to significant effects

Alex Powerbought Ṁ80 of Natural vs. Caesaria...Somebody at the ACX comments section said they liked this one.

Alex Powerbought Ṁ1 of Avoid touching recei...I'm fairly confident this isn't going to be the top pick, but I'm not sure how to short just this one answer. So, a spite dollar.

Alex Powerbought Ṁ120 of Supplement with cholineI have done no research, but after reading the comments, this seems like the option where I'd like to incentivize more research.

Alex Holcombebought Ṁ800 of Use an air filterThe evidence is pretty overwhelming that air pollution is bad for human health (although I don’t know about IQ, unless you count lead, but my understanding is that air filters don’t help with lead much), and air filters remove a lot of pollution. Simple. Most of the other interventions are dietary supplements, which in aggregate have a terrible track record (that doesn’t exclude the possibility that there’s *some* dietary supplement that will help a lot, but the prior is low). Oily fish has the mercury problem (although maybe Scott will get out of that by saying it is possible to avoid fish with non-trivial amounts of mercury), and the failure of fish oil tablets favors a confounding explanation of the observational data. Receipt paper and water filters are probably a good idea based on the same principle as air filters. I suspect the effect sizes would be smaller for receipts and water filters, but I don’t know much about them so I didn’t bet on them partly due to ignorance.

Ian Philipsbought Ṁ50 of Eat plenty of oily fishLet food be thy medicine!

Alex Powerbought Ṁ25 of Supplement with Vita...This feels the most plausible of "the field" to me.

Lazy Studentbought Ṁ1 of Use an air filter(Buying 1 so I can comment). I don't understand why people keep buying this option (it's currently at nearly 50%). Is it that the market knows a lot more than me, or a lot less? To clarify: to my knowledge, there was only ever a single randomized controlled trial of air purifiers during pregnancy. It took place in Ulaanbaatar, a heavily polluted city. It was not blinded. It also failed to find any significant results on its primary outcome (birthweight), and a secondary analysis when the kids were 4 years old concluded "We found no benefit of reducing indoor particulate air pollution during pregnancy on parent-reported behaviors in children." Sure, some secondary outcomes were just barely significant at p=0.05, but if that's Scott's threshold for a super-effective intervention, his top recommendation would be vitamin D (it's not going to be vitamin D). I'm new to manifold. I don't know how much to trust the market in this situation; maybe you all have some inside info into Scott's likely choices, or maybe people are blindly going "air purifier good". My guess is this the latter, so I think I will just keep using all my fake manifold money to bet against air purification here. I suppose if it does end up being air purification, I will be extremely impressed with manifold's markets. If it ends up being oily fish (the obvious baseline guess, but one that's been bet down to 33% at the time of this comment) I will be unimpressed; if it ends up being choline (for which I'm almost the only one buying right now, and which would be at like 3% without my intervention), I will be extremely unimpressed.

Lazy Studentbought Ṁ60 of Supplement with cholineActually, searching on Google scholar, it looks like my review (from 2018) is way out of date and a lot more research has come out. I didn't look into it yet but it seems promising so far.

Nicolas Feltmanbought Ṁ50 of Use an air filterAlways bet on air quality.

Lazy Studentbought Ṁ30 of Avoid touching recei...I don't think this is a good recommendation, but it's not terrible either (cost of doing it is small). I'm buying a bit because Scott funded that one "endocrine disruptor logo" grant, which makes me think he takes BPA risk more seriously than I do.

Lazy Studentbought Ṁ60 of Supplement with cholineCheck out my choline in pregnancy literature review here: https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/96vs5d/choline_supplementation_during_pregnancy/ Bottom line: it increases IQ in rats, but the data in humans is not very convincing at the moment. The since there is little risk, I would still advocate for supplementing with choline, but I don't know if Scott will put it first on his list.

Lazy Studentbought Ṁ100 of Eat plenty of oily fishThis one is by far the most mainstream on the list, and was mentioned in Scott's original biodeterminist's guide back on Livejournal.

