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It also found that the use of digital screens 2 hours, 1 hour, or 30 minutes before bedtime didn't have clear associations with decreases in adolescent well-being, even though this is often taken as a fact by media reports and public debates.

Though it seems like this study had a reasonably strict study design, and may be a welcome addition to the body of literature, this claim belittles the adverse findings in systematic reviews and clinical guidelines:

Screen time and sleep among school-aged children and adolescents: a systematic literature review., Sleep Medicine Reviews, 2015:

We reviewed 67 studies published from 1999 to early 2014. [...] We found that screen time is adversely associated with sleep outcomes (primarily shortened duration and delayed timing) in 90% of studies.

Effects of screentime on the health and well-being of children and adolescents: a systematic review of reviews, BMJ Open, 2019:

Findings of significantly shorter total sleep time with greater mobile device screentime were reported in 10/12 studies, with 5/5 reporting greater subjective day-time tiredness or sleepiness.

American Academy of Pediatrics Announces New Recommendations for Children’s Media Use, American Academy of Pediatrics, 2016:

For children ages 6 and older, place consistent limits on the time spent using media, and the types of media, and make sure media does not take the place of adequate sleep, physical activity and other behaviors essential to health.

Which western countries are these?

America , UK, Canada , Australia and, NZ because they have similarly structured Family law courts.

White men are the highest suicide rate in the Western world at 77% in the US, that's a lot of evidence against the existence of white male privilege.

Divorced men (not just white men) are eight times more likely to commit suicide than divorced women. It's called divorce rape for a reason. Being married is a very risky proposition for a western man, you can literally have everything you have worked your whole life for, taken from you.

so I'm interested to know if this claim has any statistical basis.

It does.

Family law in western society make it easy for women to behave very badly on the way out of marriages. I've had women lawyers tell me how weighted against men family law is so it is little wonder that men are checking out when they discover they are sold a lie that they invested all their time and life into.

This much larger study reported in the British Medical Journal reported that "Higher consumption of eggs (up to one egg per day) is not associated with increased risk of coronary heart disease or stroke." The data in the study reported on here don't appear to change this overall result.

Age is very hard to correct for in cardiovascular studies

Okay, I'll take your word for it. But you don't actually need to correct for age to compare the predictive power of push-ups vs. treadmill performance. You have three data points for each person, the two fitness measurements and subsequent cardiovascular outcomes. Determining that two of the three correlate better than other two of the tree is purely a numbers game.

It sounds like you are just saying that there are too few test subjects to back the claim?

I repeat: the pushup data shows simply that number of pushups correlates (negatively) with age.

Age correlates with cardiovascular outcome, but that's not news.

Here's a graph of chance of heart attack versus age. https://heart.bmj.com/content/...
The 41-pushup group averages 35 years old, which puts them on the very left edge of this graph, which is to all practical purposes "negligible chance of heart attack". Telling me that they have few heart attacks isn't news. Of course they don't, at 35 years, heart attacks are very uncommon.

The less-than-10 pushup group averages 48.4 years old, where the curve is rising... but the standard deviation of 10 means that a significant number of them are over 58 years old, where the curve is definitely non-negligible indeed.

So, the data tells me that the 58 year olds have more heart attacks than the 35 year olds. That's not news.

That's not true. Nicotine is directly associated with increased stroke and heart attacks. It attacks the venous system.

https://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com...

The report you cite doesn't back your statement. What it says is that "overall there is no increased risk of myocardial infarction, stroke, or death in the 56 days after the first prescription for NRT."

That's not true. Nicotine is directly associated with increased stroke and heart attacks. It attacks the venous system.

https://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com...

and here you go:

https://www.bmj.com/content/36...

and finally, the most pressing question answered from the article itself:

"Funding: There was no funding source for this study."

So, some fun was had by many, discussion was sparked, but no (direct) taxpayer money wasted. Might even make a useful point, if anyone remembers it where relevant:

"Conclusions Parachute use did not reduce death or major traumatic injury when jumping from aircraft in the first randomized evaluation of this intervention. However, the trial was only able to enroll participants on small stationary aircraft on the ground, suggesting cautious extrapolation to high altitude jumps. When beliefs regarding the effectiveness of an intervention exist in the community, randomized trials might selectively enroll individuals with a lower perceived likelihood of benefit, thus diminishing the applicability of the results to clinical practice."
.

