The title on HN (at the moment anyway) is truncated -- the full title is "Autistic children with imaginary friends have better social skills, just like neurotypical children" which has a bit of a different ring to it.
Not sure if I'm missing something, but the claim seems to be ~ kids that speak (to "imaginary friends") tend to speak more than the ones that don't. This doesn't seem particularly ground-breaking... So what did this research involve? They asked parents of autistic children some questions over the internet.
Finally I just want to mention that the researchers are not necessarily the people drawing conclusions from the research (let alone writing the headlines/articles about it).
I'm not fond of these takes. Because it assumes we'd never get counter-intuitive results.
I think we also kind of backfit our expectations to the results. I think if you write this headline either way, you'd have people who would say "yeah, that makes sense". Because if you told us that autistic children with imaginary friends have worse social skills, you'd have people saying "Yeah, that makes sense, imaginary friends don't respond like real people, they're just reinforcing bad habits."
But we should be testing our assumptions far more than we do. Otherwise, we're just cutting off the ends of the roast.
Right. Talking to an imaginary friend isn't the same as a real friend but tossing a baseball into the air isn't like playing baseball, yet if you told me "kids who spend an hour a day tossing and catching a baseball are better at playing baseball" I'd say "well, duh".
Back in the late 90's I was working as a forklift operator at a manufacturing plant during my summer off from college.
I will never forget walking into the breakroom and on the television was an anchor reporting that studies had shown heterosexual couples were more likely to have children than homosexual couples. Everyone in that break room was laughing.
Someone got paid to do that study.
And when I mention this, someone will inevitably come in and say we can't know until we verify. Sure we can, but more importantly, why the hell was money put towards _THAT_ question, of all questions we could be investigating? At what point are researchers just trying to look busy rather than actually be busy?
> Sure we can, but more importantly, why the hell was money put towards _THAT_ question
At a complete guess: because there's money in it. The study may have been quantifying the increased likelihood that homosexual couples are TWINKy (two incomes no kids). A demographic that is well known (in marketing circles) to have more disposable income than average. In the UK the phenomenon was known as the pink pound [0].
Without a reference to the specific study, it’s impossible to answer. You may just have witnessed (the 90s TV equivalent of) a clickbait style piece. Misrepresenting research, whether due to misunderstanding or deliberately, happens all the time.
It sounds like you didn’t personally look into the research in question, but you’re repeating a claim about it as though it were fact. That’s why this kind of misinformation is so prevalent.
> I will never forget walking into the breakroom and on the television was an anchor reporting that studies had shown heterosexual couples were more likely to have children than homosexual couples.
No reasonable person is going to read that and conclude I'm repeating a claim other than telling an anecdote.
But having said that, yes it's obviously true in the same sense that "It smells when you poo" is obviously true.
Just because something is “obvious” doesn’t mean research has no value. There have been plenty of “obvious” physical and psychological treatment done to humans which turned out to be harmful.
What you're missing is, someone applied for and received a grant to perform this 'research.' Now they get to publish this paper, and that comes with whatever other benefits.
Not sure if I'm missing something, but the claim seems to be ~ kids that speak (to "imaginary friends") tend to speak more than the ones that don't. This doesn't seem particularly ground-breaking... So what did this research involve? They asked parents of autistic children some questions over the internet.
Finally I just want to mention that the researchers are not necessarily the people drawing conclusions from the research (let alone writing the headlines/articles about it).