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Crémieux Profile picture
@cremieuxrecueil
May 2 • 6 tweets • 3 min read • Read on X
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There's a myth that the Islamic world has figured out fertility, but it has not.

They show the same declining fertility rates that other places have. Barring Iraq, the Middle East has lower fertility rates than Israel now. Image
Exceptions: Yemen and maybe Palestine, both of which have terrible data, so their comparative situation is unclear.

But, two things on that:

Firstly, Jewish fertility is ahead of Arab fertility in Israel. Image
Secondly, Israeli fertility might be just ahead or slightly behind Palestinian fertility, depending on the source.

Israeli growth is definitely ahead of Palestinian growth due to immigration, Palestinian emigration, and Palestinian mortality.Image
So no, I do not believe in Islamic excellence in fertility. Even their famously fecund culture is not immune to the global baby bust.

Not in Denmark: Image
Nor in France, and even if we look at second-generation immigrants (not shown, but source linked below): Image
Sources:

ourworldindata.org/grapher/childr…

haaretz.com/israel-news/20…

ourworldindata.org/grapher/childr…

x.com/cremieuxrecuei…

ined.fr/en/news/press/…

demographic-research.org/volumes/vol36/…

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More from @cremieuxrecueil

Crémieux Profile picture
May 2
Relationships between class and fertility and IQ and fertility used to routinely be negative in the not-so-distant past.

But across the developed world, they're increasingly positive, albeit only slightly. In this Swedish birth cohort (1951-67), the transition came early: Image
In this example, there's also some interesting confounding: between families, IQ isn't monotonically associated with fertility, but within families, it is.

Something seems to suppress the IQ-fertility relationship between families!

See also:
Sweden's positive IQ-fertility gradient (which, above, is just for males, since it's draftee data), has been around for quite a while (but has varied, too), whereas in countries like France, Japan, and the U.S., the gradient shift towards being slightly positive is more recent. Image
Read 6 tweets
Crémieux Profile picture
May 2
One of the reasons people are so pessimistic about fertility policy is because they misjudge the counterfactual🧵

Consider this. We have a country with a given fertility level: Image
The country intervenes with some fertility policy, and the fertility rate continues to fall.

The program is therefore dubbed a failure. Oh no! Image
But, had the program never been implemented, the fertility rate would have fallen much more.

This is the counterfactual, and it is roundly ignored in favor of the pessimistic conclusion that fertility policy simply does not work. Image
Read 10 tweets
Crémieux Profile picture
Apr 30
This is a really strong claim based on really scant evidence.

Add in a control for family history or use Bonferroni instead of Benjamini-Hochberg and 5-aminovaleric acid betaine goes nonsignificant. Add in polygenic risk scores too and Cyclo(Leu-Pro) goes nonsignificant.
Using a small number of the total tests (multiple comparison correction was too lax), the model with both metabolites in it alone led to p-values of 0.3512 for 5-AVAB and 0.0188 for Cyclo(Leu-Pro) and that's from a model without family history or genetic risk.
I don't see any good reason why, but the authors preferred to make inferences from a model missing important controls they had available

But to make matters worse, 5-AVAB wasn't measured super well, and the analyses with cLP were not quantitative at all, as most data was missing
Read 7 tweets
Crémieux Profile picture
Apr 29
The Mafia is undoubtedly cool.

It makes for good TV and good movies, and some even argue that it makes for economic growth, that it 'greases the wheels'.

But I've never believed this theory, and I think there's considerable evidence against it🧵 Image
Italy is the homeland of the Mafia, and though they've tried everything to get rid of them, they're still around.

Check this date out: They're still doing anti-Mafia stings in 2025!Image
We are quite literally approaching 100 years of the Italian state engaging in mass campaigns to contain and crush the Mafia.

In June of 1924, Mussolini tasked Cesare Mori with eradicating them, and though he did a lot and thought he'd win, he did not.

Cent'Anni! Image
Read 22 tweets
Crémieux Profile picture
Apr 25
Why have autism rates risen over time?🧵

I have just put out an article dealing with numerous misconceptions about this topic, and a complete explanation of why autism diagnoses have become more common.

It starts with acknowledging that more kids are diagnosed than in the past: Image
But this is misleading for a few reasons.

One has to do with how this data was sourced. We didn't have a DSM with autism in it before 1980, so all the oldest people in this cohort were diagnosed as adults.

Adults are underdiagnosed. Go out of your way to diagnose? Same rates.Image
So something is off about this graph.

A major issue is that the older diagnoses here were done under a more arbitrary criteria: Autism has only been a described thing since Kanner's studies in 1943 and mass diagnosis kicked off in 1980.

Before 1980, diagnosis was often crazy:Image
Read 16 tweets
Crémieux Profile picture
Apr 24
In 2016, researchers found that the minority-White wage gap was overestimated by about 10% because, at work, non-Whites tended to partake in more leisure, waiting around, etc.

They delayed releasing the study out of fear Trump would "use it as a propaganda piece." Image
They explicitly admitted that they let their personal politics get in the way of releasing a study with contentious but correct findings.

That doesn't inspire trust, but at the same time, given the topic, it might!
This isn't the worst example of scientists hurting the public for political reasons.

More infamously, this guy stopped the release of the COVID vaccines to prevent Trump from winning re-election in 2020, killing tens of thousands in the process. Image
Read 5 tweets

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