#longitudinal studies

What I find fascinating with with this article is that the researchers can’t actually agree on what the data is, let alone what it indicates.  But this is the problem with medications like anti-depressants (or even allergy meds, or pain relievers) - they are very subtle medications that cause relatively small changes in the body that may not be directly detectable, even over the long term.  But that’s the issue with vaccines, too - the changes they cause are very, very subtle.  You can’t exactly “see” immunity.  You can test the blood for antibodies, but functionally speaking, the only difference between someone vaccinated and someone unvaccinated is the likelihood of getting a particular disease.  And now, when some people sense that vaccines have caused autism in their children, it becomes nearly impossible to convince them otherwise.

Large-scale surveys have revealed a great deal in the past several decades about typical interpersonal relations. And observations of family dynamics in the laboratory, where subjects are hooked up to devices that read their physiology during play activities or heated discussions have revealed some fine-grain details of what goes on in our bodies and minds when we engage in life's recurring dust-ups.  In between are the highly non-linear social spaces where people actually experience their daily lives, and it has been hard for social scientists to find acceptable methods in today's environment of clenched-jaw human subjects committees to collect rich data on "in vivo" subjects in uncontrived settings. Smart phones are a technological solution to that problem, as they can be carried with us at all times—no lab-coated technician need wait behind a two-way mirror.  In a future iteration of this study, Ram plans for subjects also to wear small, quarter-sized monitors that record heart rate and other physiological functions. They would transfer the data via Bluetooth to a smart phone that then sends the data, along with information about the environment, wirelessly to a server. There, the data could be analyzed instantaneously and "an appropriate intervention message," Ram says, would be prepared and sent right back to the subject—real-time coaching. So as well as gaining stronger scientific insights into a specific individual's day-to-day experiences, the findings could also be applied to improving individuals' overall health and well-being.  "Engineers have developed a whole set of methodology that takes in information in real time, say from a plane that is flying, models how the plane moves, and suggests adjustments that can be made, a little turn left, a little turn right, to keep the plane on track," Ram says. "We think the same ideas can be applied to human behavior. Our objective is to model how individuals 'fly' along, and then make suggestions for adjustments." "For example, if we find in the stream of data we collect that an individual has a tendency to withdraw every time he or she meets with his or her boss, we can begin providing some guidance that may help those interactions go more smoothly. Ideally we might even be able to deliver those 'micro-interventions' right on the cell phone—with a text message appearing that says, "Okay, just take a couple of deep breaths and be assertive.'" Will subjects be willing to divulge all this private information and do all the required data entry? Ram says the initial subjects will be highly motivated people who are interested in interpersonal issues and like contributing to scientific discovery. "It's a pretty demanding study and over the course of one and a half years these people will learn a lot about themselves," Ram says.