March 13, 2005
Bad science
In a similar vein to the medicine discussion that I hope to continue in further posts, here's an example of bad science. Someone did a study comparing the self-reported health of people who keep diaries versus people who don't, and reported that the diarists did a lot worse for things like headache, sleepness, etc. They therefore concluded that keeping a diary (or, if one extrapolates, a blog) is bad for you. The theory offered by the "scientist" who did the "study" is that instead of a single, cathartic overflow or a decent, deliberate repression, diarists go over and over traumatic events, keeping the damage fresh.
Slight problem, which is buried most of the way down the article: there is no way of telling whether the health problems cause one to keep a diary, or whether keeping a diary causes health problems, and no mention is made of the content of said diaries. We can thus conclude from this: absolutely nothing. We might be able to conclude that this is worth some more attention, but even that would be stretching it a bit.
I think I'll keep pointing out things like this when I see them. The sheer amount of junk science that makes it into the public eye is staggering.
