Meryl Horn

Yeah.

Like, none of these studies was like a slam dunk on its own.

But at the same time, dozens of other studies were also coming out looking at other stuff, especially ADHD, and finding that rates of ADHD were up in these kids exposed to acetaminophen in the womb.

Oh, okay.

And yeah, in some cases, it looked like the link was strongest for mothers who took acetaminophen pretty often, like in all three trimesters.

So there's like a dose-response element as well.

That's what it looked like.

And in 2021, this all comes to a head.

A paper comes out from a bunch of researchers who'd been studying this called a consensus statement.

They issued a, quote, call for precautionary action, unquote, and basically suggested that people should pump the brakes on these pills, minimize the amount of acetaminophen that they take during pregnancy.

Here's Brian.

And so this statement really made scientists pay attention.

And some parents even started suing the companies that make meds with acetaminophen in them, saying that they should have warning labels on them about these risks.

But as all of this was happening, a lot of scientists were like, wait a second.

And implying that this was the consensus seemed to piss a lot of scientists off.

Some of them wrote responses to that consensus statement saying that it was way too soon to come out so hard against acetaminophen, saying that the evidence they cited was, quote, weak in consistence and to a large extent methodologically inadequate, unquote.

So they're saying the studies are crap.

Well, basically, yeah.

That's the science-y way of saying, what?

This?