Correlation != causation
That's all.
Drop that can of sweet pop and grab a coffee - for your sanity's sake
Further proof - were it necessary - that strong unsweetened coffee is the only correct workplace beverage and that sickly imitation pop is the devil's own satanic brew has emerged this week. Boffins in the States have confirmed that sweetened and "diet" drinks are associated with a significantly heightened risk of mental illness …
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Thursday 10th January 2013 12:28 GMT Psyx
Re: Correlation != causation
Yup.
"People who drank more than four cans or cups per day of soda " ... [tend to be lower on the socio-economic totem pole, so are indeed more likely to get depressed]
Not to mention the startlingly obvious point that people who drink diet drinks are already much more likely to be in the "I'm not happy with how I look" camp than those who drink full-fat.
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Thursday 10th January 2013 15:14 GMT Eddy Ito
Re: Correlation != causation
"when they have perfectly good (free) drinking water available."
I'm going to go out on a limb and say you don't live in an American city. The water here, in SoCal at least, is neither free nor perfectly good as there are times when I open the raw tap and the aroma immediately reminds me of the hyper-chlorinated pool I learned to swim in as a child. Needless to say the water that goes into my coffee maker is thrice filtered with the last stage being reverse osmosis. Before the city we had nearly perfect water with tds of 50 ppm and a pH of 6.6 coming from 630 ft below ground.
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Thursday 10th January 2013 17:11 GMT Psyx
Re: Correlation != causation
"I'm going to go out on a limb and say you don't live in an American city."
Was it stating a drink price in pence that was the give-away?!
In any case, [bottled] water > diet drinks. There really is no good reason to pour over a litre of fizzy chemical crap into your system every day*.
*Including lager.
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Friday 11th January 2013 09:48 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Correlation != causation
Hmmmmmm, speaking of correlation != causation, it's interesting to note that you're not prepared to spend £0.50 on a prepared drink and then complain about "chemical crap".
Maybe (just a thought) if you pushed the boat out occasionally and spent just a bit more on what you eat / drink, you wouldn't have so many chemicals to worry about?
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Friday 11th January 2013 10:34 GMT Psyx
Wrong conclusion. Misunderstanding of observed evidence.
"Hmmmmmm, speaking of correlation != causation, it's interesting to note that you're not prepared to spend £0.50 on a prepared drink and then complain about "chemical crap". Maybe (just a thought) if you pushed the boat out occasionally and spent just a bit more on what you eat / drink, you wouldn't have so many chemicals to worry about?"
I'm quoting 50p for a can of drink not because I buy cheap fizzy drinks, but because I have absolutely NO IDEA how much stuff like that costs. (And if tins of Coke are more that 50p each, then that's over £15 quid a week for a four-a-day habit!)
From that you could conclude that either I'm far to wealthy to shop for myself, or that I never buy any form of pre-packaged soft drink.* So you lecture about diet is very much misplaced.
*Except an occasional emergency Purdeys, for when I have a hangover. Is that reassuringly expensive enough for you?
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Sunday 13th January 2013 19:44 GMT Naughtyhorse
Re: Correlation != causation
'cept the problem is not with sugar, its with Aspartame. about which there is considerable debate.
indeed depression is pretty low on the list of claimed issues:
multiple sclerosis, systemic lupus, methanol toxicity, blindness, spasms, shooting pains, seizures, headaches, depression, anxiety, memory loss, birth defects and death.
persny i'd rather suck shit through an oily rag than drink any of this crap, so i aint that worried.
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Thursday 10th January 2013 17:23 GMT Eric Olson
Re: Correlation != causation
Unless you read the study and went through the data and mathematics, you can't assume all Dr. Chen did was make a pretty graph with depression on one axis and drink preference on the other, slapped on a regression line, and called it a day.
More likely, this variable was isolated using a variety of statistical tools that approximate making all other things equal and took into account the other known risk factors for depression.
Of course, it's possible he did just make the graph, since I haven't read the full text either. But the fact that it's being presented at the annual AAN conference likely means that it's not designed the same way that someone competing in a high school science fair would have done.
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Thursday 10th January 2013 17:43 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Correlation != causation
"you can't assume all Dr. Chen did was make a pretty graph with depression on one axis and drink preference on the other"
No. But I know the one that sadly seems to win out a lot. It takes a lot to show the work has been done over just making it up. Lots of the stuff we follow today is from some one pretending to be a scientist, getting the media/political/economic backing and running with it. Turn the TV on for half of these "scientific" examples. :(
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Thursday 10th January 2013 13:26 GMT kissingthecarpet
Re: Dyslexic analysis disorder
Also, in the mind of most journos(& everyone else) "statistics == data" is true, i.e. a statement like "8 out of 10 owners etc." is a pieces of statistical analysis as far as most are concerned.
Correlation, significance, probability, regression etc. are all completely meaningless to all journalists it would seem. The only stats measure ever used is the arithmetic mean, even when a median value would be far more informative(salaries for eg) and anything that indicates spread like standard deviation etc is never, ever mentioned on pain of death( apparently).
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Saturday 12th January 2013 15:53 GMT stuff and nonesense
Re: Dyslexic analysis disorder
Diet soda uses aspartame as the sweetener.
Aspartame is a source of phenylananine (sp), an amino acid that has been suspect in mental disorders for the past 3 decades (at least).
It inhibits seratonin production/retention in the brain. Seratonin is a neurotransmitter that is present when we feel happy.
A number of anti-depressants on the market work by "inhibiting the absorbtion" of seratonin.
Drinking diet soda isn't a good idea if you are on anti depressants.
Also in the report, It seems that if you have depressive tendencies diet drinks can make the depression worse but if you are not affected by such problems diet drinks have little/no effect.
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Thursday 10th January 2013 10:16 GMT NorthernCoder
Re: If only . . .
I suggest moving to Sweden.
I can't recall a single workplace I have worked at here which didn't have free coffee for the employees.
As a bootnote, when I was in Crete, I saw that the restaurant menus on the sidewalks usually had four languages; Greek, English, German and one of the Scandinavian ones. I noted one of these menu boards proclaiming in the first three languages that they served espresso for so and so many €. In Swedish (on this particular board) it was translated as "svart kaffe" ("black coffee").
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Thursday 10th January 2013 11:56 GMT Tom 38
Re: If only . . .
You need to find a better boss, we have 6 of these babies dotted around the office.
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Thursday 10th January 2013 13:54 GMT Tom 38
Re: If only . . .
It's only £7k without the warranty - which is essential - so add another £2k to each one. We broke two of the machines within a month of moving here, simply by, as the engineer put it 'making too much coffee'. We didn't pay that much anyway, I think around £6k with warranty.
Before we had the machines, in our old offices, we had tubs of Nescafe, which no-one drank, and loads of people popping out each hour to get their fix. £36k over 3 years in capex, but it keeps employees in the office and working.
There should be some sort of coffee icon..
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Thursday 10th January 2013 09:19 GMT Richard 81
Splutter!
"Dr Chen is indisputably a real doctor and a proper boffin - as opposed to the larger and less distinguished category of "scientist" - being an MD as well as a PhD."
How dare you Sir! Such an inflammatory statement just caused this doctor* to splutter his delicious and health-giving juice of the naughty bean across the desk.
*PhD only and you can cram it where tech news hacks traditionally cram things.
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