Friday, February 12, 2016
For some? Who's not some?
Headlines: Dementia rates decrease for some.
But who are the unlucky Not-Some?
Looking at four distinct periods in the late 1970s, late 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, researchers found that there was a progressive decline in incidence of dementia at a given age, with an average reduction of 20 percent per decade since the 1970s, when data was first collected. The decline was most pronounced with a type of dementia caused by vascular diseases such as stroke. The researchers noticed that the decline in dementia incidence was limited however to people with high-school education and above. "Currently, there are no effective treatments to prevent or cure dementia," noted author Sudha Seshadri, professor of neurology at Boston University School of Medicine. "Effective prevention could diminish in some measure the projected explosion in the number of persons affected with the disease in the next few decades."First: When normal readers see the word dementia we think Alzheimers. The decrease appears to be in the condition that normal readers call senility or hardening of the arteries. Not the same thing. You may have grant-getting reasons to confuse and conflate these two conditions, but you shouldn't publish deceptive conclusions based on your greed. Second: "Effective prevention could diminish in some measure the projected explosion." If it's declining, how come you're still talking about an explosion? And why are you talking about prevention as something we need to START, when it's clear that the prevention of senility is already well under way thanks to better diet and exercise habits among non-dropouts? Obviously you're talking crazy because you're demented. You're the unlucky UnSome. But then we already knew that, because you're "scientists".
Labels: Blinded by Stats
¶ 1:45 AM
