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I don't have training to make a formal argument, but this has got to be bullshit. They take the few people that had some form of heart disease (37 out of 1104

I don't have training to make a formal argument, but this has got to be bullshit. They take the few people that had some form of heart disease (37 out of 1104 over ten years) and noted that none of them except one could do 40 pushups. By some magic, this is translated into a 96% reduction in chance of a heart attack. If that's really the reasoning, could I not just pick any metric (i.e. words typed per minute over 120, or IQ over 130) which is likely to eliminate almost all of the participants and conclude that it is reducing risk of heart disease? Am I missing something? Is this kind of reasoning not complete bogus?

maxander 8y ago
That's not how this sort of analysis is done. They separated people by push-up capacity, and compared the rate of heart disease in the low-capacity group versus the high-capacity group; those rates were 36 "cardiovascular events" for the 948 low-capacity guys (so, 3.7% of them), and 1 for the 155 high-capacity guys (0.6% of them.) I know which group I'd rather be in. It is true that, with the small number of events, the precise "96% reduction" number shouldn't be taken too seriously- the study notes that the 95% confidence interval is 99% to 64%; essentially, there's a one-in-twenty chance that it's a 99% reduction, or likewise that it's only a 64% reduction. Science never grants absolute uncertainties- but sadly, that part never makes it into the news story.
- zeroname 8y ago
  Thank you for the explanation, that makes a lot more sense.