3 ms·
It's always wise to suspect that sort of data-mining, but if (as I think but am not sure) your point is that they look like arbitrary numbers, suggesting that t
by gjm11 16y ago
It's always wise to suspect that sort of data-mining, but if (as I think but am not sure) your point is that they look like arbitrary numbers, suggesting that they were chosen by the researchers to give a good-sounding result -- well, let's express them differently: "24 hours or more" versus "less than 12 hours". It sounds a lot more canonical that way :-).
... Except that, looking at the abstract (there's a link in the NYT article), I find this: "Men who reported >10 h/wk riding in a car or >23 h/wk of combined sedentary behavior had 82% and 64% greater risk of dying from CVD than those who reported <4 or <11 h/wk, respectively." [I've changed one unhelpful bit of notation.] So, looks like data mining after all.
On the other other hand, as well as those (possibly cherry-picked) thresholds there are statements like "After age adjustment, time riding in a car and combined time spent in these two sedentary behaviors were positively (P(trend) < 0.001) associated with CVD death." which suggests something less ad hoc.
- carbocation 16y agoI agree with you on all points.
- phe 16y agoFrom the NYTimes article: What was unexpected was that many of the men who sat long hours and developed heart problems also exercised. Quite a few of them said they did so regularly and led active lifestyles. The men worked out, then sat in cars and in front of televisions for hours, and their risk of heart disease soared, despite the exercise. Their workouts did not counteract the ill effects of sitting. From the journal abstract: In addition, high levels of physical activity were related to notably lower rates of CVD death even in the presence of high levels of sedentary behavior. If anybody wants to look at the article, I have access to the paper.