Hey, here’s another thing to worry about
Are you a tall postmenopausal woman? Apparently your cancer risk is higher than if you were shorter, according to this helpful article. But the author never defines “tall,” so readers have no idea at what point the diminishing returns for height begin to show up. And of course there’s nothing a person could do about her height anyway (wearing flats doesn’t count).
What’s more, to make things even more convoluted, increased height confers cardiovascular benefits. So, does the height evidence constitute a wash?
Sometimes I think articles like this one—and articles about health in general, even in medical journals (or maybe especially in medical journals?)—are designed to increase our anxiety and maximize the number of worried well among us. The effects they describe, including this one for height, tend to be very small. Finding tend to be expressed in terms of percentages—such as “20%” more likely to”—rather than absolute numbers (“6 rather than 5 in 100,000,” which is the same as “20% more likely to” but sounds a lot less compelling). Plus, it’s often very hard to know whether a seeming effect is causation or correlation. And it’s not unusual for half the studies to contradict the other half.
We are upset by our cholesterol, our weight, our bone densities, our handedness (left-handed, like me? BAD!), and just about every other figure that can be measured. So, what to do? Worry? Relax? Obsessive focus? Blissful ignorance? Happy medium, anyone?
“We are upset by our cholesterol, our weight, our bone densities, our handedness . . . .”
Saccharin causes cancer—no it doesn’t. Salt is no good for you—yes it is. Alcohol is bad for pregnant women—an infrequent glass of wine might actually be beneficial to pregnancy. Too much sun encourages skin cancer—lack of “Sunshine Vitamin D” is even more deleterious than too much sun.
I stopped worrying about the health-nannies’ crisis du jour a long time ago (are you listening Michael Bloomberg?). In fact one of the best compliments I ever received was from a local operatic producer who said as an aside to Mrs. T that he could tell her husband was “comfortable in his body.” A good thing that, because no one else would ever want it.
“I stopped worrying…” Yeah, me too. Or maybe I should say stopped listening–I never did worry very much. I have wondered what is going on with all these often trivial-sounding studies, that are so often contradicted a year or a few years later. There must be some incentive involved not only in the producing but the publicizing. I guess the former is natural–you want to think your research is significant–and the latter is just because publications need material.
Mac:
Some of them may be efforts to get more of the public on medications. But certainly this one can have no such goal.
Perhaps the explanation for this one is that the findings were a side effect of a larger study that wasn’t designed specifically to study height. But the finding came up.
It has been estimated that more than 75% of medical “studies” are either wrong or fraudulent. Sorry, no immediate cites – I’ll do the research if requested.
The reason for so many studies? Fame and fortune. Most of this “research” is funded by grants, federal and private. Advancement in the field is directly affected by publishing papers – “publish or perish”. The National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts have become malevolent swamps of political interests – time for them to go.
I suggest that there is too much government grant money in the system, and insufficient meaningful uses for it. No matter, it must be dispensed.
Secondly, just as there is too much TV air time that simply must be filled, there are too many magazines searching for content; any content. Hence, a plethora of articles with no redeeming value.
The above paragraph explains why I only read high quality internet sites such as Neoneocon. No patience with the mass media. Oh, I also read mysteries–preferably those with a historical perspective, or those set in exotic locales.
There are far too many studies involving data mining, correlation, and statistical misrepresentation. Real science has to involve controlled experiments, and how can you control the data on the lifelong diets of 70 year olds. While computer investigations can point to interesting unexpected correlations that might point the way to real studies, most of these “investigators” try to make the news before they know anything. I ignore them. I figure that the time spent not worrying is a valuable addition to my lifespan.
Years ago Forbes did a study of what would extend longevity (not quality of life as that is difficult to quantify). The result showed one thing that outweighed everything else combined (exercise, diet, etc.); wear a seat belt.
I keep this in mind and only work on quality of life not what is good for me.
Another factor is the media. Their ‘stories’ are what they sell. If media is not ‘consumed’ advertising dollars dry up. By offering hyped up stories that elicit interest, the public buys the magazines, papers, watches TV and/or reads the internet article, it’s all revenue producing activity that advertisers pay for to gain access to the consumers attention, in hopes of increased sales. The veracity of the ‘story’ is of little importance, after all, ‘everything’ is relative anyway.
