6 ms·

Oh, c'mon... these guys are not your average armchair statiticians newbies. One of the authors: "He studied economic history at the London School of Economics

by inerte 17y ago

Oh, c'mon... these guys are not your average armchair statiticians newbies. One of the authors: "He studied economic history at the London School of Economics before training in epidemiology and is Professor Emeritus at the University of Nottingham Medical School and Honorary Professor at University College London." The other: "Kate Pickett is a Senior Lecturer at the University of York and a National Institute for Health Research Career Scientist. She studied physical anthropology at Cambridge, nutritional sciences at Cornell and epidemiology at Berkeley before spending four years as an Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago." Their board http://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/about/board http://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/about/board : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molly_Scott_Cato http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molly_Scott_Cato (Phd) http://www.shef.ac.uk/geography/staff/dorling_danny/ http://www.shef.ac.uk/geography/staff/dorling_danny/ - Danny Dorling was educated at The University of Newcastle upon Tyne in Geography, Mathematics and Statistics leading to a PhD in the Visualization of Spatial Social Structure http://www.penguin.co.uk/nf/Author/AuthorPage/0,,1000074828,00.html http://www.penguin.co.uk/nf/Author/AuthorPage/0,,1000074828,... - gained a BA in Oriental Studies at Oxford, received a Harvard MBA before returning to Scotland to manage the family paper mill business, transforming it into a more open company, for which he was given the ‘Scottish Business Achievement Award’ in 1998. His St Andrews PhD was on the subject of employee ownership http://www.uel.ac.uk/ssmcs/staff/rustin-michael.htm http://www.uel.ac.uk/ssmcs/staff/rustin-michael.htm Not saying the book is right, but I'll be damned if we have to teach correlation/causation to these people. edited: The Wikipedia article on "Correlation does not imply causation" cites a "a widely-studied example, (where) numerous epidemiological studies showed". Just a friendly reminder :)

gaius 17y ago
Both people who've only ever had State jobs, tho'.
ellyagg 17y ago
Nevertheless. One issue is that the US probably has a much higher segment of the population that's at least a standard deviation below average in IQ than European nations do. I'd love to see Finland work with our IQ distribution. Low IQ demographics cause a lot of problems.
- euccastro 17y ago
  "Probably"? Do you have data on that? And if that were true, what explanation do you propose for that? I bet something that affects mental health and criminality rates can have an impact in IQ distribution. Anyway, the study compared 20 different countries, and each state of the USA. Low IQ in the US wouldn't begin to explain their observations.
- lutorm 17y ago
  IQ scores are affected by education and training, so if the US has lower IQ than European nations (a fact I have no idea if it's true) I would suspect that's because of the differences in education (where education does not just mean school). If you want to suggest there is a big genetic difference in the two populations, I think you're going to need to cite some references there before that's credible.
bokonist 17y ago
The confusion of correlation with causation is everywhere in the social sciences. The entire profession suffers from the keys and lamppost fallacy. They study intensive mathematics and then they end up trying to attack every problem with regressions, and miss out on the supporting logic that proves causation. How many useful and accurate predictions do you see coming out of economics? Or out of nutrition for that matter? This article is a classic example of confusing correlation with causation. The author simply does not detail a chain of cause and effect. And the correlation she poses, does not explain such facts as why Baltimore was really safe in 1900, and is violent wreck today.
- euccastro 17y ago
  What should be predicted in nutrition that isn't?
  - bokonist 17y ago
    Well, virtually everything that gets spouted as gospel ends up turning out not to be true five, ten years later. Fats are good, then fats are bad, then they are good again. Then only certain kinds of fat, then other kinds of fat, etc. If you actually look into the studies, you find that the evidence for any the propositions is usually non-existent. I was reading some recent studies for instance, that were showing lower cholesterol increases mortality. Of course, I have no idea how good this study was. The entire review process for published results is broken horribly. You're pretty much better off ignoring everything and just using common sense.

by inerte 17y ago

gaius 17y ago

Both people who've only ever had State jobs, tho'.

ellyagg 17y ago

Nevertheless. One issue is that the US probably has a much higher segment of the population that's at least a standard deviation below average in IQ than European nations do. I'd love to see Finland work with our IQ distribution. Low IQ demographics cause a lot of problems.

euccastro 17y ago
"Probably"? Do you have data on that? And if that were true, what explanation do you propose for that? I bet something that affects mental health and criminality rates can have an impact in IQ distribution. Anyway, the study compared 20 different countries, and each state of the USA. Low IQ in the US wouldn't begin to explain their observations.
lutorm 17y ago
IQ scores are affected by education and training, so if the US has lower IQ than European nations (a fact I have no idea if it's true) I would suspect that's because of the differences in education (where education does not just mean school). If you want to suggest there is a big genetic difference in the two populations, I think you're going to need to cite some references there before that's credible.

bokonist 17y ago

The confusion of correlation with causation is everywhere in the social sciences. The entire profession suffers from the keys and lamppost fallacy. They study intensive mathematics and then they end up trying to attack every problem with regressions, and miss out on the supporting logic that proves causation. How many useful and accurate predictions do you see coming out of economics? Or out of nutrition for that matter? This article is a classic example of confusing correlation with causation. The author simply does not detail a chain of cause and effect. And the correlation she poses, does not explain such facts as why Baltimore was really safe in 1900, and is violent wreck today.

euccastro 17y ago
What should be predicted in nutrition that isn't?
- bokonist 17y ago
  Well, virtually everything that gets spouted as gospel ends up turning out not to be true five, ten years later. Fats are good, then fats are bad, then they are good again. Then only certain kinds of fat, then other kinds of fat, etc. If you actually look into the studies, you find that the evidence for any the propositions is usually non-existent. I was reading some recent studies for instance, that were showing lower cholesterol increases mortality. Of course, I have no idea how good this study was. The entire review process for published results is broken horribly. You're pretty much better off ignoring everything and just using common sense.