Account deletion requestedbought Ṁ10 of Supplement with Vita...as far as I know that is one of possible helpful, cheap and not harmful ones overall I am really dubious is such market going to be in any way helpful for anything

Account deletion requestedbought Ṁ10 of Use an air filterone of few that I know that has chance to make sense, but may not really apply in USA

agabarabought Ṁ15 of Eat plenty of oily fishI think this is the only one that is mentioned positively in Expecting Better.

agabarasold Ṁ14 of Activated alumina wa...I originally bought this because of https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29220711/ and https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31743803/ but think it is overpriced now.

S Gbought Ṁ20 of Activated alumina wa...Here for the Bircher-Rationalist synthesis.

Austinbought Ṁ15 of Activated alumina wa...I know nothing about this field, but Ruth Grace (someone I trust a lot wrt evidence-based parenting) mentioned water filtering & VitD supplementation here: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/xocdNsa8At3bmQKm3/how-be-productive-before-your-baby-turns-one?commentId=34kfrN2BwmmZnPXMq

A trader bought Ṁ20 Supplement with choline at 24%

A trader bought Ṁ3 Supplement lutein an... from 1.6% to 1.7%

A trader bought Ṁ6 Supplement with nico... at 3%

A trader bought Ṁ6 Avoid touching recei... at 3%

A trader bought Ṁ16 Activated alumina wa... from 7% to 8%

A trader bought Ṁ20 Natural vs. Caesaria... at 10%

A trader bought Ṁ46 Eat plenty of oily fish from 23% to 24%

A trader bought Ṁ46 Supplement with choline from 23% to 24%

A trader bought Ṁ3 Supplement lutein an... from 1.6% to 1.7%

A trader bought Ṁ6 Supplement with nico... at 3%

A trader bought Ṁ1 Avoid touching recei... at 3%

A trader bought Ṁ5 Avoid touching recei... at 3%

A trader bought Ṁ14 Activated alumina wa... from 7% to 8%

A trader bought Ṁ20 Natural vs. Caesaria... at 10%

A trader bought Ṁ44 Eat plenty of oily fish from 22% to 23%

A trader bought Ṁ46 Supplement with choline from 23% to 24%

A trader bought Ṁ20 Supplement with Vita... at 6%

A trader bought Ṁ20 Supplement with Vita... from 5% to 6%

A trader bought Ṁ20 Supplement with nico... from 2% to 3%

A trader sold Ṁ32 Use abdominal decomp... at 0.0%

A trader sold Ṁ30 Supplement lutein an... at 0.0%

A trader sold Ṁ33 Avoid touching recei... at 0.0%

A trader sold Ṁ22 Supplement with nico... at 0.0%

A trader sold Ṁ29 Avoid touching recei... at 0.0%

A trader sold Ṁ61 Supplement with Vita... at 0.0%

A trader sold Ṁ53 Activated alumina wa... at 0.0%

A trader bought Ṁ3 Use an air filter at 21%

A trader bought Ṁ3 Eat plenty of oily fish at 21%

A trader bought Ṁ3 Supplement with Vita... at 7%

A trader sold Ṁ3 Eat plenty of oily fish at 0.0%

A trader bought Ṁ1 Use an air filter at 21%

A trader bought Ṁ1 Activated alumina wa... from 8% to 9%

A trader bought Ṁ1 Supplement with Vita... at 7%

A trader bought Ṁ1 Avoid touching recei... at 5%

A trader bought Ṁ1 Use abdominal decomp... at 2%

A trader bought Ṁ1 Supplement lutein an... at 2%

A trader bought Ṁ1 Supplement with nico... at 3%

A trader bought Ṁ20 Avoid touching recei... from 4% to 5%

A trader bought Ṁ20 Natural vs. Caesaria... at 9%

A trader bought Ṁ4 Supplement lutein an... at 2%

A trader bought Ṁ6 Supplement with nico... from 2% to 3%

A trader bought Ṁ8 Avoid touching recei... at 4%

A trader bought Ṁ16 Activated alumina wa... from 8% to 9%

A trader bought Ṁ18 Natural vs. Caesaria... from 8% to 9%

A trader bought Ṁ42 Eat plenty of oily fish from 21% to 22%

A trader bought Ṁ44 Supplement with choline from 22% to 23%

A trader bought Ṁ4 Supplement lutein an... at 2%

A trader bought Ṁ4 Supplement with nico... from 2% to 3%

A trader bought Ṁ8 Avoid touching recei... at 4%

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