Since some commenters appear to have misunderstood the point of the article it's worth quoting from the BMJ paper (I recommend actually reading the entire paper and/or this BMJ blog):

...

The study also has several limitations. First and most importantly, our findings might not be generalizable to the use of parachutes in aircraft traveling at a higher altitude or velocity. Consideration could be made to conduct additional randomized clinical trials in these higher risk settings. However, previous theoretical work supporting the use of parachutes could reduce the feasibility of enrolling participants in such studies.

...

Finally, although all endpoints in the study were prespecified, we were unable to register the PARACHUTE trial prospectively. We attempted to register this study with the Sri Lanka Clinical Trials Registry (application number APPL/2018/040), a member of the World Health Organization’s Registry Network of the International Clinical Trials Registry Platform. After several rounds of discussion, the Registry declined to register the trial because they thought that “the research question lacks scientific validity” and “the trial data cannot be meaningful.” We appreciated their thorough review (and actually agree with their decision).

The PARACHUTE trial satirically highlights some of the limitations of randomized controlled trials. Nevertheless, we believe that such trials remain the gold standard for the evaluation of most new treatments. The PARACHUTE trial does suggest, however, that their accurate interpretation requires more than a cursory reading of the abstract. Rather, interpretation requires a complete and critical appraisal of the study. In addition, our study highlights that studies evaluating devices that are already entrenched in clinical practice face the particularly difficult task of ensuring that patients with the greatest expected benefit from treatment are included during enrolment.

...

Since some commenters appear to have misunderstood the point of the article it's worth quoting from the BMJ paper (I recommend actually reading the entire paper and/or this BMJ blog):

...

The study also has several limitations. First and most importantly, our findings might not be generalizable to the use of parachutes in aircraft traveling at a higher altitude or velocity. Consideration could be made to conduct additional randomized clinical trials in these higher risk settings. However, previous theoretical work supporting the use of parachutes could reduce the feasibility of enrolling participants in such studies.

...

Finally, although all endpoints in the study were prespecified, we were unable to register the PARACHUTE trial prospectively. We attempted to register this study with the Sri Lanka Clinical Trials Registry (application number APPL/2018/040), a member of the World Health Organization’s Registry Network of the International Clinical Trials Registry Platform. After several rounds of discussion, the Registry declined to register the trial because they thought that “the research question lacks scientific validity” and “the trial data cannot be meaningful.” We appreciated their thorough review (and actually agree with their decision).

The PARACHUTE trial satirically highlights some of the limitations of randomized controlled trials. Nevertheless, we believe that such trials remain the gold standard for the evaluation of most new treatments. The PARACHUTE trial does suggest, however, that their accurate interpretation requires more than a cursory reading of the abstract. Rather, interpretation requires a complete and critical appraisal of the study. In addition, our study highlights that studies evaluating devices that are already entrenched in clinical practice face the particularly difficult task of ensuring that patients with the greatest expected benefit from treatment are included during enrolment.

...

This wasn't a serious study, it is actually an extension of an old joke.

https://www.bmj.com/content/32...

They are mocking people who demand double blind tests of everything and dismiss anything that isn't tested that way. Since double blind trials are impossible for many things in medicine, especially psychology and sociology, some people think they are bunk yet probably wouldn't hold parachutes to the same rigorous standard.

Additional analyses revealed a tendency for an increased risk of mortality associated with hypnotic use.

This confirms prior studies that have shown 3 times increase risk of mortality with as little as 18 pills/year of Ambien.

https://bmjopen.bmj.com/conten...

Reminds me of this classic study of randomized double blind trials to determine the effectiveness of parachutes in preventing death and severe trauma. Clearly parachutes are just bunk science until we shove some people out of aircraft with placebos to act as a control group.

I assume you will be happy to volunteer, in the interests of science.

Because psychologists aren't idiots they instead looked at the success rate on similar cases. I couldn't find any hard data but I imagine someone must have done a survey of parachute vs. no parachute falling from aircraft and found a statistically compelling result, same as they did for CBT.

