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I'm not able to speak to the statistical validity of the test, but as a software developer I find it more convincing if there's an explicit causal connection.
by MichaelBurge 10y ago
I'm not able to speak to the statistical validity of the test, but as a software developer I find it more convincing if there's an explicit causal connection.
Like, "Poor people live in darker homes, and the photosensitive ganglion cells are connected to the part of the brain that controls melanin production. And this triggers a sleep response more often, which causes the immune system to behave in X, Y, and Z".
How does a statistician make a decision about what to change given only statistical data? It seems very mysterious to me. I understand how to interpret a scientific result(give people brighter homes), but not a statistical one.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 10y agoCausality is extremely difficult to prove in all sorts of reasonable circumstances, much less the Rube Goldberg mess of horrible chemistry that is the human corpus. (See also for example Judea Pearl's work http://causality.cs.ucla.edu/blog/ http://causality.cs.ucla.edu/blog/ )
- bootload 10y ago"I'm not able to speak to the statistical validity of the test, but as a software developer I find it more convincing if there's an explicit causal connection." @Michael, biology is messy compared to machines. To judge a measure of certainty in the methodology and results, read the peer-reviewed papers submitted to scientists working in this and other fields ~ http://dunedinstudy.otago.ac.nz/publications http://dunedinstudy.otago.ac.nz/publications
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