The abstract doesn't make very strong claims about how much an impact they saw, only that they started to see some patterns emerge.
The patterns were also not even consistent in the same direction, with some of their measurements correlating adversity with changes that "looked like" the opposite of accelerated aging.
> "In some cases, adversity-related changes looked like accelerated aging. In others, they went in the opposite direction," explained co-lead author Rachel Petersen
I would like to read the full paper, but this feels like there are several layers of PR speak on top of what they were studying.
Many factors can impact the markers they're measuring, including body size, so this paper shouldn't be used as evidence that we can measure trauma directly or anything like that. They were searching for patterns and differences, but there isn't a clear or even uni-directional link with adversity.
Even DNA methylation follows that principle: easy to put the tags in. Very hard to take them back out (mostly happens during cell division which happens less and less when you age)
Of course if you took this message to patients as a therapist, good luck holding a job.
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/epigenetics-and-epigeno...
The idea was, thinking about species fitness, it made sense for some of the population that can make it through the hard times, and some of the population that can really take advantage of the good times, even if that meant very poor outcomes in the bad times...It's a hedging-like evolutionary strategy to try to make the most, at the population level, with what you are given.
Anyway, I found it provacative to think about.
Higher highs, lower lows.
it is gene fitness, except the observer is focused on species population level dynamics rather than individual level dynamics.
they may look very different however the fundamental mechanism is contribution of a biopolymer to variations of biological fitness
But on the other hand, adversity does not equal disadvantage, and in fact the trials that leave those marks -- beneath some threshold -- may bestow an advantage over unstressed peers. Like released hatchery fish have ~10% of the survival rate of wild fish.
A low methylation score could be interpreted as a call to mature a child's tissues more rapidly by the curated application of adversity.
Is that inclusive of the entire egg->fry->fish cycle? I wouldn't be surprised if wild fish had extremely high "infant mortality" compared to hatchery fish
> A low methylation score could be interpreted as a call to mature a child's tissues more rapidly by the curated application of adversity.
The paper didn't even find a unidirectional correlation between methylation and adversity. They say right in this article that some adversity was correlated with changes they would expect to see with slowed aging (which does not mean adversity slowed aging, it's just a marker).
Those markers are also correlated with many other factors like the size of the animal.
It's not a marker of adversity.
Since when has science stopped someone who wanted to use DNA to assign someone a fixed role in society?
Free universal preschool seems to have big impact. Also free universal school lunches are too. There may be other examples too.
If, despite those interventions, your ACT score is 9 points below a more affluent student, do you still deserve a boost? At 35, despite picking up a conviction for theft and possession, and now working a minimum wage job, should the taxpayers have to fund a 2 bedroom apartment for you, pay for your groceries, pay for your healthcare?
Besides, how do you even define "best student". One that scores the highest on the SATs and has the highest high school grade? There's so much more to being a good learner than having the opportunity to get high grades and high test scores.
The triad top colleges look for:
1. SAT score
2. high school grades
3. evidence of being a self-motivated person
It will be very hard to to force colleges to downsize to the appropriate population count. Lots of prestige and money on the line
If you want to see what a world where universities do that, check Europe in the 11th century. You might just like it
It shouldn’t be controversial to recognize that some students are not capable of success in college.
The degrees with the lowest attrition rates tend to be the ones that are gated behind high admission requirements (e.g. minimum high school grades).
The idea that anyone can be anything is harmful to everyone. If you are 5’2”, you won’t make it in today’s NBA. If you are 400lbs, you are not healthy.
I’m sure some people have been failed by the K-12 educational system, but the answer isn’t to further degrade the college system.
It’s even more predictive when you realize that the SAT/ACT are given a year or two before college: this isn’t tracking someone at age 5, but saying someone a year away from college lacks the skills and knowledge to perform well in class next year.
If schools actually consistently applied standardized test scores as part of admissions, without padding scores for race or economics, it’d be better for everyone. It might sting to be told you won’t do well in college, but wouldn’t that $100 test be better than taking on $50K in debt to find that out?
Research backs this: SAT scores strongly correlate with GPA, retention, and degree completion. High scores even are predictors of life outcomes: income, occupational achievement, medical degrees, etc.
This is pointless if IQ tests can be gamed. It's like those leetcode tests. Smart folk can pass them. But so can anyone that practices for them or anything adjacent to them.
Thus you don't need to be smart to pass the leetcode tests, just have enough time and resources to practice them over and over until you pass.
And thus, it becomes a proxy for people who have the will and resources to practice enough till they pass.
You might be interested in “hormesis”, a vital aspect of Life’s resilience, in which (some) stress improves a system.
So if all of this adversity related difference doesn't even throw off the chronological calculation of age by more than a year, how significant is it? Certainly there could be other effects beyond just aging, but is there any evidence of the actual effect size here?