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Curry spice turmeric boosts memory by nearly 30%, eases depression, study finds

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Re: Curry spice turmeric boosts memory by nearly 30%, eases depression, study finds

#291

Post by _mbr6 »

ksk wrote: post #187
dahidahi1 wrote: post #45

Turmeric has been used in India since ancient times. There are many references to it in Ayurveda - the Indian/Hindu medical sciences. Ayurveda believes in using food as medicine to non only prevent a large majority of human diseases, but also to cure several of them — all with almost zero side effects. Turmeric is just one such extremely powerful & healthy food item that Western science seems to be playing catch up o…

>There are many references to it in Ayurveda - the Indian/Hindu medical sciences. Ayurveda believes in using food as medicine to non only prevent a large majority of human diseases, but also to cure several of them — all with almost zero side effects. Homeopathy also has zero side effects (apart from having zero effects). There is no medical wisdom in any of the old texts (from any culture) that are relevant in 2018.…

> There is no medical wisdom in any of the old texts (from any culture) that are relevant in 2018.

Seriously? We can do better than that - if you're going to make a statement that extreme, you'll need to provide sources to back it up.

Re: Curry spice turmeric boosts memory by nearly 30%, eases depression, study finds

#292

Post by andy_ppp »

rjett wrote: post #127
adamc wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you take it?

My favorite "tea" to make is just chopping up a little ginger, a little turmeric, and some sort of citrus zest, steep in boiling water for 10 mins. You can re-steep it several times also. I drink it every day because it's delicious, as well as calming and anti-inflammatory.

Yes! I too make that exact tea, it tastes of the earth and really chills me out! Recommended!

Re: Curry spice turmeric boosts memory by nearly 30%, eases depression, study finds

#294

Post by jjgreen »

jeffdavis wrote: post #206
randomsearch wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with “is this true?” Investigations is that there are tons of potential pitfalls and a combination of experimental limitations, poor academic incentives, and insufficient statistical and scientific training make this very hard to do well. I think it’s bad science, that will one day retrospectively be viewed as invalid scientific method. I think the way to combat this is to avoid studies that solely attemp…

I somewhat agree, but "is it true?" is all that science can answer. A mechanism is really just a narrower example without irrelevant distractions or confounding variables. Kind of like the difference between the bug reports: "run this complex workload on this specific machine and it will orobably crash after a few hours" versus "run these three commands when the cache is cold and it crashes".

I find it odd that the sibling reply by fleitz (all that science can say is "is it false"), which just a precis of Popperian philosophy of science, has been marked dead. Not a view that I share, but seems uncontroversial.

Re: Curry spice turmeric boosts memory by nearly 30%, eases depression, study finds

#295

Post by geezerjay »

zaptheimpaler wrote: post #195
dumbneurologist wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a neurologist. this is actually the exact opposite of what you should care about, which is "does it work to treat ___" In this trial, and 99% of other trials, there is no mechanism provided by the study, only a measurement of causality (which is the same thing as effectiveness). The authors may think they know based on other, prior, basic science research (as they are postulating here), but it does not affect th…

Obviously you don't understand HN.. everyone here is a "very smart software engineer" and knows far better than a simpleton like you with your decades of medical training and experience.

Appeals to authority, such as those you've made, are worthless.

The motto of the Royal Academy of Sciences is quite literally "take no one's word for it". If you wish to blindly swallow assertions made by people with academic titles, perhaps you should start to listen to those who advise against it.

Re: Curry spice turmeric boosts memory by nearly 30%, eases depression, study finds

#296

Post by bildung »

geezerjay wrote: post #295
zaptheimpaler wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously you don't understand HN.. everyone here is a "very smart software engineer" and knows far better than a simpleton like you with your decades of medical training and experience.

Appeals to authority, such as those you've made, are worthless. The motto of the Royal Academy of Sciences is quite literally "take no one's word for it". If you wish to blindly swallow assertions made by people with academic titles, perhaps you should start to listen to those who advise against it.

An appeal to authority is perfectly reasonable if the person in question is actually an authority in the topic discussed. The logic fallacy you probably meant is about appeals to authority in cases where the authority is in another domain.

Re: Curry spice turmeric boosts memory by nearly 30%, eases depression, study finds

#297

Post by bildung »

platz wrote: post #185
hannob wrote: post #152

Small study, probably not preregistered (didn't find anything about it in the description). Likely Publication Bias or p-hacking. I'm starting to get interested when it's been independently replicated.

What is the power & effect size?

Effect size is the amount of change that has been observed, in this case the ability to memorize things.

Significance is the probability of the result being coincidence. So "highly significant" only means "most probably not coincidence".

That means you can have a "highly significant" result where the actual result (= effect size) is tiny.

In study design, both are related: The higher the number of test persons, the easier it is to archive significance. Therefore, proper design would be to first guesstimate (based on existing literature etc.) the effect size, then define the minimum number of test persons necessary.

Re: Curry spice turmeric boosts memory by nearly 30%, eases depression, study finds

#299

Post by Tepix »

piyh wrote: post #201
hannob wrote: post #152

Small study, probably not preregistered (didn't find anything about it in the description). Likely Publication Bias or p-hacking. I'm starting to get interested when it's been independently replicated.

If every study on tumeric, tea, chocolate, and coffee was fully accurate we'd all be immortal by now.

I'm doing my part!

Re: Curry spice turmeric boosts memory by nearly 30%, eases depression, study finds

#300

Post by Retric »

roystonvassey wrote: post #247
hannob wrote: post #152

Small study, probably not preregistered (didn't find anything about it in the description). Likely Publication Bias or p-hacking. I'm starting to get interested when it's been independently replicated.

This is becoming an increasingly worrying trend - to bunk any analysis with a comment on 'small sample size, biases' that somehow moves to the top of the comment pile. Statistically, there is no such thing as a 'small sample size', in isolation. It is always related to the power and effect that the researchers want to work with. Moreover, even if a study is statistically insignificant, it DOES NOT mean that the oppos…

Statistics makes basic assumptions that are false. For example, most things don't fit a bell curve.

These assumptions are more relevant in small sample sizes. Making them inherently unreliable. What's missing is not a p-value, but an estimate for the uncertainty around that p-value.

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