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> Next, the researchers examined how fitness was associated with the risk of dying in random accidents such as car accidents, drownings and homicides. They chos

> Next, the researchers examined how fitness was associated with the risk of dying in random accidents such as car accidents, drownings and homicides. They chose random accidents because they assumed that there ought to be no association between the men’s fitness in late adolescence and the risk of dying in random accidents. Blank slatism is the curse of the sciences. Of course the kind of people who die in car accidents and homicides are not identical to everyone else but for random luck. They're less educated[1], they make poor decisions, they have dangerous neighbors, frequently they're immigrants from countries with lots of car accidents and homicides. We've known that "everything is correlated" since 2014[2], when will science figure it out? 1. https://www.theverge.com/2015/10/2/9438197/traffic-accident-study-education-level-deaths https://www.theverge.com/2015/10/2/9438197/traffic-accident-... 2. https://gwern.net/everything https://gwern.net/everything

stepanhruda 1y ago
I thought these studies often control for additional factors like wealth, education etc. not sure about this one, but genuinely curious whether I am mistaken and science “did not figure it out” yet
- gwern 1y ago
  Those studies never 'control for those'. What they do is a crude statistical approximation (sometimes extremely crude - eg most studies will 'control for education' by counting up 'years', which equates 4 years at Caltech with 4 years in community college), and hope that not too much leaks through as "residual confounding" (https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0152719 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...). Unfortunately, because everything is correlated, there's residual confounding everywhere. This is why every time someone does a Scandinavian population registry study and compares eg siblings within the same family, often the correlation just disappears then and there. It's 100% unsurprising that this is true of fitness too. This is what always happens. You look at something like a corporate health fitness plan and you find some correlate even after you 'control for' SES, prior health record etc etc; wonderful! Then you do a randomized experiment and it turns out that the residual confounding was still larger than any causal effect which might be there: https://gwern.net/doc/statistics/causality/2022-wallace.pdf https://gwern.net/doc/statistics/causality/2022-wallace.pdf Ah well. Maybe next time you'll manage to 'control for' the confounders...
conception 1y ago
Any paper that starts with a blank slate and doesn’t control for confounding variables is unlikely to be published or accepted in.. like… high school.
azan_ 1y ago
Yes, and since there is a factor that affects both fitness and dying in car accidents or homicides, then it's harder to establish for how big reduction of mortality is fitness really responsible (causal). What you are complaining about is exactly the point of this study: > This suggests that people with high and low fitness levels may differ in other important ways, which is something that previous studies have not fully taken into account
JumpCrisscross 1y ago
I’m also struggling to see how one’s risk of drowning isn’t obviously related to fitness. (The nexus between weight and car crash mortality isn’t exactly buried science, either [1].) [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11829292/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11829292/
- Teever 1y ago
  I could see a scenario where less fit people stay out of the water while people who are fit do more activities in the water and some of them engage in riskier activities in the water like whitewater kayaking.
  - koolba 1y ago
    There’s an age dynamic as well. The most reckless people I knew at age 20 were the most physically fit. But that flipped in later years.
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    > could see a scenario where less fit people stay out of the water Which further undermines the authors’ assumption that drownings are random accidents.
    - M95D 1y ago
      That's not what the study said.
- _qbxi 1y ago
  My university required a swim test to graduate, and also required 10 minutes of treading water in order to access sailboats. Many of my classmates talked about this being difficult, but both were trivial for me. Fat is buoyant.
  - galangalalgol 1y ago
    Yeah you can have lots of spare energy and still be quite strong with great cardiovascular health. It is hard on the joints though.
ajross 1y ago
You're misunderstanding. The point is absolutely not that the fitness/accident correlation must be fictitious. It's that the fact that it exists exists suggests that the fitness/cardiovascular-mortality link may not be as direct as previously understood. It might be co-causal, for example: to take your list, maybe "making poor decisions" has a bigger impact on cardiovascular health than we thought.
- Swizec 1y ago
  > It might be co-causal Kinda like how wine after dinner improves health outcomes. The kind of people who can afford to regularly drink wine, but not a lot, also have more access to healhtcare. Also riding horses makes you healthier! (it’s a proxy for wealth) One could argue that high VO2max may just be another proxy for wealth. People who can afford to work out every day can also afford lots of other things that correlate with health and longevity.
readthenotes1 1y ago
The study group were all military conscripts so at least some of the environment variations were taken care of. Sweden had a low homicide rate as well (between 4x and 9x lower than the USA, depending on year)

