3 ms·
I find it problematic that the only controls consistently accounted for are age, sex, and race. I think they are making too big a claim, and they would've gene
by ianamartin 9y ago
I find it problematic that the only controls consistently accounted for are age, sex, and race.
I think they are making too big a claim, and they would've generated a more useful insight if they were controlling for pathological behaviors as well.
Are popular alcoholics likely to live longer? How about popular obese people? Is there, perhaps, a causal relation between being isolated/unpopular and pathological behaviors?
The study itself (the pnas source--and by the way, thanks to the NY Times for linking to the source) smacks of p-value fishing combined with making the most grandiose claim you can based on those p-values.
I'm not saying the paper is wrong in a mathematically provable way or that it couldn't be replicated. I'm saying that it isn't science that is meaningful or useful. It strikes me as resume-driven science.
Scientific click-bait.
- bjourne 9y agoIt's a meta study. That means the authors themselves haven't gathered any data but used data from other studies and done some number crunching on it. There have already been hundreds of studies which have found links between loneliness factors and mortality. This study's authors contribution to the science is estimating the size, or strength, of that link.