10th November 2018, 2 min read

Science and Technology links (November 10th, 2018)

1. It already takes more energy to operate Bitcoin than to mine actual gold. Cryptocurrencies are responsible for millions of tons of CO2 emissions. (Source: Nature)
2. “Half of countries have fertility rates below the replacement level, so if nothing happens the populations will decline in those countries” (source:BBC)
3. According to Dickenson et al., 8.6% of us (7.0% of women and 10.3% of men) have difficulty controlling sexual urges and behaviors.
4. A frequently prescribed drug family (statins) can increase your risk of suffering from ALS by a factor of 10 or 100.
5. Countries were people are expected to live longest in 2040 are Spain, Japan, Singapore, Switzerland, Portugual, Italy, Israel, France, Luxembourgh, Australia. Not included in this list is the USA.
6. Smart mirrors could monitor your mood, fitness, anxiety levels, heart rate, skin condition, and so forth.
7. When you are trying to determine whether a drug is effective, it is tempting to look at published papers and see whether they all agree on the efficacity of the drug. This may be quite wrong: Turner et al. show a strong bias whereas negative results are never published.
   

Studies viewed by the FDA as having negative or questionable results were, with 3 exceptions, either not published (22 studies) or published in a way that, in our opinion, conveyed a positive outcome (11 studies). According to the published literature, it appeared that 94% of the trials conducted were positive. By contrast, the FDA analysis showed that 51% were positive. Separate meta-analyses of the FDA and journal data sets showed that the increase in effect size ranged from 11 to 69% for individual drugs and was 32% overall.

Simply put, it is far easier and profitable to publish positive results so that’s what you get.

This means that, by default, you should always downgrade the optimism of the litterature.

Simply put: don’t be too quick to believe what you read, even if it is comes in the form of a large set of peer-reviewed research papers.

1. Richard Jones writes “Motivations for some of the most significant innovations weren’t economic“.1. Cable and satellite TV is going away.
2. “What if what students really want is not to be learners, but alumni?” People will prefer an academically useless program from Harvard to a complete graduate program from a lowly school because they badly want to say that they went to Harvard.1. Drinking coffee abundantly protects from neurodegenerative diseases.