I think Scott doesn't argue against scientific papers in particular or in general. I think he is raising the sanity waterline. Increase the awareness for these things in general. The specialized scientists may be aware of thse - and probably joke about them. But I was surprised a bit. I could have come up with that - but I didn't. Did you?
If you read "Married people live longer" what does that sentence mean?
The people on the street think it means (A): "We measured the the lifespan of married people and we measured the lifespan of unmarried people. It turns out that the lifespan value we measured for the people who are married is higher."
The problem is that's not what it means. It rather means (B): "We measured a bunch of factors among them lifespan and whether people are married. Then we did run a regression analysis and found that being marriages influences lifesp...
If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.
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