Some do apparently.
https://gut.bmj.com/content/32...

Osmium, Polonium, and of course, Gold (liquid form, taken orally).

and has been for a long time, but it is getting worse.

Well funded interests can influence the politicians to get what they want, in return politicians get (disguised) money or help with re-election (eg a few jobs created in their electoral area).

Those able to put words in front of eyeballs can also do this: not just media magnates but those able to whip up passions -- this is easier in these Internet times (not just Google, Facebook et al but those who can create twitter, etc, storms). Sometimes these activists push for the right thing (eg Rosa Parks), sometimes they are wacky (eg Wakefield on MMR), others push the agenda of a small vocal group to the detriment of others. Fake news is one mechanism for achieving this.

The make politicians & government act in the best interests of the population at large (not just elites & special interests) lobbying & fake news needs to be brought under control, ie regulated. However this is much easier said than done: politicians will resist their side deals; fake news peddlers will attack this. However unless we do so the ''common man'' will never get a fair deal.

These details are in the paper. In particular, they did not test any device but just exposure to the chemicals which they note may not provide the same levels seen by actual people who vape. I think it's unreasonable to expect this level of detail in a popular news site given that they are writing a few paragraphs for a general audience. The paper is there for those who want this level of detail.

Also, somewhat ironically, cow flatulence actually is important for determining climate change!

Wasn't there a 'study' a while ago linking hot drinks to cancer?

I'm not sure why you've put 'quotes' around the word study, but the answer is, partially, yes. Drinking very hot tea has been shown to marginally increase incidence of oesophageal cancers, albeit only in smokers or people who regularly drink alcohol.

So if you swallow the water, a hot tub 'may cause cancer'... doubly so if you fill it with coffee...

Only if you're smoking and/or drinking whilst in the tub, or if your tub is located in California ...

California wins the top spot in 6 of the 12 decades, NY wins it 3 times

You're using absolute numbers instead of number of school shootings per 100,000 people. Oklahoma has 1700 schools, but California has over 12,000 just in K-12.

I decided to go through the entire Wikipedia list starting in 1900

The Heller decision wasn't until 2008. You should take a look at this thorough study of the impact of that decision. The raw data is included in case you want to do an extensive comparison to some random Slate article.

http://injuryprevention.bmj.co...

Doctors

Solicitors

Vets

Dentists

notably absent are roles involving risk to life or health.

Smokers die young. Their lifetime healthcare costs are _lower_. Sense health care after age 65 is highly subsidised, we want _more_ smokers.

Not actually the case.

Yes it is.

[citation needed]

Citation: Fruit Juice Intake Predicts Increased Adiposity Gain in Children

Citation: Reducing childhood obesity by eliminating 100% fruit juice

Citation: Fruit consumption and risk of type 2 diabetes

Citation: Intake of Fruit, Vegetables, and Fruit Juices and Risk of Diabetes in Women

Citation: Soft drink and juice consumption and risk of physician-diagnosed incident type 2 diabetes

Jesus christ dude, you're probably gonna be dead in no time from atherosclerosis.

I'm assuming you're talking about the saturated fat content. It's a myth that saturated fat clogs arteries.
From here:

The epidemiology of saturated fats and atherosclerosis doesn't look good for the old theory that one is caused by the other. Mostly it's been confounded by the fact that intake of preserved meat (which is high in saturated fat) correlates with atherosclerosis. But it's a proxy because intake of fresh meat and dairy and tropical oils, all does NOT correlate with it.

... low-I.Q. members of our societies ...

"... there can be little doubt that Darwin Award winners seem to make little or no real assessment of the risk, or attempt [] risk management. They just do it anyway."

This graph analyses the gender imbalance of Darwin Awards, to confirm that Male Idiocy Theory (MIT) is based on evidence. The article doesn't suggest that MIT is correct or indicative of any male characteristic.

Men, more than women, have a "can do" attitude: However, a number of young men seem to avoid thinking about how they "can do" something, particularly in an unfamiliar situation. The greatest human ability is supposedly, the ability to adapt. These awards reveal that many humans don't have that ability.

A big part of being an adult is turning big problems into little problems. A big part of that is asking "what happens next?" This is a question that many humans are incapable of processing.

