Don't Blame Sitting — Yet — for Shorter Lives of the Sedentary
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Re: Don't Blame Sitting — Yet — for Shorter Lives of the Sedentary
#2This is the same old “correlation is not causation” thing that the press never seems to understand.
Move along; nothing to see here…
Re: Don't Blame Sitting — Yet — for Shorter Lives of the Sedentary
#3The WSJ previously wrote an article titled "Sitting for More Than Three Hours A Day Cuts Life Expectancy," and now they backpedal by writing an entire article summarizing that correlation does not necessarily imply causation. Unfortunately, the damage is already done. The Illusion-Of-Truth effect ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implicit_memory#Illusion-of-tr... ) is a cognitive bias that states people will believe familiar statements, sometimes even after being told they're false.
Re: Don't Blame Sitting — Yet — for Shorter Lives of the Sedentary
#4This is the same old “correlation is not causation” thing that the press never seems to understand. Move along; nothing to see here…
They understand it well. Problem is, you rarely produce big headlines without jumping to conclusions.
Re: Don't Blame Sitting — Yet — for Shorter Lives of the Sedentary
#5Step 1: Flurry of fearmongering articles that appeal to the prejudices of the target audience with logical hole large enough to drive a freight train through (usually correlation=causation/post-hoc reasoning or statistical silliness.)
Step 2: sell tons of papers, products, and ads to the credulous.
Step 3: point out logical flaw.
Step 4: sell tons of papers and ads to the incredulous.
Step 5: profiles of the people who were influenced by the original story, painting them as crazies (or are they visionaries? You, the reader, decide!)
Step 6: sell tons of papers and ads to the gawkers.
Final disposition: People get stupider as a result of reading the paper than they would have been by completely avoiding it, and they completely dismiss everything they read, relying instead on their prejudices and what they heard from a guy once.
edit: I've noticed the successful garbage health panics seem to be structured like sympathetic magic (like-with-like, metaphors, symbolic connections.) For example, "Study Finds Depression Causes Death in Close Relatives" won't work, but "Study Finds Depression Causes Heart Disease" does. I think of this one as "Study Finds Standing Up Prevents Lying Down."
Re: Don't Blame Sitting — Yet — for Shorter Lives of the Sedentary
#6The WSJ previously wrote an article titled "Sitting for More Than Three Hours A Day Cuts Life Expectancy," and now they backpedal by writing an entire article summarizing that correlation does not necessarily imply causation. Unfortunately, the damage is already done. The Illusion-Of-Truth effect ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implicit_memory#Illusion-of-tr... ) is a cognitive bias that states people will believe fa…
Speaking of correlation, it would be interesting to see if there is one between the publication of these two WSJ articles and the sales of standing desks.
Re: Don't Blame Sitting — Yet — for Shorter Lives of the Sedentary
#7I made my own standing desk and I've been using it for a year now. I won't go back because just by doing that, I have more energy through the day. Who cares what the flip-flopping WSJ keeps saying.
Re: Don't Blame Sitting — Yet — for Shorter Lives of the Sedentary
#8These studies on sitting on completely overblown. One of the most consistent findings that holds true across all cultures is that the more years of schooling people have, the longer they live. If sitting was really all bad for you, this wouldn't be the case since not only is schooling a highly sedentary activity, but people with more schooling are also much more likely to have sedentary jobs.
Re: Don't Blame Sitting — Yet — for Shorter Lives of the Sedentary
#9This is the same old “correlation is not causation” thing that the press never seems to understand. Move along; nothing to see here…
This mis-characterizes the article. "Correlation is not causation" can be said about anything. The article has a number of specific findings which weaken the original finding.
Just about every strong and weak scientific finding involves correlation. "Correlation is not causation" comes into play most strongly when a correlation seems assign causation to something with no clear underlying physical mechanism - leap years and stock market behavior, etc. But one could imagine a number of plausible physical mechanism whereby sitting could be back bad for one. That still doesn't prove it but it different lines of reasoning could appropriate.
Re: Don't Blame Sitting — Yet — for Shorter Lives of the Sedentary
#10This is the same old “correlation is not causation” thing that the press never seems to understand. Move along; nothing to see here…
What commenters never seem to understand is that the "press" are commercial for profit ventures, and to a first approximation get paid for page views (on dead trees or web sites). It is in their interest to publish whatever furthers that goal, up to the point they drive readers away.
If readers punished the press for this then they would stop doing it. But readers don't, and as such the stories in the press reflect on what people want to read. And as much as people claim to be high and mighty, only want good news etc, they actually read all the salacious erroneous stuff.