pseudobison comments on Goal setting journal (March 2016) - Less Wrong

3 Post author: Clarity 27 February 2016 09:39AM

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Comment author: Clarity 27 February 2016 09:40:28AM *  4 points [-]

Competition for assistant professor positions in many fields is rapidly growing; the number of PhD graduates is rising, while the number of assistant professor openings remains roughly constant.[16] The opposite is true, however, in business disciplines, where the anticipated shortfall of business faculty may reach 2,400 openings by 2012.[17] The U.S. Occupation Outlook Handbook notes that a significant proportion of any growth in academic professor jobs will be due to "part-time and non tenure-track positions."[1] As of 2003, the average age at which scientists received tenure in the United States was 39, which can make it difficult for professors to balance professional and family obligations

-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professors_in_the_United_States#Non-tenure-track_positions

So I'll be sure to go for a business PhD

special project: friday

  • My incompetent psychologist forgets to consult with her liaison psychiatrist about my MRI brain scan results. I have no idea what they indicate. It's been weeks now. The obvious thing to do is to find a different psychologist. However, I'm going to have to get that MRI result one way or another.
  • apply to finance jobs
Comment author: pseudobison 28 February 2016 08:07:52PM 0 points [-]

I once TA'd a statistics class in which the chocolate/Nobel Prize thing was used as the prototypical example for why correlation doesn't equal causation. Scientific American describes some problems with the study and plausible alternative explanations.

On the other hand, the cocoa may have some health benefits with respect to all-cause mortality, and the flavonoids likely have cognitive and other health benefits.

On the other other hand, the sugar surely doesn't, and chocolate has a lot of aluminum and maybe lead -- the latter is definitely not good for your brain, and the former might not be.

In any case, if you're going to take it up for health reasons, a spoonful of unsweetened cocoa in your oatmeal or coffee every morning is probably better than a Cadbury's egg.

Comment author: Lumifer 28 February 2016 08:46:04PM 1 point [-]

chocolate has a lot of aluminum

Let's follow your link. It says:

Extended data on the aluminium content of food items in France are available from the 1st French Total Diet Study, conducted in 2000. The results showed that an aluminium level > 3 mg/kg fresh weight was only observed in the following food groups: ‘Bread & rusk’ (4.1 mg/kg), ‘Biscuits’ (5.3 mg/kg), ‘Vegetables’ (3.2 mg/kg), ‘Nuts and oilseed’ (4.1 mg/kg), ‘Ice-cream’ (3.9 mg/kg), ‘Chocolate’ (3.7 mg/kg), ‘Salads’ (4.9 mg/kg) and ‘Shellfish’ (17.1 mg/kg) (Leblanc et al., 2005). Mushrooms, spinach, radish, swiss card, lettuce and corn salad having the highest levels in the vegetables group ranged from 5 to 150 mg/kg.

So, out of that list you think chocolate is especially problematic? X-/

Comment author: pseudobison 29 February 2016 08:30:42AM *  0 points [-]

I guess whether > 3 mg/kg is a "lot" compared to other food types is relative to the number of food types the study considered.

I haven't dug up the France study to see how many foods they looked at that didn't make the >3 mg/kg cut, but the first study that I clicked on after searching Google scholar just now is a German study that found a median mg/kg of 160 for "cocoa powder" and 39 for "chocolate". Of the 1,431 food samples they tested, "77.8% had an aluminium concentration of less than 10 mg kg-1. Of the samples, 17.5% had aluminium concentrations between 10 and 100 mg kg-1. In only 4.6% of the samples, aluminium concentrations greater than 100 mg kg-1 were found.". Looking at the histogram in Figure 1, we can place chocolate's median aluminum level of 39 in the top 13.7% percent or higher, and cocoa powder's of 160 in the top 4.6% or higher.

I'm well aware of the irony that in my above post I suggested substituting cocoa powder for chocolate.

In particular, the study notes that "Table 4 shows that the PTWI for aluminium can be reached only by consumption of large amounts of chocolate [42–44]." (PTWI = provisional tolerable weekly intake used by the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives).

Are there plenty of other foods with as much aluminum as chocolate? Sure. Am I cutting chocolate out of my own diet anytime soon? No. But since the original poster is planning to take up chocolate consumption specifically for brain/intelligence -related reasons, I figured it was a relevant consideration.

edit: It's kind of an odd list of foodstuffs the German study considered. The introduction implies but doesn't state that they selected foods that they expected to have at least some aluminum content based on prior research. I also can't account for the huge discrepancies between the French and German studies in terms of mg/kg aluminum levels detected.

Comment author: Lumifer 29 February 2016 03:54:10PM 2 points [-]

I guess whether > 3 mg/kg is a "lot" compared to other food types is relative to the number of food types the study considered.

It's also relative to the amounts of these food types people normally consume.

When chocolate has about the same amount as bread and vegetables, I don't see any reason to worry about chocolate.

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