3 ms·

I think this is one of those studies where you didn't really need to do a study.

• psyc 5y ago
  I feel the same about a great many studies, but normally would never say so here. What if people found out I was tainted in my epistemologies?
• lallysingh 5y ago
  It's useful to measure things even if we already know that they're common. Numbers tell a story that beliefs cannot.
• wheybags 5y ago
  New study shows most water is wet
  • pilsetnieks 5y ago
    There is, however, a significant percentage of it in dry or gaseous form.
    • Sohcahtoa82 5y ago
      You got me thinking now... How many chemicals/materials have different names depending on their state of matter, versus just having an adjective prepended? When ice melts, it's called water. But when steel melts, it's just called molten steel.
• gwern 5y ago
  No, this is important. There are a lot of people who will tell you that 'selective breeding doesn't work and always backfires, because look how unhealthy some dog breeds are'. This study is part of the evidence-base showing that that is wrong: those dog breeds are unhealthy because they are incredibly inbred with effective population sizes so small you may be able to count them on two hands. The bulldogs will always be unhealthy to some degree because those faces are just not a good idea, but even there some bulldog breeds are far sicklier than others, and it's due to the inbreeding, and when you know that, you know how to improve them. This is important for stuff like agricultural breeding: the problems aren't inevitable, and are caused by specific mistakes, like starting with too few individuals, closing the studbook prematurely, and not outcrossing.
• 0xdeadb00f 5y ago
  The point is, the study has been done, and now there is an academic precedent and solid evidence people can cite now. A lot of scientific studies are like this. Doesn't make them any less important.