February 14, 2014

Briefly

  • Genetic determinism, from Nathaniel Comfort: Studying genetics and popularization over the last century or so has led me to the surprising conclusion that genetic oversell is independent of genetic knowledge. We see the same sorts of articles in 2014 as we saw in 1914.
  • Kudos to the Herald for explicitly saying that research on grapeseed extract in colon cancer was lab-based, not on people. This sort of science is interesting if it isn’t hyped up as a cure.
  • Rather less impressive is the ‘sextacy’ story on the evils of Viagra. This combines general warnings on psychological problems; the specific, well-characterised dangerous interaction between Viagra and nitrates; and relatively anecdotal warnings about serotonin syndrome. And rubbish about arginine, where the fact that it gets sold in early February is taken as convincing evidence it has genuine sexual effects. Guess where the Herald got the story.
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Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »

Comments

  • avatar

    :) The funny thing is that I think I’ve only ever read one or maybe two papers by Savage.

    10 years ago

    • avatar
      Thomas Lumley

      Yeah, but something more accurate would be less funny, and, in contrast to, say, de Finetti, being associated with Jimmy Savage is a compliment.

      10 years ago