• @taiyang
    link
    141 year ago

    I’m so glad I didn’t see that. I hate just now easy it is for things to get published and, worse, draw media attention.

    Although if I had to guess, it isn’t the sample size and sds so much as drawing stupid conclusions from correlations without using controls for things that actually lead to depression and addiction. (Like the wine is good for you studies that ignore the benefits of wealth, ugh)

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      91 year ago

      The wine is good for you did not ignore the benefits of wealth.

      It first ignored the fact that the initial study was of Japanese doctors and maybe having a medical education made you more likely to adopt healthier practices.

      The next study ignored wealth.

      The next study ignored education and wealth.

      It proceeds to be bad study after bad study until 20 or so years after the first study when someone thought “what if the non-drinking crowd included people who were alcoholics and people who had to stop drinking because of health problems?” Turns out when you only focus on non-drinkers who never regularly drank and compared them with wine drinkers the wine drinking crowd has a lot more health issues.

      I work in the wine business and I laugh every time I see a new study to see what they ignored to conclude wine was a health food

      • @taiyang
        link
        61 year ago

        Wine as a health food is such wishful thinking, haha. I have the privilege of learning some advanced statistical methods in grad school and so many of those issues are easily accounted for with better data and models.

        Or, you know, common sense. Lol