I am aware of the difference between a cause and a correlation. I also know
that establishing a causal relationship is immensely difficult, and, indeed,
the very notion of causality is a well-known fly in the ointment of 20th
century science. In the case of this particular study, the raw data seemed
compelling, but, as I said, I might have looked in the toilet at some trout
floating therein that morning (see previous post from someone convinced of
energy drainage in the presence of animals) and my judgment might have been
adversely affected. a
"new.morning" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: --- In
FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Angela Mailander
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> No, I wasn't as careful as that.
I was just playing with, and on, your response to Curtis a week ago or
so on his comment "there is no such study" -- re correlation of
attentions span an nationality.
None of us is as "careful as that" -- per my post below. And we all
use loose language. Some TMO's and others to a sickening degree (been
there, done that) a la, "Science had proven that the quantum ground
state is indeed consciousness -- the very filed we tap in TM". With my
less than stellar epistimological roots and history, I am aware of
now, if not cautious of, loose language regarding beliefs and what is
known -- and unknown..
We all know science doesn't prove anything. A number of good studies
do increase the liklihood that some theory is valid. Doesn't prove it.
Nothing is shown to be true. Science has not shown that quantum
physics is true. But quantum theory makes predictions that are
accurate to about the 10th decimal place -- so I give it far more
credence than say the hypothesis that Hugo and or Rick are
space-shirting reptile aliens. Of course science has not disproved the
latter -- so I do give it some non-zero degree of probability. (A
higher P to Rick than Hugo).
Anyway, I was not confronting your comment -- more just playing with a
view and framework that I find useful.
> I've seen one study. The raw data was, all by itself, compelling.
One study obviously does not a summer make, but in this case, my
prejudices in favor of cats and my predilection for creating a state
of apparent certainty in my mind that's tantamount to a profound aha
experience set in,
A ripe ground for cognitive or logical error.
So much in life - the TM years are a good example -- that just SEEM so
right that they MUST be true -- led many astray -- IMO. Stating
feelings for fact. In life, lectures and life choices. (Just a general
observation -- not directed specifically at your post)
>and I said to self, well, who'd need a study for that one? When I
asked Greymir and Furlough about this, they just purred in divine assent.
>
> I've been wrong plenty of times, though. The sound frequency,
produced by means other than feline, appeared to accelerate the
healing of, especially, broken bones. I don't remember much else
about it. a
If it was one study, then at best, it may have observed some
correlation between the two. Not causality -- which would take a
number of studies, over different times, methods, locations, subjects,
etc.
(Riffing again -- not directed at you .. )
Again, a strong TMO TB trait is mistaking correlation for causation.
Just see the ludicrous comments about the ME an stock market, crime,
etc. As well as lots of preliminary MIU studies on health, etc. (I am
speculating -- not having read those in years). An interesting
correlation may be found -- an even published in a peer reviewed
journal -- even a good one -- not a third tier one that will publish
most anything. This does not establish causality. All other possible,
and "hidden" causes need to be weeded out first. This can only be done
with multiple, well designed,well implemented studies -- and good
statistics (multiple regression and all.) And good research criticism
from many parties. As well as duplication by independent parties.
>
> "new.morning" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Angela Mailander
> <mailander111@> wrote:
> >
> > That sound has been shown to accelerate the healing process. a
> >
>
> Did you mean to actually say "I am aware of one or several studies
> that show this. I am not too sure how good the studies were.
> And I am not aware of, or read the counter-finding studies. I don't
> think there is a scientific consensus on this. I simply find it an
> interesting hypothesis with at least some evidence supporting it. And
> it resonates with the structure, and admitted biases, of my world
view."
>
> --------------------------
> btw, an interesting article on scientific consensus and the "Cascading
> Effect" (perhaps a new term for the old phenomenon of "Groupthink".
> Not directly related, but relevant to the topic.
>
> By JOHN TIERNEY, NYTimes
> Published: October 9, 2007
>
> In 1988, the surgeon general, C. Everett Koop, proclaimed ice cream to
> a be public-health menace right up there with cigarettes. Alluding to
> his office's famous 1964 report on the perils of smoking, Dr. Koop
> announced that the American diet was a problem of "comparable"
> magnitude, chiefly because of the high-fat foods that were causing
> coronary heart disease and other deadly ailments.
