Post <blockquote><blockquote>Is it just me or are the outcomes completely different in the two papers? One is all about stuff happening at birth, the newer one much later in life. I'm all for witch-hunting but let's read the papers bros. It's imminently plausible to me that the authors missed a paper in the health literature. The ID strategy is kind of obvious if you think about the admin data they have. They should have cited it, but two papers using a similar identification strategy with completely different outcomes is still not a scandal. </blockquote> <blockquote> This was my reaction as well. Three pages of EMJR outrage and self-congratulation without anyone actually reading the abstracts? </blockquote> It looks like you didn't read the papers. Protip: if you want to defend your fellow corrupt HRMs, read the f**king papers first, so you know when to shut up. Persson and Rossin-Slater claim (page 2) that, "By considering the deaths of different relatives, our approach presents a new measure of the intensity of stress exposure—the strength of the family tie that is severed." But it is clear that Class et al. already looked at "death of the father of the child or first degree relative of the mother." Persson and Rossin-Slater motivate their paper primarily in terms of mental health, which Class et al. don't look at. But Persson and Rossin-Slater emphasize that their second "primary contribution" is (page 3) <blockquote> we can trace the onset of adverse effects of exposure to maternal bereavement in utero. We document that important physical health consequences are already evident at birth and in early childhood. In particular, we see 12, 24, and 12 percent increases in the likelihoods of low-birth-weight (less than 2,500 grams), very-low-birth-weight (less than 1,500 grams), and pre-term (less than 37 weeks gestation) births, respectively. </blockquote> Hmm, didn't Class et al. already look at PTB and LBW? What did they say their objective was? <blockquote> To identify the impact of timing of prenatal stress exposure on offspring risk for shortened gestational age (GA), preterm birth (PTB), low birth weight (LBW), and small for gestational age (SGA) using a population-based sample. </blockquote> tl;dr f**k all of you corrupt HRM douchebags.</blockquote>

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