stepanhruda 1y ago

I thought these studies often control for additional factors like wealth, education etc. not sure about this one, but genuinely curious whether I am mistaken and science “did not figure it out” yet

gwern 1y ago
Those studies never 'control for those'. What they do is a crude statistical approximation (sometimes extremely crude - eg most studies will 'control for education' by counting up 'years', which equates 4 years at Caltech with 4 years in community college), and hope that not too much leaks through as "residual confounding" (https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0152719 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...). Unfortunately, because everything is correlated, there's residual confounding everywhere. This is why every time someone does a Scandinavian population registry study and compares eg siblings within the same family, often the correlation just disappears then and there. It's 100% unsurprising that this is true of fitness too. This is what always happens. You look at something like a corporate health fitness plan and you find some correlate even after you 'control for' SES, prior health record etc etc; wonderful! Then you do a randomized experiment and it turns out that the residual confounding was still larger than any causal effect which might be there: https://gwern.net/doc/statistics/causality/2022-wallace.pdf https://gwern.net/doc/statistics/causality/2022-wallace.pdf Ah well. Maybe next time you'll manage to 'control for' the confounders...

conception 1y ago

Any paper that starts with a blank slate and doesn’t control for confounding variables is unlikely to be published or accepted in.. like… high school.

azan_ 1y ago

Yes, and since there is a factor that affects both fitness and dying in car accidents or homicides, then it's harder to establish for how big reduction of mortality is fitness really responsible (causal). What you are complaining about is exactly the point of this study: > This suggests that people with high and low fitness levels may differ in other important ways, which is something that previous studies have not fully taken into account

JumpCrisscross 1y ago

I’m also struggling to see how one’s risk of drowning isn’t obviously related to fitness. (The nexus between weight and car crash mortality isn’t exactly buried science, either [1].) [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11829292/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11829292/

Teever 1y ago
I could see a scenario where less fit people stay out of the water while people who are fit do more activities in the water and some of them engage in riskier activities in the water like whitewater kayaking.
- koolba 1y ago
  There’s an age dynamic as well. The most reckless people I knew at age 20 were the most physically fit. But that flipped in later years.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > could see a scenario where less fit people stay out of the water Which further undermines the authors’ assumption that drownings are random accidents.
  - M95D 1y ago
    That's not what the study said.
_qbxi 1y ago
My university required a swim test to graduate, and also required 10 minutes of treading water in order to access sailboats. Many of my classmates talked about this being difficult, but both were trivial for me. Fat is buoyant.
- galangalalgol 1y ago
  Yeah you can have lots of spare energy and still be quite strong with great cardiovascular health. It is hard on the joints though.

ajross 1y ago

You're misunderstanding. The point is absolutely not that the fitness/accident correlation must be fictitious. It's that the fact that it exists exists suggests that the fitness/cardiovascular-mortality link may not be as direct as previously understood. It might be co-causal, for example: to take your list, maybe "making poor decisions" has a bigger impact on cardiovascular health than we thought.

Swizec 1y ago
> It might be co-causal Kinda like how wine after dinner improves health outcomes. The kind of people who can afford to regularly drink wine, but not a lot, also have more access to healhtcare. Also riding horses makes you healthier! (it’s a proxy for wealth) One could argue that high VO2max may just be another proxy for wealth. People who can afford to work out every day can also afford lots of other things that correlate with health and longevity.

readthenotes1 1y ago

The study group were all military conscripts so at least some of the environment variations were taken care of. Sweden had a low homicide rate as well (between 4x and 9x lower than the USA, depending on year)