If they didn't ask the question, it's not a very useful study.

They adjusted for patient age. This is explained in the actual paper. They also adjusted for gender, ethnicity, household income, day of week of admission, etc.

They also considered many characteristics of the doctor besides age, including gender, medical school attended, etc.

I had the same reaction ... ANY?
Here's the actual study: http://www.bmj.com/content/357...

I'm having some difficulty pulling out the raw numbers from the actual study, so I'll make up some nearly correct number to show the example.
What they mean is that during the study period of the 250,000 participants, 2,500 died which is 1% risk of death during the study period.
Of that 250,000 people, 10,000 commuted to work on bicycles. Of the 10,000 cyclists, 59 died for a 41% reduction in risk of death during the study period.

If we had used two groups, 100,000 people of the general population, about 1,000 would have died during the study period.
Of a group of 100,000 cyclists, about 590 would have died during the period.

As with most studied, the really interesting parts are hidden in the data.

A few things should be kept in mind. For example, there was a huge difference in two characteristics of the subpopulations. Non-drinkers and former drinkers had much higher incidence of diabetes and being socially deprived compared to moderate drinkers. This is mentioned in the research article but not the Time article. When adjustments for systolic blood pressure, diabetes status, body mass index, HDL-cholesterol, use of statins or blood pressure lowering medication, and whether offered dietary advice were made, the benefits for moderate drinkers decreased but still somewhat remained for some diseases.

However, there was no adjustment for social class. It would have been extremely interesting to see the results with adjustments for social class, or even better just to see the raw numbers for each social class. 30.6% of the non-drinkers were socially deprived ("Most deprived 5th of socioeconomic deprivation") compared to 15.7% of moderate drinkers. That looks like a significant disparity for a characteristic that would seem to correlate strongly with bad health.

As with most studied, the really interesting parts are hidden in the data.

A few things should be kept in mind. For example, there was a huge difference in two characteristics of the subpopulations. Non-drinkers and former drinkers had much higher incidence of diabetes and being socially deprived compared to moderate drinkers. This is mentioned in the research article but not the Time article. When adjustments for systolic blood pressure, diabetes status, body mass index, HDL-cholesterol, use of statins or blood pressure lowering medication, and whether offered dietary advice were made, the benefits for moderate drinkers decreased but still somewhat remained for some diseases.

However, there was no adjustment for social class. It would have been extremely interesting to see the results with adjustments for social class, or even better just to see the raw numbers for each social class. 30.6% of the non-drinkers were socially deprived ("Most deprived 5th of socioeconomic deprivation") compared to 15.7% of moderate drinkers. That looks like a significant disparity for a characteristic that would seem to correlate strongly with bad health.

If our gut bacteria can produce enough B12, please explain why deficiency is so common. http://www.bmj.com/content/349...

Apparently smokers do have higher medical costs per year than non-smokers (but lower costs over a lifetime because they die sooner). source source

I think the reason for this is that on average smoking causes more damage via heart disease and emphysema than via lung cancer.

That last link was messed up; it should have been this: http://www.bmj.com/content/340...

It is quite well accepted that improved hygienic, nutritional and medical conditions had already contributed to a serious decline in the infectious diseases.

These diseases, and others, have for periods been completely eliminated in some countries that have passed a certain threshold of vaccination. You cannot find a single credible voice who has proven that this was the result of better hand washing .

It is "quite well accepted" that vaccines work. There's no reason at all to think that they don't work. They've been shown to be highly effective even in third world countries where running water is a luxury.

Andrew Wakefield has been proven not to be a fraud in the juridical case... axed down by the judge as being highly unprofessional and also wrong for that matter in revoking his license, and had to re-instate the same.

Nope. I took ten minutes out of my busy day to examine this and it's completely untrue:

1. It was widely reported in 2010 that he lost his license.

2. As of March of this year, he still hasn't been reinstated. Note that the Walker-Smith stuff you allude to happened in 2012.

3. Then I saw an article from just two months ago explaining at length that not only has he not been exonerated, but we can be fairly sure he will NEVER be exonerated despite the legal happenings involving John Walker-Smith that you allude to.

