Reut Avinun, PhD

Very interesting. Did they check if it biased the findings in said manuscripts? Were reported effects smaller?

The Myth of a Loneliness Epidemic We often hear concerning headlines about a “loneliness epidemic”. Governments, like the UK and Japan, have appointed “loneliness ministers”. In 2023, the World Health Organi…

Very interesting! About the pandemic itself I have to admit I'm not convinced. The rise isn't alarming, still well below high levels, and a lot of it seems to be due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It also seems to depend on country, how it's evaluated etc.
theparentingmyth.wordpress.com/2025/08/02/t...

Thanks for sharing! It's great to see my paper helped spark more research on this topic 🙏🏻

1/4 In the smartphones paper that received many headlines around the world and stressed parents about their use, another association that was found was that smartwatches were actually protective against psychopathology (see the attached table).

#smartphones #teens #screens #parenting

4/4 And this is without even getting into how it is impossible to truly control for things like socioeconomic status, which is related to so many aspects of our lives, or the fact that shared genetics between parents and children was not considered.

3/4 Obviously, the answer is no. But this highlights how serious the lack of causality is here. There are so many confounding factors that, even though the authors did a good job trying to control for them, many still remain.

2/4 This protective effect was much larger than the effect associated with owning a smartphone. Does this mean parents should run to buy smartwatches?

1/4 In the smartphones paper that received many headlines around the world and stressed parents about their use, another association that was found was that smartwatches were actually protective against psychopathology (see the attached table).

#smartphones #teens #screens #parenting

1/ We often hear: “That’s obvious, why do we need to study it?”
Or: “Not everything can be studied scientifically.”
This thread is about why those instincts can be tragically wrong and cost lives.

How the consequences of “Common Sense” can be tragic and Why Research Matters As a researcher, I often hear responses like “That’s obvious, why do we need to study it?” or “Not everything can be studied scientifically.” Both reactions miss something fundamental.

10/ Estimates suggested this change saved tens of thousands of lives across developed countries. For decades, advice based on “what made sense” cost lives.

Rigorous research is not an academic luxury.
It can be the difference between life and death.
Full story -> open.substack.com/pub/theparen...

9/ In the early 1990s, campaigns began encouraging parents to place babies on their backs to sleep. The results were immediate and profound.
In the US alone, sudden infant death rates dropped by more than 50 percent within a decade.

8/ That analysis was never done.
And for more than a decade, no new studies were published at all.
When research finally resumed, the pattern was unmistakable.
Prone sleeping was associated with a 3- to 28-fold increase in risk, depending on age, sex and family characteristics.

7/ At the same time, unexplained infant deaths quietly increased.
The connection to sleep position was not taken seriously. By 1970, enough data already existed that a simple meta analysis could have shown a higher risk of sudden infant death among babies who slept on their stomachs.

6/ From the 1950s to the late 1980s, many medical textbooks recommended placing babies on their stomachs.
It sounded logical. It reduced fears of suffocation and flat head.

5/ Alternative explanations for sudden infant death became popular, like infection or choking on vomit.
The role of sleep position faded from attention.

4/ But the recommendation was short lived.
A pediatrician dismissed the concern based on poorly described, tiny experiments.
Because infants moved or showed some airflow when tested, he concluded that even small babies would move if their breathing were blocked.

3/ In the 1940s, doctors observed that many infants who died from suffocation were found lying on their stomachs.
Early public health advice warned against prone sleeping.

2/ Our intuitions can feel completely correct.
They can also cause enormous harm when they are not tested systematically.
A powerful example comes from guidelines about infant sleep position.

1/ We often hear: “That’s obvious, why do we need to study it?”
Or: “Not everything can be studied scientifically.”
This thread is about why those instincts can be tragically wrong and cost lives.

And then you see people thriving on lies and misinformation, and wonder what’s the point....

That’s a powerful message:
Even when it comes to genes, social change can rewrite the story.

Genetics usually isn't destiny.

#Genetics #MentalHealth #SocialDeterminantsOfHealth #ScienceThread #GenesAndEnvironment #PublicHealth

10/ If we improve those environments, reduce crime, strengthen communities, expand opportunities, those genetic associations would weaken, and might even vanish altogether.

9/ In other words: more children with depression-linked variants lived in more disadvantaged neighborhoods.

Those “depression genes” are connected to depression because they’re connected to environments that increase stress and risk.

8/ This pattern held even after controlling for family socioeconomic status and mental health history.

Neighborhood adversity was defined by lower average SES, higher crime, and fewer educational, health, and social resources.

7/ The study found that children with a higher polygenic score for depression (meaning a combination of many genetic variants linked to depression) tend to live in neighborhoods with greater social and economic adversity.

6/ Now for the self-congratulatory part 😅
My paper helped spark this kind of thinking and today I came across a new study that beautifully illustrates it.

5/ Here’s the key point:
If we change social attitudes toward body weight, those genetic associations with depression could simply disappear.

4/ That social experience can raise the risk of depression.
So, genetic variants associated with higher body weight may also appear linked to depression, not because they cause it biologically, but because they increase exposure to social stress.

3/ What does that mean?
Think of body weight.

In today’s culture, individuals with higher body weight, or what society labels as “overweight”, often face bullying or exclusion.

The E is in the G: Gene-Environment-Trait Correlations and Findings from Genome-Wide Association Studies Genome-wide association studies (GWASs) have shown that pleiotropy is widespread, with the same genetic variants affecting multiple traits, and that complex traits are polygenic, affected by many gene...

2/ Five years ago, I wrote a paper I was truly proud of.
I suggested that genetic variants linked to diseases or behaviors may be connected to them not only through biology, but also through social processes.
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...