5 ms·
Maybe these studies are particularly hard
by pcloadletter_ 2y ago
Maybe these studies are particularly hard
- CydeWeys 2y agoThey certainly are hard, because dementia is something that develops over years if not decades. Anytime it takes that long to do a single iteration of your experiment, it's hard!
- jfoster 2y agoDoes it need to be, though? You can survey healthy but senior populations about their habits, and then over the following years track what happens. If medical records were public, the answers could even be in those for any medicines that are prescription based. You could then make statements like "A% of patients who took drug B within C years did/didn't develop disease D".
- CydeWeys 2y agoThat's not a randomized controlled trial though. You might find a correlation, but you couldn't actually establish causation, or eliminate hidden variables.
- hombre_fatal 2y agoWe have to get over this false meme where people think RCTs prove causation and the rest prove correlation. An RCT doesn’t prove causation, it only might observe another correlation that contributes to our causal inferences based on the convergence of evidence. We don’t have RCTs for most things that you take for granted.
- CydeWeys 2y agoWell, an observational-only study proves even less.
- lisper 2y agoAnd any time the object of your study is also a treatment for ED it gets extra hard. ;-)
- K0balt 2y agoThat seems a reasonable assumption.
- debo_ 2y agoDon't worry, I caught your innuendo.
- henriquez 2y agoIt’s hard science. I take viagra every day and have only become moderately demented, so obviously it’s working.