Do you have any sources showing otherwise? Are you going to own up to that little mistake / lie or are you going to carry on like nothing happened? Your intellectual credibility, such as it's worth, is on the line here.

Even if his license were eventually reinstated through some horrible technicality, that does not excuse his highly suspect and unethical behavior. The most charitable possible interpretation is that he was extremely reckless in misusing terminology to support his extraordinary theory, but the evidence points much more strongly towards an obvious intent to deceive, particularly when taken in combination with his later statements and actions. I would dissect that entire incident at length for your benefit, but at present I'm not entirely convinced you'd be interested or willing to hear me.

I managed to track down the actual text of the cases. TFA was only adding the human doctors to an analysis already done with the aps. The aps paper is http://www.bmj.com/content/351... and the cases are in the supplementary material ('data supplement') http://www.bmj.com/highwire/fi...

A 48-year-old woman with a history of migraine headaches presents to the emergency room with altered mental
status over the last several hours. She was found by her husband, earlier in the day, to be acutely disoriented and
increasingly somnolent. On physical examination, she has scleral icterus, mild right upper quadrant tenderness, and
asterixis. Preliminary laboratory studies are notable for a serum ALT of 6498 units/L, total bilirubin of 5.6 mg/dL, and
INR of 6.8. Her husband reports that she has consistently been taking pain medications and started taking additional
500 mg acetaminophen pills several days ago for lower back pain. Further history reveals a medication list with
multiple acetaminophen-containing preparations.

(This one is acute liver failure requiring emergency care).

An 18-month-old toddler presents with 1 week of rhinorrhea, cough, and congestion. Her parents report she is
irritable, sleeping restlessly, and not eating well. Overnight she developed a fever. She attends day care and both
parents smoke. On examination signs are found consistent with a viral respiratory infection including rhinorrhea and
congestion. The toddler appears irritable and apprehensive and has a fever. Otoscopy reveals a bulging,
erythematous tympanic membrane and absent landmarks.

(Acute otitis media - requires 'non-emergent care', i.e. needs professional medical care but is not an emergency)

A 34-year-old woman with no known underlying lung disease 12-day history of cough. She initially had nasal
congestion and a mild sore throat, but now her symptoms are all related to a productive cough without paroxysms.
She denies any sick contacts. On physical examination she is not in respiratory distress and is afebrile with normal
vital signs. No signs of URI are noted. Scattered wheezes are present diffusely on lung auscultation.

(Acute bronchitis, self-care appropriate.)

I managed to track down the actual text of the cases. TFA was only adding the human doctors to an analysis already done with the aps. The aps paper is http://www.bmj.com/content/351... and the cases are in the supplementary material ('data supplement') http://www.bmj.com/highwire/fi...

A 48-year-old woman with a history of migraine headaches presents to the emergency room with altered mental
status over the last several hours. She was found by her husband, earlier in the day, to be acutely disoriented and
increasingly somnolent. On physical examination, she has scleral icterus, mild right upper quadrant tenderness, and
asterixis. Preliminary laboratory studies are notable for a serum ALT of 6498 units/L, total bilirubin of 5.6 mg/dL, and
INR of 6.8. Her husband reports that she has consistently been taking pain medications and started taking additional
500 mg acetaminophen pills several days ago for lower back pain. Further history reveals a medication list with
multiple acetaminophen-containing preparations.

(This one is acute liver failure requiring emergency care).

An 18-month-old toddler presents with 1 week of rhinorrhea, cough, and congestion. Her parents report she is
irritable, sleeping restlessly, and not eating well. Overnight she developed a fever. She attends day care and both
parents smoke. On examination signs are found consistent with a viral respiratory infection including rhinorrhea and
congestion. The toddler appears irritable and apprehensive and has a fever. Otoscopy reveals a bulging,
erythematous tympanic membrane and absent landmarks.

(Acute otitis media - requires 'non-emergent care', i.e. needs professional medical care but is not an emergency)

A 34-year-old woman with no known underlying lung disease 12-day history of cough. She initially had nasal
congestion and a mild sore throat, but now her symptoms are all related to a productive cough without paroxysms.
She denies any sick contacts. On physical examination she is not in respiratory distress and is afebrile with normal
vital signs. No signs of URI are noted. Scattered wheezes are present diffusely on lung auscultation.

