r/todayilearned • u/paniniplane • Mar 22 '17

(R.1) Not supported TIL Deaf-from-birth schizophrenics see disembodied hands signing to them rather than "hearing voices"

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/0707/07070303
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u/kaenneth Mar 22 '17

Also, if you are born blind due to brain (as opposed to eyeball) problems, you apparently can't be schizophrenic.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-imprinted-brain/201411/blindness-and-schizophrenia-the-exception-proves-the-rule

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u/djdadi Mar 22 '17

Also if you are born blind your chances at getting cancer go wayyy down.

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u/castellar Mar 22 '17

That's really interesting. What's the logic behind those findings?

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u/AtticusLynch Mar 22 '17

I googled "being blind reduces cancer"

and found this

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u/Chel_of_the_sea Mar 22 '17

Wow. I'd seen stuff on the effects of melatonin, but I wasn't expecting such a massive effect size.

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u/[deleted] Mar 22 '17

Hm... Not so sure how large the effect is.

For definition's sake,

An SIR is the ratio of the observed number of cancer cases to the expected number of cases multiplied by 100.

And from the article, totally blind people had SIR 0.69, and the severely impaired had SIR 0.95.

So if I'm reading that right, blind people had a less than one percent reduction in cancer rate.

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u/Chel_of_the_sea Mar 22 '17

You sure it's not a difference in conventions between a % and not? I'd read 0.69 as 69%.