> I always hear this brought up, but I’m not sure one should be so confident in that conclusion. I can't explain how statistics work in a post on hackernews, b

> I always hear this brought up, but I’m not sure one should be so confident in that conclusion. I can't explain how statistics work in a post on hackernews, but you should understand that it is possible to quantify uncertainty, and authors of studies are asking the same questions you are when they think about their data. Well, maybe some authors of some studies are morons or have a political axe to grind, but when basically all the studies agree that is called a strong consensus and whenever a consensus exists in a field there are people trying very hard to overturn it. Overturning an accepted 'truth' in a field will basically make your career, it is highly significant, and this is partly what keeps science on the right track. So we can be about as confident in this as we can in anything. Also conservative talk radio isn't a reputable source to quote, mostly because political pundits (on both sides) lie almost all the time. It's basically their job description.