Thursday, April 15, 2010
Odds Are, It's Wrong - Science News
This article got my attention because so many advertising claims use studies and statistics.
Now, we all know that "stretching" is likely when it comes to extolling the virtues of a product; however, I doubt many know the true reliability of the "facts" that is based on.
Caution: this is a fairly long article...
Now, we all know that "stretching" is likely when it comes to extolling the virtues of a product; however, I doubt many know the true reliability of the "facts" that is based on.
Caution: this is a fairly long article...
Tom Siegfried writes this among many things in an informative post at ScienceNews.org:
"Nowhere are the problems with statistics more blatant than in studies of genetic influences on disease. In 2007, for instance, researchers combing the medical literature found numerous studies linking a total of 85 genetic variants in 70 different genes to acute coronary syndrome, a cluster of heart problems. When the researchers compared genetic tests of 811 patients that had the syndrome with a group of 650 (matched for sex and age) that didn’t, only one of the suspect gene variants turned up substantially more often in those with the syndrome — a number to be expected by chance.
'Our null results provide no support for the hypothesis that any of the 85 genetic variants tested is a susceptibility factor' for the syndrome, the researchers reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
How could so many studies be wrong?"
