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The article spends the first half implying causation, briefly admits this study does not address that, and then resumes suggesting that causation exists. I hop

by jmull 9y ago

The article spends the first half implying causation, briefly admits this study does not address that, and then resumes suggesting that causation exists. I hope that's not considered responsible science journalism. Personally, I don't conclude anything from this. The tone and overreaching conclusions in the study abstract and in the quotes of the study's conclusion make me think the study's authors were looking for a specific answer, which they found. It's not hard to pull what you're looking for out of nothing using statistics, especially on your own data. In fact, it's hard NOT to do.

boomboomsubban 9y ago
>The article spends the first half implying causation, briefly admits this study does not address that, and then resumes suggesting that causation exists. It starts talking about "common anecdotes," then talk about the self reporting survey this is based on. I can't see that as implying causation, and I don't know what more can be expected of science journalism. The field has to make it into a story, that's what differentiates it from scientific journals. The abstract also states how inconclusive this result is, that the full paper addresses the limitations and that this data should be used with other evidence. The problems I see are the general need to find some link to get published, and they are at least straightforward about the strength of their data.