Comments on: Does Lithium in Drinking Water Reduce Suicide Rates?

By: Monado

Monado — Wed, 13 May 2009 13:46:33 +0000

But Greg, you don’t drink a line of water; you drink a volume of it, which at a given concentration of a solute is a certain number of molecules.

P.S. If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the precipitate!

By: wybory sondaze demokracja

wybory sondaze demokracja — Tue, 12 May 2009 09:53:27 +0000

So in some northern countries it is worth to add some lithum to water as the rate of depression (lithum is used against depression as well) and suicides is the highest due to lack of sun.

By: Wayne Conrad

Wayne Conrad — Mon, 04 May 2009 17:31:51 +0000

Greg, Thanks for the explanation.

Fascinating.

By: Greg Laden

Greg Laden — Mon, 04 May 2009 16:40:43 +0000

Wayne: The second of those two statements would probably be the best way to put it.

However, we also have to consider that the comparison is being made of things that are not of equivalent dimensionality. The Y axis is observed events over unit time, and the X axis is number of molecules of lithium in a volume of water (consumed over time). It is almost like comparing a one dimensional to a three dimensional measure (sort of). My inclination would have been to take the cube root of the lithium value. But I’m strange about dimensionality. I actually try to understand it rather than gloss it with the usual techniques.

By: Wayne Conrad

Wayne Conrad — Mon, 04 May 2009 15:06:32 +0000

My math skills are poor… would y’all please help me out? It’s a logarithmic scale (for X; linear for Y), which means non-linear. I get that. But the exact meaning of a downward sloping linear regression on a logarithmic scale, I’m having a little trouble wrapping my head around. Does it mean that each incremental increase of lithium had a lesser impact on suicide rates? Or to put it another way, it took more and more added lithium to cause the same incremental decrease in suicide rate as you go to the right on the X axis. Have I got that right?

By: sailor

sailor — Mon, 04 May 2009 14:36:18 +0000

It would be interesting to also look at the murder rates.

By: John

John — Sun, 03 May 2009 19:41:08 +0000

Between this and Elsevier, it’s been a banner day for the tinfoil hat crowd.

By: JohnnieCanuck

JohnnieCanuck — Sun, 03 May 2009 18:28:29 +0000

“as yet unreplicated” I would think.

This has to merit further study and soon, yes?

By: D. C. Sessions

D. C. Sessions — Sun, 03 May 2009 18:28:01 +0000

Nothing like a twofer: the TFH crowd have been flipping out for years over fluoride in drinking water (they even claim it’s for mind control!)

I haven’t checked MHA lately but am willing to bet that they’re already going off on the rumor that LiF will be added to “trank” us all into submission.