The cause of Sophie’s APD diagnosis is unknown, but her audiologist believes the overuse of noise-cancelling headphones, which Sophie wears for up to five hours a day, could have a part to play.
Other audiologists agree, saying more research is needed into the potential effects of their prolonged use.
That looks to me like, “audiologists have no bloody clue where this issue is coming from, and are therefore throwing shit at the wall in the hope that something will stick.”
Nope it’s a very reasonable hypothesis. “Symptom X suddenly occurs frequently. That started when people started doing Y. According to our understanding, Y has a direct impact on the functioning of X”. Causation has still to be established formally but it’d be quite surprising if it was mere correlation, as in it would overturn the understanding audiologists have about how things work.
Bluntly said: If you never train filtering out noise, then you suck at filtering out noise. That looks dead obvious, if it’s wrong, then in a very, very interesting way. General relativity vs. Newtonian mechanics kind of interesting.
The problem is not the hypothesis, the problem is that it isn’t really presented as a hypothesis. Reporting on the results before doing the experiment isn’t the way to go.
Our theories of how the world works are necessarily incomplete, and experiments turn up things that overturn scientific understanding often enough. The way this is set up matches a common pattern of vilifying tech without seeing whether it’s deserved or not. Maybe not wearing a noise cancellation headset would, in fact, help this patient, but until that’s tested and found out to be true, reporting on it is just spreading FUD.
(emphasis mine). Belief is colloquial speech for working hypothesis. Her prescription will have been along the lines of “ease on those headphones, go to a forest or park and just listen, use them only if you really feel them to be necessary, try to expose yourself”.
“Nothing can ever be acted upon unless we have a meta-study examining fifty double-blind studies” is pseudoscepticism.
I really struggle to process voices, but I hear absolutely everything.
Someone talking to me can get completely drowned out by a 15KHz hum of an electronic device, the acoustics of a room or a TV in the background.
Yet, I ask them if they are having trouble hearing me over all the noise. They usually reply “wharlt noise?” If it’s a high-pitch hum, they won’t acknowledge the noise even if I show them on a spectral analyser.
If it’s a high-pitched hum, they may genuinely be unable to hear it. It’s common for people to lose their hearing in very high registers quickly as they age (like, most teens still hear them, but thirty-somethings mostly don’t). Without noticing, since it doesn’t impede day-to-day communication.
Studying sure. But this is openly speculating to the uninformed masses. Can earphones cause cancer? Unless you can prove they don’t, that is a hypothesis that could be tested. But more importantly, it’s slop for clickbait bullshit so your aunt can post that to Facebook and feel superior to all the dregs giving themselves cancer by wearing earphones. It’s useless.
eh, I don’t see a problem with this article specifically, and I don’t think your “cancer” hyperbole is helpful. If people feel like they are suffering from a similar listening/attention issue, there’s no real harm in trying to go without noise-cancelling for a while to see if the symptoms improve.
That looks to me like, “audiologists have no bloody clue where this issue is coming from, and are therefore throwing shit at the wall in the hope that something will stick.”
Exactly.
Is she wearing high heels every day? Could be bullshit, but could be related. 🙄
Nope it’s a very reasonable hypothesis. “Symptom X suddenly occurs frequently. That started when people started doing Y. According to our understanding, Y has a direct impact on the functioning of X”. Causation has still to be established formally but it’d be quite surprising if it was mere correlation, as in it would overturn the understanding audiologists have about how things work.
Bluntly said: If you never train filtering out noise, then you suck at filtering out noise. That looks dead obvious, if it’s wrong, then in a very, very interesting way. General relativity vs. Newtonian mechanics kind of interesting.
The problem is not the hypothesis, the problem is that it isn’t really presented as a hypothesis. Reporting on the results before doing the experiment isn’t the way to go.
Our theories of how the world works are necessarily incomplete, and experiments turn up things that overturn scientific understanding often enough. The way this is set up matches a common pattern of vilifying tech without seeing whether it’s deserved or not. Maybe not wearing a noise cancellation headset would, in fact, help this patient, but until that’s tested and found out to be true, reporting on it is just spreading FUD.
(emphasis mine). Belief is colloquial speech for working hypothesis. Her prescription will have been along the lines of “ease on those headphones, go to a forest or park and just listen, use them only if you really feel them to be necessary, try to expose yourself”.
“Nothing can ever be acted upon unless we have a meta-study examining fifty double-blind studies” is pseudoscepticism.
I really struggle to process voices, but I hear absolutely everything.
Someone talking to me can get completely drowned out by a 15KHz hum of an electronic device, the acoustics of a room or a TV in the background.
Yet, I ask them if they are having trouble hearing me over all the noise. They usually reply “wharlt noise?” If it’s a high-pitch hum, they won’t acknowledge the noise even if I show them on a spectral analyser.
If it’s a high-pitched hum, they may genuinely be unable to hear it. It’s common for people to lose their hearing in very high registers quickly as they age (like, most teens still hear them, but thirty-somethings mostly don’t). Without noticing, since it doesn’t impede day-to-day communication.
that’s how science works until you can actually test the hypotheses.
Studying sure. But this is openly speculating to the uninformed masses. Can earphones cause cancer? Unless you can prove they don’t, that is a hypothesis that could be tested. But more importantly, it’s slop for clickbait bullshit so your aunt can post that to Facebook and feel superior to all the dregs giving themselves cancer by wearing earphones. It’s useless.
According to this articles methods we know that noise cancelling headphones kill people, since everyone who uses them dies! (Eventually and yes /s)
eh, I don’t see a problem with this article specifically, and I don’t think your “cancer” hyperbole is helpful. If people feel like they are suffering from a similar listening/attention issue, there’s no real harm in trying to go without noise-cancelling for a while to see if the symptoms improve.
Sure, but it’s still pretty irresponsible of the BBC to publish what is effectively educated guesses as something to be concerned about.
This belongs in an academic article. Not a news one.
If a hypothesis is untestable, then it is a guess, and not scientific.
it’s not untestable, they just haven’t actually done it yet. In fact they say in the article research is needed.