(Acute bronchitis, self-care appropriate.)

Not everything we know comes from randomized, large-scale trials. There are other ways to gain knowledge. This link shows why randomized, large-scale trials are not always the best idea.

Testing the efficacy of parachutes? Really?
This is the kind of argument a bunch of over-educated children make. Made only better by it's author's profession: Gynaecology

It is obvious a parachute is needed, however, testing different designs would be a better comparison; It may be obvious that we need floss, but daily? weekly? Should it be woven? Plastic filament? Barbed? Is irrigation a better method (waterpik)?

Not everything we know comes from randomized, large-scale trials. There are other ways to gain knowledge. This link shows why randomized, large-scale trials are not always the best idea.

-evidence based policy

That doesn't always work fwiw

Oh please, there a just as many studies saying second hand smoke is harmless.

Shame you didn't link to any. And if you do, please link to the actual articles instead of right-wing news sites who claim such studies exist. Do it like this:

http://thorax.bmj.com/content/...

http://www.jabfm.org/content/2...

http://ash.org.uk/files/docume...

http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/dat...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/b...

See, the thing is, when you dig a little into those claims about "studies that show no risks from second-hand smoke", you find that they don't really exist except in the minds of "skeptic" sources like Reason or the Cato Institute.

I'll go out on limb and say that virtually no one posting here is qualified on their own to come to any conclusions about whether the earth is warming or not. That's not to say they aren't smart people, just that researching long term climate patterns and their causes is not their vocation and not something they're trained for. Lots of people can regurgitate information they found somewhere else. They can also do some analysis on some subset of data and come to some conclusions which may or may not be correct.

Climate modeling is complex and at some point you have to rely on the experts. For example, let say you're not feeling well and haven't been for months. In fact, it's getting worse. You try to diagnose and treat it yourself but it's not working so you go to the doctor who sends you to a specialist. The specialist says you've got some terminal illness. There is a treatment but it's not guaranteed to work and the treatment itself is going to make you feel worse for awhile. That sucks, but doctors make mistakes right? So you get a second opinion. That doctor agrees with the first. In fact you end up seeing 100 of them and all but one agree with the diagnosis and the treatment. Which one are you going to believe?

When it comes to climate science, maybe 90 some percent of scientists world wide are on the take and just perpetuating the climate change myth in order to keep their funding sources in tact. Or just maybe, actually trying to lower CO2 emissions world wide is not trivial and there's a number of influential people who stand to lose big if we do it. It means some lucrative industries (fossil fuel production) would have to be dramatically scaled back. It might even mean lifestyle changes which are never easy and are a tough sell. There are a whole lot of built in reasons for people not wanting to believe it.

" In 1960, in a poll organised by the American Cancer Society, only a third of all US doctors agreed that cigarette smoking should be considered ‘a major cause of lung cancer’. This same poll revealed that 43% of all American doctors were still smoking cigarettes on a regular basis, with occasional users accounting for another 5%. With half of all doctors smoking, it should come as no surprise that most Americans remained unconvinced of life-threatening harms from the habit." - http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/...

So even doctors are fallible and inclined not to believe things that would suggest they need to change. Yes, the climate scientists could be just parroting each other, participating in group think, and trying to keep their funding alive. I don't believe that is what's really going on.

She should have been a con artist. I figured you'd be interested and would like to know that, in her professional opinion, they're suitable for use in such environments assuming they're not being kept in complete, sterile, isolation. I expect to know if they can be brought in and put on the network by the end of next week.

Ya know, for someone who isn't an Apple fan, you have probably purchased more Apple gear than the next TEN fanbois, LOL!!!

Your daughter may very well have a promising second-career as a con-artist; but in this particular case, she is right-on.

When the iPad first came out, I was looking into developing a disposable "bag" for just this sort of application. That idea went the way of all my good ideas, and was eventually replaced with another idea of mine for an iPad/tablet "sterilizer" chamber, that would use UV to disinfect one or more iPads/tablets. And of course, charging facilities would be provided, too for charging-while-disinfecting.

iPads are used in thousands of hospitals everyday. Even without the disinfection. In sterile environments, like an Operating Room, they tend to put them in plastic bags (a gallon-ziploc works fine), and yes, the touchscreen does work through the plastic bag. But on the regular "floors", they just treat iPads like a clipboard. No sterilization, no protective sheath/pouch, nothing.

