Unfortunately, we have been seeing this kind of science in medicine for a long time. There is a tendency to run large groups of data through a computer and sees what falls out at the end, and publish the results whether it is relevant or not. Several years ago, NEJM publish a widely sited study that women, 35-55, who were more than 10 pounds overweight, died at twice the rate for those who were not. This caused many with tendency to bulimia to frantically loose weight and get sick. This group of patients is actually the healthiest with a mortality rate of like 2/100,000. Doubling this number was irrelevant. Publish or parrish.
Jon Redman
3 years ago
Fun article, Tom, but your longitude point doesn’t quite work.
Longitude is arbitrary – it’s east / west basis some reference point, which can be anywhere you choose. The French were still bitching that the 0 degrees meridian ought to go through Paris rather than London until the 20th century.
Latitude in contrast is absolute. It’s degrees above or below the plane of the equator. You can assign any point on Mars a latitude because it’s got an equator, but for a longitude you’d need to pick a feature and designate that as 0 degrees E, 0 degrees W.
Unfortunately, we have been seeing this kind of science in medicine for a long time. There is a tendency to run large groups of data through a computer and sees what falls out at the end, and publish the results whether it is relevant or not. Several years ago, NEJM publish a widely sited study that women, 35-55, who were more than 10 pounds overweight, died at twice the rate for those who were not. This caused many with tendency to bulimia to frantically loose weight and get sick. This group of patients is actually the healthiest with a mortality rate of like 2/100,000. Doubling this number was irrelevant. Publish or parrish.
Fun article, Tom, but your longitude point doesn’t quite work.
Longitude is arbitrary – it’s east / west basis some reference point, which can be anywhere you choose. The French were still bitching that the 0 degrees meridian ought to go through Paris rather than London until the 20th century.
Latitude in contrast is absolute. It’s degrees above or below the plane of the equator. You can assign any point on Mars a latitude because it’s got an equator, but for a longitude you’d need to pick a feature and designate that as 0 degrees E, 0 degrees W.
But the degree is also arbitrary. For example, just try measuring latitude in radians.