Whew…….at 5’0″ I take this as pretty good news. >grin<
I fail ECG tests all the time inspite of being a regular jogger. According to my cardiologists, Ii have a “mitral valve prolapse” which is often associated with “tall thin men and women with straight backs .”
He also mentioned people with this have highly flexible joints. Those things all describe me, but how they relate to a valve that buckles slightly it is beyond me.
What on earth can it mean to “fail” an ECG (aka EKG)? I have a mitral valve prolapse too, and have been taking medication to prevent the associated tachycardia for over 30 years. I don’t know anything about any straight-backed woman association, though–I also have mild scoliosis. Oh well.
I think all this risk stuff started out as a way to discover causes when causes were otherwise unknown, and the best anyone has ever been able to do was come up with correlations. But of course neither effort nor data are ever to be wasted in these matters, so instead of calling them correlations, someone developed the fundable field of Risk Assessment. It’s really nothing but a numbers racket, of course. I know some perfectly nice risk assessors, and they don’t ever actually tell you whether they believe the untestable foolery they come up with. Because never stab your own profession in the back.
http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/mobileart.asp?articlekey=423
Betsy u can see this link or several other if you7 do a search.
Fail in my case is any physical that requires a normal EKG for various purposes. Thelast 3 times prior to surgery.
But the link between thin women and backs and the condition seems to be commonly linked. How, I do not know
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1182327/
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/11/lies-damned-lies-and-medical-science/308269/
And read Briggs regularly http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=3013
“Most medical studies–and most studies in other fields–rely on statistical models as primary evidence. The problem is that the way these statistical models are used is deeply flawed. That is, the problem is not really with the models themselves. The models are imperfect, but the errors in their construction are minimal. And since (academic) statisticians care primarily about how models are constructed (i.e. the mathematics), the system of training in statistics concentrates almost solely on model construction; thus, the flaw in the use of models is rarely apparent. “
Thanks, stan. Your links are all good enough at first blush to justify spending more time with them–which I am doing.
In my own field of environmental remediation, I gradually became aware that the risk assessments upon which virtually all remediation goals, both for groundwater and soil, are based are nothing but an amalgamation and statistical manipulation of research data that are sketchy to begin with. First, they are often based upon extrapolations from animal studies that use highest-non-lethal-dose experiments to determine both carcinogenic and general toxicity–and hence, have nothing to do with real-world exposures and conditions.
Second, they are expressed as regulator-determined and -enforced levels that have nothing to do with reality and are merely statistical manipulations of probability. For example, the enforceable groundwater clean-up levels of certain chlorinated solvents are in large part determined by the solvent’s cancer-causing statistics over an expected number of cancers in an entire population at a given groundwater concentration. So we’re not ever talking about actual cancers, we’re talking about statistically determined probabilities of possible cancers that may or may not be caused by the contaminant in question. As I say, it’s nothing but a numbers racket. And while there may have been some initial validity to some of it, it has now grown to include extrapolations of methods and population studies that have nothing to do with the anything but the numbers themselves. And in the absence of anything someone with enforcement powers thinks might be better, we base crucial real-world decisions on it.
Use chi gong, energize the bones, make them produce the good stuff.
betsybounds,
Academic research generally is a disaster. As bad as the hard sciences are, social science is ten times worse. Briggs has a number of posts on some of the most ridiculous. Andrew Ferguson has a lot of fun with this article —
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/new-phrenology_644420.html
one more — I’m sure a number of readers here are familiar with how rotten climate science is. The deepest of the depths may have been the polar bear study by Charles Monnet. Basically, once in 15 years, he saw some white things in the water during his regular weekly flight along the Alaskan coast. The white things might have been polar bears. It is possible they were dead. If they were polar bears and dead, they might have drowned. Drowning is extremely rare as they are excellent swimmers. So, if they drowned, it may have been due to getting caught in a really bad storm. There was a storm a week or so ago. Global warming is supposed to make storms more intense. Thus, global warming is wiping out the polar bear. Also, since the flight only covered an estimated 11% of the possible coastline, the number of dead polar bears (or never seen before or after white things in the water) must be multiplied by a factor of 9.
Good one. That sounds a lot like some of the “just-so” stories you read in evolutionary psychology these days. I mean, I’m no creationist, but sometimes you wonder whether evolution isn’t, at a minimum, a bit less explanatory than it’s often cracked up to be. 😀