>
> -------sidebar
> TierneyLab
>
> The low-fat fad isn't the only cascade of error. Can you think of
others?
> Go to TierneyLab »
> Further Reading
> 'Good Calories, Bad Calories: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom on
> Diet, Weight Control, and Disease,' by Gary Taubes (Knopf, 2007)
> Informational Cascades and Rational Herding: An Annotated Bibliography
> and Resource Reference (Sushil Bikhchandani, David Hirshleifer, Ivo
Welch)
> Availability Cascades and Risk Regulation Timur Kuran and Cass
> Sunstein. Stanford Law Review, 1999
> 'Rethinking Thin: The New Science of Weight Loss -- and the Myths and
> Realities of Dieting,' by Gina Kolata (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2007)
> 'Infotopia: How Many Minds Produce Knowledge,' by Cass Sunstein
> (Oxford, 2006)
>
> He introduced his report with these words: "The depth of the science
> base underlying its findings is even more impressive than that for
> tobacco and health in 1964."
>
> That was a ludicrous statement, as Gary Taubes demonstrates in his new
> book meticulously debunking diet myths, "Good Calories, Bad Calories"
> (Knopf, 2007). The notion that fatty foods shorten your life began as
> a hypothesis based on dubious assumptions and data; when scientists
> tried to confirm it they failed repeatedly. The evidence against
> Häagen-Dazs was nothing like the evidence against Marlboros.
>
> It may seem bizarre that a surgeon general could go so wrong. After
> all, wasn't it his job to express the scientific consensus? But that
> was the problem. Dr. Koop was expressing the consensus. He, like the
> architects of the federal "food pyramid" telling Americans what to
> eat, went wrong by listening to everyone else. He was caught in what
> social scientists call a cascade.
>
> We like to think that people improve their judgment by putting their
> minds together, and sometimes they do. The studio audience at "Who
> Wants to Be a Millionaire" usually votes for the right answer. But
> suppose, instead of the audience members voting silently in unison,
> they voted out loud one after another. And suppose the first person
> gets it wrong.
>
> If the second person isn't sure of the answer, he's liable to go along
> with the first person's guess. By then, even if the third person
> suspects another answer is right, she's more liable to go along just
> because she assumes the first two together know more than she does.
> Thus begins an "informational cascade" as one person after another
> assumes that the rest can't all be wrong.
>
> Because of this effect, groups are surprisingly prone to reach
> mistaken conclusions even when most of the people started out knowing
> better, according to the economists Sushil Bikhchandani, David
> Hirshleifer and Ivo Welch. If, say, 60 percent of a group's members
> have been given information pointing them to the right answer (while
> the rest have information pointing to the wrong answer), there is
> still about a one-in-three chance that the group will cascade to a
> mistaken consensus.
>
> Cascades are especially common in medicine as doctors take their cues
> from others, leading them to overdiagnose some faddish ailments
> (called bandwagon diseases) and overprescribe certain treatments (like
> the tonsillectomies once popular for children). Unable to keep up with
> the volume of research, doctors look for guidance from an expert or
> at least someone who sounds confident.
>
> In the case of fatty foods, that confident voice belonged to Ancel
> Keys, a prominent diet researcher a half-century ago (the K-rations in
> World War II were said to be named after him). He became convinced in
> the 1950s that Americans were suffering from a new epidemic of heart
> disease because they were eating more fat than their ancestors.
>
> There were two glaring problems with this theory, as Mr. Taubes, a
> correspondent for Science magazine, explains in his book. First, it
> wasn't clear that traditional diets were especially lean.
> Nineteenth-century Americans consumed huge amounts of meat; the
> percentage of fat in the diet of ancient hunter-gatherers, according
> to the best estimate today, was as high or higher than the ratio in
> the modern Western diet.
>
> Second, there wasn't really a new epidemic of heart disease. Yes, more
> cases were being reported, but not because people were in worse
> health. It was mainly because they were living longer and were more
> likely to see a doctor who diagnosed the symptoms.
>
> To bolster his theory, Dr. Keys in 1953 compared diets and heart
> disease rates in the United States, Japan and four other countries.
> Sure enough, more fat correlated with more disease (America topped the
> list). But critics at the time noted that if Dr. Keys had analyzed all
> 22 countries for which data were available, he would not have found a
> correlation. (And, as Mr. Taubes notes, no one would have puzzled over
> the so-called French Paradox of foie-gras connoisseurs with healthy
> hearts.)
