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Comment by tediousdemise | Hacker News Reader

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tediousdemise·

Next week’s headline: Aspirin raises cancer risk by 20%

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https://kill-or-cure.herokuapp.com/

I thought I was joking…

https://www.healthline.com/health-news/a-low-dose-aspirin-da...

This is a perfect example of why our current media feels so exhausting. There's so many conflicting viewpoints and studies that all seem reasonable.

With a low enough sample size anything can be true.

It's exhausting because the stories exaggerate the findings. Most everything in science is nuanced. Small sample, preliminary finding, caveats, unclear results…

Really, this is more of an issue with modern storytelling which is often motivated to be sensational, or at least to present a relatable story.

Or in this case a meta study. It's hard to say how meaningful the results are because the purposes and methods of the underlying studies, meaning it's not likely they were designed to control for other factors that would impact what this study was looking at.

0.8*1.2 = 0.96, so that's a net 4% decrease in deaths :)

Cancer causes cell phones, by xkcd

https://xkcd.com/925/

Correlation != Causation :)

They do have a noticeable impact on sperm count though. That's enough of a reason not to have one, or at least not carry it in one's pockets.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4074720/

If this is significant, then maybe one should refrain from keeping a phone near testicles for a month or two before using those testicles for procreation. Otherwise, not terribly relevant to behavior.

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