Now whenever I read articles of this type of statistical research, my mind immediately recalls Tyler Vigen's website and book... http://tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
Ramen restaurant prevalence is associated with stroke mortality in Japan
11–20 of 69 posts
Re: Ramen restaurant prevalence is associated with stroke mortality in Japan
#12People are just waking up to dangers of sugar, but too much salt is also not good, increasing blood pressure (see below link). Potassium can offset much of the affects but it’s surprisingly difficult to get even the US recommended amount every day. I’ve started using potassium salt instead of sodium salt in my cooking, and it feels great to kill two birds with one stone. Now I just need soy sauce and others without s…
WebMD? Seriously? The science on salt is quite debated, actually: https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/heart-failure-and-salt-t...
Re: Ramen restaurant prevalence is associated with stroke mortality in Japan
#13How do we prove that they didn't just look at mortality in all diseases and for all restaurants, and cherry-picked stroke-vs-ramen because it has the best significance? I am not accusing them of anything - I have no horse in this race. What I am curious about is: how do you prove that you haven't p-hacked, if you are going to do a study like this? Sure, you can pre-register your methods, but presumably you can get th…
I guess the only reliable way is to have an independent group reproduce it using different data and publish their result. Whenever theres something interesting shown in natural sciences you quickly hear about replication efforts being able or unable to replicate the results. In most other sciences there doesn't seem to be much glory in replication
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Re: Ramen restaurant prevalence is associated with stroke mortality in Japan
#14I’d be surprised if people are eating ramen so much it affects long term disease rates noticeably just because there are more restaurants. I also think Japanese could eat tonkotsu ramen a few times a week and still get less saturated fat than most Western diet eaters. Maybe salt could cause some acute condition though?
Re: Ramen restaurant prevalence is associated with stroke mortality in Japan
#15People are just waking up to dangers of sugar, but too much salt is also not good, increasing blood pressure (see below link). Potassium can offset much of the affects but it’s surprisingly difficult to get even the US recommended amount every day. I’ve started using potassium salt instead of sodium salt in my cooking, and it feels great to kill two birds with one stone. Now I just need soy sauce and others without s…
I think things are going the opposite direction with salt.
That is one study, but studies that are not finding any link between health hazards and salt are starting to pile up.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/its-time-to-end-t...
Lots of doctors are even starting to tell people that they don't really have to worry about salt unless they have a hypertension problem.
Re: Ramen restaurant prevalence is associated with stroke mortality in Japan
#16How do we prove that they didn't just look at mortality in all diseases and for all restaurants, and cherry-picked stroke-vs-ramen because it has the best significance? I am not accusing them of anything - I have no horse in this race. What I am curious about is: how do you prove that you haven't p-hacked, if you are going to do a study like this? Sure, you can pre-register your methods, but presumably you can get th…
Good faith is required to accept any type of reporting. Otherwise, your question can always be extended to "How do we know that they didn't just make it all up?"
The researchers did not report conducting more comparisons and they did not adjust for this in their analysis, so we have to assume that they are telling the truth.
Of course, there's always the chance that they are being deceitful, so we have to reserve some skepticism and take into consideration related studies before forming any firm conclusions.
In this particular case, the correlations that they found have quite strong effect sizes with p < .001. Figures 2 and 3 are quite striking. These results are also supported by previous research. That doesn't mean the matter is settled by any means. It's just another piece in the puzzle. But there is no indication whatsoever that they are p-hacking or going on a fishing expedition.
Re: Ramen restaurant prevalence is associated with stroke mortality in Japan
#17Not surprising. In the China Study they also found a positive correlation between consumption of wheat flour and heart disease. (Some places in China eat mostly rice, others more wheat.)
Any new guesses on the mechanism?
Related: https://deniseminger.com/2010/09/02/the-china-study-wheat-an...
Re: Ramen restaurant prevalence is associated with stroke mortality in Japan
#18I’d be surprised if people are eating ramen so much it affects long term disease rates noticeably just because there are more restaurants. I also think Japanese could eat tonkotsu ramen a few times a week and still get less saturated fat than most Western diet eaters. Maybe salt could cause some acute condition though?
The authors state (the obvious) in the discussion: the correlation is likely not caused by ramen itself. Rather, the prevalence of ramen restaurants is an indicator of general food preferences in a particular region. The regions in question are known to have high salt diets.
Re: Ramen restaurant prevalence is associated with stroke mortality in Japan
#19People are just waking up to dangers of sugar, but too much salt is also not good, increasing blood pressure (see below link). Potassium can offset much of the affects but it’s surprisingly difficult to get even the US recommended amount every day. I’ve started using potassium salt instead of sodium salt in my cooking, and it feels great to kill two birds with one stone. Now I just need soy sauce and others without s…
Potassium is hard on your kidneys, probably okay if you’re young but increasingly worse for you as you age...
I'd never heard of this so I tried to find anything that talls about potaassium causing kidney issues and I haven't been able to find any links between potassium consumption and kidney problems.
Mind linking
Re: Ramen restaurant prevalence is associated with stroke mortality in Japan
#20How do we prove that they didn't just look at mortality in all diseases and for all restaurants, and cherry-picked stroke-vs-ramen because it has the best significance? I am not accusing them of anything - I have no horse in this race. What I am curious about is: how do you prove that you haven't p-hacked, if you are going to do a study like this? Sure, you can pre-register your methods, but presumably you can get th…
Good faith is required to accept any type of reporting. Otherwise, your question can always be extended to "How do we know that they didn't just make it all up?" The researchers did not report conducting more comparisons and they did not adjust for this in their analysis, so we have to assume that they are telling the truth. Of course, there's always the chance that they are being deceitful, so we have to reserve som…
I don't think you have to assume good faith at all in these situations.
If someone comes up with a correlation of X statistic with Y statistic in a fashion seemingly coming from nowhere, they either say why they started studying the correlation or show the correlation is incredibly strong.
I think that's pretty much what "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" winds-up meaning.