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Video Game Playing Increases Food Intake In Teens
An anonymous reader writes "There have been plenty of anecdotal associations between gaming and obesity. Now Canadian and Danish researchers have tested the hypothesis that video game playing leads to increased spontaneous food intake; a true test of causation vs. correlation. Their conclusion? 'A single session of video game play in healthy male adolescents is associated with an increased food intake, regardless of appetite sensations (abstract).'"
Not by much, in this case. The researchers collected a very small collection of similar anecdotes. They have 22 subjects, apparently going through a single experimental cycle (control and test each, I think). There is no indication of what kind of games were played, or what long-term effects might be. The results apply only to a single session of gaming, and not to habitual gamers. The headline is crap as usual, and the study doesn't really involve correlation vs. causation at all.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Sample size of 22 is only meaningless if you know nothing about statistical analysis. Say I have 22 people and 12 of them got fatter then the article is meaningless since you're outside your confidence interval (google those words before your next post). But if all 22 people got fat then it's perfectly reasonable sample size to conclude the sample is representative of the population. Just an example, the statistical analysis is in the study which I'm sure you didn't bother digging up to read before slagging.
Any doctor who rejects an study that is significant to P values of 0.05 because of a sample size is an idiot who also needs to take a statistics course.