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Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer's

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Re: Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer's

#81

Post by mr_mitm »

coldtea wrote: post #61
cortic wrote: post #30

Taxi Drivers: The mean age at death is approximately 67.8 years. General Population: in the same dataset, life expectancy averaged 74 years. The average age at which patients are typically diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease is 79. People in these jobs don't live long enough on average to get diagnosed, at the same rate. The same effect will happen in any job that lowers your life expectancy.

Ah, the typical cheap HN reaction to a paper, along with "correlation is not causation", and as usual, for things already factored in into it.

Next up: "I didn't do a statistical analysis but the sample size seems small"

Re: Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer's

#82

Post by j45 »

vlovich123 wrote: post #79
specproc wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Studies typically use regression to account for stuff like that. CBA to look at the article, but I bet any money that's controlled for.

> After adjusting for age, sex, race, ethnicity and education, roughly 1 in 100 taxi and ambulance drivers died of Alzheimer’s, compared with 1 in 60 people overall. So no indication they accounted for the expected lifespan of the profession.

Seems like a fair point.

Re: Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer's

#83

Post by harrall »

cortic wrote: post #30

Taxi Drivers: The mean age at death is approximately 67.8 years. General Population: in the same dataset, life expectancy averaged 74 years. The average age at which patients are typically diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease is 79. People in these jobs don't live long enough on average to get diagnosed, at the same rate. The same effect will happen in any job that lowers your life expectancy.

The study accounts for that.

Delay your aging by using your brain a fuck ton, all the time, learning brand new things nowhere near anything you already know.

Re: Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer's

#84

Post by danw1979 »

vlovich123 wrote: post #79
specproc wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Studies typically use regression to account for stuff like that. CBA to look at the article, but I bet any money that's controlled for.

> After adjusting for age, sex, race, ethnicity and education, roughly 1 in 100 taxi and ambulance drivers died of Alzheimer’s, compared with 1 in 60 people overall. So no indication they accounted for the expected lifespan of the profession.

Adjusting for age seems like an indication to me

Re: Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer's

#85

Post by mito88 »

glitchc wrote: post #40
cortic wrote: post #30

Taxi Drivers: The mean age at death is approximately 67.8 years. General Population: in the same dataset, life expectancy averaged 74 years. The average age at which patients are typically diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease is 79. People in these jobs don't live long enough on average to get diagnosed, at the same rate. The same effect will happen in any job that lowers your life expectancy.

They are likely studying individuals that retired without getting fatally stabbed or shot on the job.

survivorship bias

Re: Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer's

#86

Post by _kulang »

danw1979 wrote: post #84
vlovich123 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> After adjusting for age, sex, race, ethnicity and education, roughly 1 in 100 taxi and ambulance drivers died of Alzheimer’s, compared with 1 in 60 people overall. So no indication they accounted for the expected lifespan of the profession.

Adjusting for age seems like an indication to me

Adjusting for sample/population age is the simplest interpretation of that

Re: Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer's

#88

Post by Nasrudith »

jrflo wrote: post #48
Barrin92 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As the paper points out that's accounted for in the analysis, because shockingly enough to most internet commentators researchers know that they need to control for confounding variables https://www.bmj.com/content/387/bmj-2024-082194

Always insane to me how people will just read the headline of an article and point out "flaws" based on what they assume the article says

They got trained to said assumptions by bad sensationalist 'science journalism'. Remember how power lines caused brain damage in children? Not through the magnetic fields or anything like that, but the lowered property values.

Re: Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer's

#89

Post by xvedejas »

cortic wrote: post #30

Taxi Drivers: The mean age at death is approximately 67.8 years. General Population: in the same dataset, life expectancy averaged 74 years. The average age at which patients are typically diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease is 79. People in these jobs don't live long enough on average to get diagnosed, at the same rate. The same effect will happen in any job that lowers your life expectancy.

And how would you control for the causal possibility that those who will eventually develop Alzheimer's early on might tend to have undetectable memory issues that prevent them from becoming taxi drivers in the first place? You can't control for profession, since that's behind the very claim itself.

Re: Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer's

#90

Post by neuralkoi »

walthamstow wrote: post #12

> In one landmark 2000 study, neuroscientists compared the brains of licensed London taxi drivers with those of people who did not drive cabs. Location is very important here. London cabbies have to pass The Knowledge which is an extremely difficult memory exam that only people with particular kind of brain can do.

They have to memorize 25,000 streets. The test is no joke. [0]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ur61kzXjvN8

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