I would say that iPads are probably fairly easy to keep relatively clean (cleaner than a computer keyboard and mouse!!!), simply because there really aren't many cracks and crevices for caked blood, etc, to congregate. The main issue is the Home button, because it gets pressed a zillion times a day, followed by the Sleep/Wake button. But a simple silicone-rubber "boot"-type case would probably work...

Weird that the summary doesn't include a link to the BMJ study itself, titled "Use of positive and negative words in scientific PubMed abstracts between 1974 and 2014: retrospective analysis". Whatever you might think of their findings, at least you can't fault the authors for hyping their study. Hype, I suspect, is a symptom of the data epidemic of our times. Readers, or what's left of them, need to know fast if something's worth reading. The more "tweetable" the title, the more eyeballs a study gets, never mind if it's positive or negative. And this goes not just for academic studies but for Donald Trump as well.

Show me some science backing up this crazy belief that running with headphones is more dangerous than sitting on a sofa watching TV while eating a bag of chips.

We're comparing running with headphones vs. running without headphones, not running vs. sitting on couch eating junk.

Here's the study that produced the figures mentioned a few posts above. Headphones are definitely an extra risk. We may choose not to be worried by that risk and we can say it's small compared to other risks, but let's not say the extra risk is zero, because that's false.

The LINEAR part is wrong because intracellular coping mechanisms(DNA repair, mopping up reactive oxygen species(which is one of the damage modes of ionizing radiation)) have a range in which they function optimally. Asssuming a fully linear relationship there could no repair or maintenance done at all which is a ridiculous suggestion.

Why do you think this? A linear relationship at low doses is fully consistent with repair. You are reading the wrong websites.

The NO THRESHOLD part doesn't hold up either as there's no detectable cancer rate curve among radiation worker that correlates to their doses inside the allowed intervals.

Radiation workers receive a very low dose, so obviously the minimal excess risk is hard to detect. But this does not imply it doesn't exist.
But funny: There just appeared a large scale study which claims to show this effect:
http://www.bmj.com/content/351...

If we compare a radiation worker that only does administrative work and accumulates 1mSv to one that works in a hotlab and accumulates 16mSv we should see a 16 times increase in radiation related cancer according to the LNT, but that's not what we see in the real world.

There is a huge risk to get cancer anyway. What is 16 times bigger is the additional excess risk which is extremely small even if it is 16 times bigger.

We can statistically detect the effect from very low dose received in CT scans in large scale studies:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/s...

http://www.bmj.com/content/346...

Big Pharma can hardly be blamed for selling us all something we begged them for in the first place.

An irrelevancy. Big Pharma can indeed be blamed for fabricating "evidence" to support sales of drugs.

Here's the rub, from a link in TFS:

Conclusions Neither paroxetine nor high dose imipramine showed efficacy for major depression in adolescents, and there was an increase in harms with both drugs.

You don't need to publish a new paper to introduce reasonable doubt about the conclusions of one observational study that contradicts long-standing policy in numerous areas. Just look at the limitations of the paper itself, which is freely available, as are the well-known primary data sets on which it is based.

Unlike most of the media reporting over the past few days, the original authors do acknowledge numerous factors for which they could not or did not control right there on the front page of the paper under "Introduction" and further in an extensive "Limitations" section later on. Some of those limitations are quite fundamental; here are a few things this study didn't or couldn't take into account:

1. The crime data set they were working from did not distinguish between day-time and night-time crimes.

2. The crime data set they were working from did not provide precise location data so it was only analysed within larger areas. Those areas could have had multiple street lighting policies in effect in different locations within them.

3. The STATS19 data set they were working from is primarily about motor traffic and only covers reported incidents. It provides limited insight into the causes of injuries to pedestrians or cyclists unless they directly involved a motor vehicle and resulted in police action. It appears that the study also considered only fatal and serious injury incidents, not minor injury incidents or those causing only damage to property.

