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Meta-analysis of 2.2M people: Loneliness increases mortality risk by 32%

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Re: Meta-analysis of 2.2M people: Loneliness increases mortality risk by 32%

#121

Post by cassowary37 »

Not to take anything away from the meta-analysis and the important points in the blog post, but there's a glaring error in the abstract: "the weighted average effect sizes were as follows: social isolation odds ratio (OR) = 1.29, loneliness OR = 1.26, and living alone OR = 1.32, corresponding to an average of 29%, 26%, and 32% increased likelihood of mortality, respectively."

The authors mean increased /odds/, not likelihood (probability). WHy does it matter? Well, when your whole paper is a statistical exercise, misusing basic statistical language in the abstract is not a great sign.

Re: Meta-analysis of 2.2M people: Loneliness increases mortality risk by 32%

#122

Post by ZpJuUuNaQ5 »

>Chronic loneliness

Is it generally understood as feeling (being in a particular state of mind) as being lonely or just lacking social interactions in general, regardless of how one feels about it? Those two things, to my understanding, aren't the same. For example, I never had friends, and generally, I despise people. I have no "social life," and I wouldn't even be able to clearly define what it is without googling. If I lost my voice, I wouldn't notice that it happened for about a week. However, I don't feel like I am missing out on anything. Does that increase my mortality risk by over 30% or not? I only skimmed the sources, but may read it later.

Re: Meta-analysis of 2.2M people: Loneliness increases mortality risk by 32%

#124

Post by bluebarbet »

fsckboy wrote: post #102
paraknight wrote: post #16

I haven't dug into all the sources, but I think there's a potential confounder here, or maybe even reverse causality. The author seems to assume causation when the studies only indicate correlation. E.g. the first link says "chronic loneliness increases mortality risk" but the actual source says "actual and perceived social isolation are both associated with increased risk for early mortality". So for example, it's p…

> The author seems to assume causation when the studies only indicate correlation. once I heard Feynmann say in a youtube video that (paraphrasal) "we don't know what causes gravity, we just know that it exists, it's a property of matter" then I realized, our experiments never show causation, they only show correlation. gravity has 100% (in our experience) correlation to matter. admittedly, that's a pretty good corre…

Skipping punctuation makes your writing harder to parse. It's a false economy.

Re: Meta-analysis of 2.2M people: Loneliness increases mortality risk by 32%

#125

Post by anavat »

raffael_de wrote: post #30
fullstop wrote: post #18

Before getting tied up with bureaucratic nonsense my daughter was looking at starting a "borrow a grandma / grandpa" club at her university. The idea was to connect students with elderly people who are lonely, and they could have tea / coffee together. The elderly get to be social with a younger generation, and the younger generation gets to understand the struggles that a lot of elderly people face. I think that the…

A liability for having tea with elderly citizens?

Holy... That just unlocked a memory. When I was a 10 y.o. kid and a member of Young Pioneers organization in the late Soviet Union, we had a routine elderly care assignment. There was literally a task "to help N lonely elderly people next week"! We were split in pairs and provided with a list of addresses of nearby "targets" and a general guidance on what this help may constitute, like helping them with groceries, walking a dog, house cleaning, etc. And I remember there was a nice old lady who were treating us with tea and pies, and showing us some old photos, and who we then visited few times outside of the assignment just because she welcomed us and we liked it there. For me it was just some secondary quest that I barely registered and completely forgot about until now, but now I wonder if it was a big deal for her

Re: Meta-analysis of 2.2M people: Loneliness increases mortality risk by 32%

#126

Post by tootie »

gjm11 wrote: post #85

The following is perfectly compatible with everything in the article being correct and important (though I share the suspicion that there may be some reverse-causality going on), but the author seems to be extremely fishy in some ways. He's posting about two substantial (~10-30 pages) papers per week to the arXiv, in various areas of mathematics. He claims to have developed "Alpay Algebra: A recursive language for th…

I didn't dig in to every cite but a few seemed suspicious. One linked on digital interventions specifically said it showed no positive results. Another on pet ownership having 100% success rate was sponsored by the pet industry. I think the author is tripping over a lot of data and cherry picking. We know that loneliness can cause problems and interventions can help but this post seems like it is indeed a rambling jumble and not a cogent argument for anything in particular.

Re: Meta-analysis of 2.2M people: Loneliness increases mortality risk by 32%

#127

Post by hhmc »

magneticnorth wrote: post #100
hhmc wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once did a course with a paramedic on basic aid. We were discussing choking, which is a condition that really needs a 2nd party to intervene. Someone asked what to do if you live alone (with no close neighbours) - the answer was essentially ‘good luck’

The idea of the heimlich is to put sudden force on the diaphragm and force air upward. You can do that alone by pushing your upper abdomen against a chair back, counter, railing, whatever. Not something I've ever tried, but good to know about in case.

Sure theoretically. Outcomes are dramatically better if someone else is around

Re: Meta-analysis of 2.2M people: Loneliness increases mortality risk by 32%

#128

Post by blablabla123 »

paraknight wrote: post #16

I haven't dug into all the sources, but I think there's a potential confounder here, or maybe even reverse causality. The author seems to assume causation when the studies only indicate correlation. E.g. the first link says "chronic loneliness increases mortality risk" but the actual source says "actual and perceived social isolation are both associated with increased risk for early mortality". So for example, it's p…

The myth of the lonely hero (and probably risk taker) has been mentioned as a problematic factor before

Re: Meta-analysis of 2.2M people: Loneliness increases mortality risk by 32%

#129

Post by ramblingrain »

paraknight wrote: post #16

I haven't dug into all the sources, but I think there's a potential confounder here, or maybe even reverse causality. The author seems to assume causation when the studies only indicate correlation. E.g. the first link says "chronic loneliness increases mortality risk" but the actual source says "actual and perceived social isolation are both associated with increased risk for early mortality". So for example, it's p…

The first source I clicked into was a meta-analysis of randomized clinical trials.

What you say sounds true about chronic illness and isolation. These researchers are looking at research done using actual interventions and real results.

What should they do to analyze this more than RCTs and then meta-analysis of RCTs?

https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s... Tackling social disconnection: an umbrella review of RCT-based interventions targeting social isolation and loneliness

Re: Meta-analysis of 2.2M people: Loneliness increases mortality risk by 32%

#130

Post by lotsofpulp »

raffael_de wrote: post #44
fullstop wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a lot of aspects here, such as where they would meet up, etc. If it's on school property and something happens, for example. Additionally there are restrictions for clubs operating off-campus. I don't know, it was seemingly more complicated than any of us had anticipated.

If you ask, the answer will always be No.

If you have sufficient money such that litigating against you is worth it, then playing defense is necessary. Universities surely qualify.
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