>
> The evidence that dietary fat correlates with heart disease "does not
> stand up to critical examination," the American Heart Association
> concluded in 1957. But three years later the association changed
> position not because of new data, Mr. Taubes writes, but because Dr.
> Keys and an ally were on the committee issuing the new report. It
> asserted that "the best scientific evidence of the time" warranted a
> lower-fat diet for people at high risk of heart disease.
>
> The association's report was big news and put Dr. Keys, who died in
> 2004, on the cover of Time magazine. The magazine devoted four pages
> to the topic and just one paragraph noting that Dr. Keys's diet
> advice was "still questioned by some researchers." That set the tone
> for decades of news media coverage. Journalists and their audiences
> were looking for clear guidance, not scientific ambiguity.
>
> After the fat-is-bad theory became popular wisdom, the cascade
> accelerated in the 1970s when a committee led by Senator George
> McGovern issued a report advising Americans to lower their risk of
> heart disease by eating less fat. "McGovern's staff were virtually
> unaware of the existence of any scientific controversy," Mr. Taubes
> writes, and the committee's report was written by a nonscientist
> "relying almost exclusively on a single Harvard nutritionist, Mark
> Hegsted."
>
> That report impressed another nonscientist, Carol Tucker Foreman, an
> assistant agriculture secretary, who hired Dr. Hegsted to draw up a
> set of national dietary guidelines. The Department of Agriculture's
> advice against eating too much fat was issued in 1980 and would later
> be incorporated in its "food pyramid."
>
> Meanwhile, there still wasn't good evidence to warrant recommending a
> low-fat diet for all Americans, as the National Academy of Sciences
> noted in a report shortly after the U.S.D.A. guidelines were issued.
> But the report's authors were promptly excoriated on Capitol Hill and
> in the news media for denying a danger that had already been
> proclaimed by the American Heart Association, the McGovern committee
> and the U.S.D.A.
>
> The scientists, despite their impressive credentials, were accused of
> bias because some of them had done research financed by the food
> industry. And so the informational cascade morphed into what the
> economist Timur Kuran calls a reputational cascade, in which it
> becomes a career risk for dissidents to question the popular wisdom.
>
> With skeptical scientists ostracized, the public debate and research
> agenda became dominated by the fat-is-bad school. Later the National
> Institutes of Health would hold a "consensus conference" that
> concluded there was "no doubt" that low-fat diets "will afford
> significant protection against coronary heart disease" for every
> American over the age of 2. The American Cancer Society and the
> surgeon general recommended a low-fat diet to prevent cancer.
>
> But when the theories were tested in clinical trials, the evidence
> kept turning up negative. As Mr. Taubes notes, the most rigorous
> meta-analysis of the clinical trials of low-fat diets, published in
> 2001 by the Cochrane Collaboration, concluded that they had no
> significant effect on mortality.
>
> Mr. Taubes argues that the low-fat recommendations, besides being
> unjustified, may well have harmed Americans by encouraging them to
> switch to carbohydrates, which he believes cause obesity and disease.
> He acknowledges that that hypothesis is unproved, and that the
> low-carb diet fad could turn out to be another mistaken cascade. The
> problem, he says, is that the low-carb hypothesis hasn't been
> seriously studied because it couldn't be reconciled with the low-fat
> dogma.
>
> Mr. Taubes told me he especially admired the iconoclasm of Dr. Edward
> H. Ahrens Jr., a lipids researcher who spoke out against the McGovern
> committee's report. Mr. McGovern subsequently asked him at a hearing
> to reconcile his skepticism with a survey showing that the low-fat
> recommendations were endorsed by 92 percent of "the world's leading
> doctors."
>
> "Senator McGovern, I recognize the disadvantage of being in the
> minority," Dr. Ahrens replied. Then he pointed out that most of the
> doctors in the survey were relying on secondhand knowledge because
> they didn't work in this field themselves.
>
> "This is a matter," he continued, "of such enormous social, economic
> and medical importance that it must be evaluated with our eyes
> completely open. Thus I would hate to see this issue settled by
> anything that smacks of a Gallup poll." Or a cascade.
>
>
>
>
>
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