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I don't think there's a good discussion to be had about this article. The referenced paper is based on two data sources. One is a longitudinal study (great!) of "hundreds" of children in one region (not bad!) and only checks parenthood at the rather young age of 23-24 (uhhh). The other study is based on Mechanical Turk questions. In both the article and the fullest version of the paper I can find online [1], no further details are provided -- not the size of the effects, not the statistical power, nothing.

[1] https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Febs0000374




Perhaps it would be more useful to say (specifically for that first more valid study) that bullies have kids earlier.


Yeah it feels like too much "research" is just click bait at this point (or just a lazy dissertation).


Yeah, checking at such a young age is a serious distortion of the data. The average age at first pregnancy is somewhere around 30. That means they are counting exclusively pregnancies that are untypically early. A more accurate summary of the results would be:

Bullies have more accidental children before reaching the age where the average couple will start to deliberately get pregnant.


No, a more accurate summary of the results would be: "we generated a tiny bit of data from which no conclusions can be drawn, but it's some extra data that other studies may be able to use in the future maybe".




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