And now it is bad drugs.. AFAIK the argument against most environmental factors was that schizophrenia frequency seems similar globally after accounting for ways societies handle cases.
Given the ethical limitations on this kind of research, I think a research group that wants to talk about probable causation really needs a cross cultural method to randomly sample and demonstrate active case prevalence changes and to run that sampling over many years.
I considered training our cat to do this, but there's a bunch of advice out there saying that it may be harmful to your cat, and may be difficult as the cat gets older. So please consult with your vet before going this route.
"The modern housecat is just about as natural as a naked human living wild in the forest. It has been selectively bred..."
I think it would be better to say "The modern housecat is just about as natural as a modern human living in a modern house". Both species adapted to modern human environment.
That explains it. I was surprised that an nih.gov site would be a predatory journal. I guess they need to filter better what they include in their search.
I was going to suggest "Understanding physics" by Asimov. I think "On physics" is a collection of essays where "Understanding physics" is more a complete bottom-up treatment like Petzold's "Code".
When I was in HS, I found Asimov’s “World of Carbon” on a book shelf in my second trimester Chemistry class, read it, and then proceeded to ace Organic Chemistry when it was presented during third trimester.
I recommend the author's book "In Persuasion Nation", a collection of short stories, mostly a kind of near-future sci-fi satirizing excesses of commercialism.
Here is a story that made me pick up the book after I heard it on the radio: My Flamboyant Grandson":
This reminds me of a self-working trick I saw online in the 90s.
The website shows you a hand of 5 cards, and asks you to pick one card and stare at it intensely. It claims it will read your mind and guess the card. When ready, you will click a button, and 5 new cards are shown - 4 random cards plus the card you thought of.
...
The trick is that the same cards are shown as before, but in different order. Most people only focused on the one card and don't notice that the rest of the cards are the same. It sounds very simple, but it worked on me and all my family members, at least the first time.
It certainly does apply: why do men have nipples? Likely for reasons similar to why we have an appendix.
Fundamentally, natural selection and evolution are models that help explain general biological processes, to help us comprehend a bigger picture. Around the edges of that picture, it's not fully clear.
The truth is that the universe is governed by laws that are deeply unintuitive: general relativity and the standard model. Each layer of abstraction on these makes the periphery of the image fuzzier, but allows us to make more sense of the part of the image that we're focusing in on.
