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Comment by petee | Hacker News Reader

The title seems like a stretch since they then go on to say,

"Audio samples were analysed objectively using acoustic analysis for measures of timing, vocal control, and quality. Subtle differences in speech timing, vocal effort, and voice quality may exist between cannabis and control groups, however data remain equivocal."

"After controlling for lifetime alcohol and tobacco use and applying a false discovery rate, only spectral tilt (vocal effort and intensity) differed between groups and appeared to change in line with duration of abstinence from cannabis use"

Basically no acoustical difference, except in perceived effort. You'd get the same intensity out of a group of tired people too, but that oddly doesn't seem to have been compared in the study

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I feel like it’s more of a culture thing. You spend time with people who talk a certain way because of X reason and then you pick up their way of talking over time. This sounds like someone’s half assed attempt at a disertation for their graduate degree

Would be interesting to see a study comparing «lifestyle stoners» who surround themself with the culture and other smokers, to people who use cannabis, but does not identify with the stoner culture.

(Although I suspect this might be an oversimplified dichotomy)

Many SWEs are casual users of cannabis, and you'd be hard-pressed to pick them out of a crowd.

The sample size was also 31 users, 40 controls. This really isn't a meaningful result.

I did not read the results, but this definitely depends on the effect size and the variance of whatever they are studying. If 31 people were raised from the dead, for example, it's plenty of sample size.

The issue is that the sample might be highly biased. If it's just 31 white males from Lubbock Texas then what does it even say? Stoners in that town speak different?

With such a small sample size, formal methods break down. The sample could be biased. In fact, it's almost guaranteed. The ability to p-hack (even inadvertently) is extremely high. Publication bias is also practically guaranteed. These kinds of issues void significance to a reasonably high degree.

At these kinds of sample sizes, the biggest issues are not going to be included or visible in the study. Unless the reported significance is extremely high, it's not meaningful.

I don't really participate in scientific literature or journals, but I see a lot of notes in HN around papers that appear to be overblowing the significance of their findings.

Is there a way for researchers to publish 'interesting observations' as just that, something that they measured that may or may not be noteworthy but felt worth sharing with the broader community?

The traditional solution to this problem is to insert a paragraph in the conclusion saying something along the lines of "this merits further study". However, that particular phrase has been overused in journal articles, to the point that it doesn't mean anything anymore.

It's not really something researchers can control. I was commenting on the news release, and it being posted on Hacker News, because that's more of an issue.

Yes agreed - the title doesn't seem to accurately reflect the details in the abstract.

Beyond a larger sample size, IMO it would have been also been useful to take repeat measurements of the cohort over time and also under the influence, especially given the observation of "change in line with duration of abstinence from cannabis use".

Perhaps those details are in the full paper, I haven't been able to find a copy.

> Basically no acoustical difference, except in perceived effort.

On the data points measured. It's easy to observe things like "heavy cannabis users tend to have flat affect," but very difficult to translate "flat affect" into something measurable.

Look at the way that Alex Grey or Terence McKenna talk. There is clearly something going on there, regardless of our ability to measure it.

It’s hard to separate the effect of culture. A lot of cannabis users have an affinity for the cannabis sub-culture, or with related ones like the hippie/hipster cultures that have many shared speech patterns. You might see similar results analyzing the speech of surfers, pilots, sorority members, etc.

I moved to Hollywood, CA from Rockford, IL to live with my father when I was 14 years old. When I started school at the end of Summer there my mid-western accent really stood out and I took quite a bit of ribbing over that. The kids there called me a "Hillbilly" because of my accent. But down in Texas, where I spent a summer a few years before that kids there called me a "Yankee" based on my accent.

But what stood out to me in Hollywood was how many "cliques" there were there. One of the first things kids there told me is I had to join one. They said I could choose from "BMX'ers, Surfers, Skateboarders, Freaks, Motocrossers, Bikers, Stoners" and probably a few others.

Each of those groups had their own phrases and very distinct accents and you had to talk and dress like them to be a part of that clique.

So, I think one could easily conclude the same thing about speech for skateboarders as pot smokers or any other social clique. But I don't think you could detect that influence with my speech, even though I've smoked weed since before I moved to Hollywood 48 years ago. You almost certainly could detect I'm from the mid-west though.

Try to remember that if you hear a pilot meowing.

do tell?

https://www.airlinepilotforums.com/safety/127118-meow.html

https://www.pilotsofamerica.com/community/threads/i-had-hear...

meow

Did you just say 'meow'..?

This specific speech pattern is pretty difficult to fake though. Anyone can talk like a surfer, but I think the average person would be pretty hard pressed to start imitating Alex Grey.

Alex Grey and Terence McKenna consumed many more substances than just marijuana.

> You'd get the same intensity out of a group of tired people too

That would be interesting too, since AFAIK weed helps with sleep and gets you more deep sleep, but at the cost of REM sleep. There's a lot of theories tossed around as to what that can do to people, but I found it hard to find something solid in that area.

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