4. Neither data set controls for confounding factors, even obvious potential distortions like general improvements to road safety being implemented at the same time. During the periods when lights have been switched off near us, for example, we've also seen speed limits in residential areas widely reduced to 20mph and various safe cycling schemes affecting local road layouts. It is not possible to separate the effects of those different schemes based only on the STATS19 data that appears to have been considered in this study.

5. Both data sets provide only absolute statistics. Neither data set accounts for relative effects like fewer people going out late at night if the lights are off, meaning fewer people to be the victims of certain types of crime or involved in road accidents.

If you genuinely want to know more about this issue, I encourage you to start by reading the original paper. Here it is. Also read some of the opposing commentary by councils that have reversed decisions on this policy after trying it and then seeing their own specific data, and road safety groups like the AA that also analyse STATS19 and other experimental data and have previously reached very different conclusions about the effects of changing street lighting. Many of these sources are also publicly available and yours for the price of a few minutes with your web browser and search engine of choice.

Actually it's the high carb / low fat diets that put you at greater risk of getting gall stones. And yes, going low fat is a treatment for gall stones, but that doesn't imply high fat causes them. If you eat a low fat diet you're using less bile to digest your food, and hence more bile stays in the gall bladder which influences the formation of stones. See http://gut.bmj.com/content/54/... for how high carb / low fat diets increase gall stones.

Here: Homeopathic medical practice: Long-term results of a cohort study with 3981 patients or here: Efficacy, effectiveness, safety and costs of acupuncture for chronic pain – results of a large research initiative.

While obviously the conclusion is a bit tongue-in-cheek, the study is pretty nifty. The actual study attempted to show how environmental factors may influence self-reporting on sensitive data. Amazingly, people with stronger religious convictions or who had signed chastity pledges were more likely to maintain that they were still virgins, even on anonymous surveys, while simultaneously (on anonymous surveys) reporting accurate pregnancy history.

Here's a link to the original study: http://www.bmj.com/content/347/bmj.f7102

not that they are incapable of logic, but emotion is their fundamental mental underpinning

Really? And that must be why there are more battered husbands shelters than battered wives shelters ... oh wait ...

And why most murders are committed by women ... darn, again not true ...

How about most recipients of the darwin awards being women? ... oops -

Sex differences in risk seeking behaviour, emergency hospital admissions, and mortality are well documented. However, little is known about sex differences in idiotic risk taking behaviour. This paper reviews the data on winners of the Darwin Award over a 20 year period (1995-2014). Winners of the Darwin Award must eliminate themselves from the gene pool in such an idiotic manner that their action ensures one less idiot will survive. This paper reports a marked sex difference in Darwin Award winners: males are significantly more likely to receive the award than females

So, women are more emotional and men are idiots?

Silly, most murders are due either to one primary emotion (rage) or when it comes to serial killers psychopathy, which is generally a lack of ability to consider the emotions of others (hence the term "cold blooded killer").

There's actually a sizable amount of men that get raped/sexually-abused, or are 'battered husbands', but they even more rarely report it since men are taught that 'emotions are not to be shown' - in fact most women would dump a guy in a second if he was an overly emotional 'trainwreck' because they don't want wimps, they want men that 'make them feel safe', either extreme (a man that cries at the drop of a hat, or a man that flies into emotional rages) are huge turnoffs for most women. Men are also far more likely to be 'successful' in suicide (and have higher suicide rates in general) because they show less 'signs' for others to see (less 'public' emotion).

not that they are incapable of logic, but emotion is their fundamental mental underpinning

Really? And that must be why there are more battered husbands shelters than battered wives shelters ... oh wait ...

And why most murders are committed by women ... darn, again not true ...

How about most recipients of the darwin awards being women? ... oops -

Sex differences in risk seeking behaviour, emergency hospital admissions, and mortality are well documented. However, little is known about sex differences in idiotic risk taking behaviour. This paper reviews the data on winners of the Darwin Award over a 20 year period (1995-2014). Winners of the Darwin Award must eliminate themselves from the gene pool in such an idiotic manner that their action ensures one less idiot will survive. This paper reports a marked sex difference in Darwin Award winners: males are significantly more likely to receive the award than females

So, women are more emotional and men are idiots?