Biomarkers and Long-term Labour Market Outcomes: The Case of Creatine [pdf] | Hacker News Reader

Biomarkers and Long-term Labour Market Outcomes: The Case of Creatine [pdf]

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24 pointsphreeza16 comments

Plausible (creatine is good for athletics, of course, but there's also a scattershot of small psychological studies suggesting cognitive benefits to supplementation http://gwern.net/Creatine which would imply that one's normal levels of creatine might make a difference), but I'm really surprised that the correlation does not seem to be mediated by educational attainment, since that's where I would immediately expect to see some effect to get the increased wages.

It is a biomarker for meat, eggs, and fish in the diet. So, in addition to the effects of creatine in a young persons body, it may be a biomarker for wealth, assuming vegetarians are a small enough minority.

The papers asserts they controlled for that (in the Conclusion):

    Nor does it appear to be proxying the effects of other biomarkers, nor parental background.

Also, since it wasn't due to education:

    The effect of creatine on labour market outcomes does not arise through the acquisition of formal education as measured by having at least some university education.

I think that also insinuates it wasn't just a proxy for wealth, as the wealthy kids would, I assume, have had better education.

I don't think the education<=>wealth assumption plays out as well in Finland as in the US. There is much greater access to high quality education in Finland, and it's cheaper, too.

That's a very good point. With free tuition for Finnish citizens, and very likley no "legacy" admission policies, education is not a proxy for wealthy parents in Finland.

High creatine is also present in chronic kidney disease - I have to have regular blood tests for my creatine levels :-(

That's creatinine levels. Creatinine is a breakdown product of creatine, and its level is a convenient measure of kidney function.

oops I sit corrected :-)

This kind of paper probably gets lots of money from EU and government sources. It has couple of people from different EU countries and it has people from different fields co-operating.

This is probably something that people think lets do this and see what happens at least we get maximum government funding for being interdisciplinary and co-operating between institutions. Results are probably not bullshit at all, but idea to study this is probably because its easier to get funding is for interdisciplinary co-operation.

TLDR; "Those with higher levels of creatine in 1980 spend more time in the labour market in the subsequent two decades and earn more. Creatine is not associated with educational attainment."

"The associations between creatine and labour market outcomes are robust to controlling for other biomarkers, educational attainment and parental background. Creatine is a naturally occurring nitrogenous organic acid which supplies energy to body cells, including muscles and brain. Our findings are consistent with high energy levels, induced by creatine, leading to productivity-enhancing traits - such as a high propensity for effort, perseverance, or high-commitment - which results in positive labour market outcomes."

This study from a nephrology journal shows that urine creatinine levels are associated with lean body mass, degree of vigorous exercise, and meat in the diet: http://cjasn.asnjournals.org/content/3/2/348.full Did these authors control for any of these factors?

My bullshit meter reads over 9000.

Mine went off the scale on reading the title. But what about similar findings regarding testosterone and traders (and other activities involving risk taking) that have been found? What if they'd found a similar correlation between caffeine and labour output?

Made me realize my bullshit meter definitely includes a heuristic along the lines of "any mental association with the bodybuilder supplement industry adds a large multiplier to the bullshit level".

My bullshit meter is clearly flawed.

Creatine supp. isn't just for bodybuilders; it's actually beneficial for the brain.

Yup, it's actually among the couple supplements I do take. I was going for a point about bullshit meters since creatine is strongly associated with the scammy world of workout supplements in most people's minds.

Why? It's a pretty straightforward analysis, and well powered (more than 2500 people sampled). It is not about creatine supplementation, but rather creatine measured in children's urine correlated to their later income etc.

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