http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/79820/utter-cock-as-usual

http://transform-drugs.blogspot.com/2009/01/should-caffeine-be-made-class-b-drug.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00h3xgb

On cannabis and hangovers. I can imagine that cannabis users objecting to claims that the drug causes a hangover may be due to the word being primarily associated with alcohol and the specific after-effects of consumption of fairly large quantities of that particular drug. Similarly most alcohol users will probably strenuously object to suggestions that even smaller quantities of alcohol have hangover effects (they certainly tend to get bent out of shape when they’re informed that they too are recreational drug users – seems quite common to pretend otherwise). There may also be other factors at play like for instance do users stay up later, and hence get less sleep, when they’re using their chosen drug? I would also surmise that the arbitrary persecution to which cannabis users are subjected tends to make them sensitive to any, even valid, criticism of their chosen drug or references to potential dangers thereof.

Back to caffeine. According to The Independent a cup of instant coffee has 45mg and tea has 40mg. Either they’re making very watery coffee or very strong tea. The former I think. Then again every article I have looked at has different numbers reported. With caffeine I have twice in my life suffered a reversal of tolerance and currently cannot consume even a single mug of filter coffee without suffering from caffeine overload. I have so far had no luck re-developing a tolerance for it. Annoying as I really like coffee.

No, what I think reveals Dr Goldacre to be a true polymath is his use of “unblameless”, which would suggest a knowledge of the rules of Newspeak, as set out by Orwell in the Appendix to Nineteen Eighty-Four. Most people – including one or two here – obviously skip this bit, but as a pointer to how politicians, health pressure groups such as nutritionists and homeopaths, media commentators etc twist and degrade language to suit their purposes and hoodwink us, it is unbeatable. Perhaps unknowingly, but certainly ironically, Dr Goldacre gave us an excellent example of these charlatans’ “goodthinkfulness”.

Fair point – I meant parameter.

‘Given we don’t know the population, what use is any kind of estimate of ‘precision’? Precision of the estimate of what?’

As you say this is arguable, but the population is defined by the sampling procedure (not by what the researchers say they sampled). I think its OK to think the sample as a sample of some population – and in this case the sampling procedures makes it very hard to say anything useful about what population. This is a fairly standard interpretation (e.g., in Hays, 1973, Statistics for the Social Sciences). More importantly, if your argument is taken at face value it means we can virtually never calculate SEs, CIs or p values – because we can never ensure every member of the population has an equal probability of selection during sampling. Scientists also rarely work with defined finite populations (and assuming an infinite population is slightly conservative in that it increases the width of a CI).

Reporting a mean without a CI (or SE) is nearly always worse than reporting it with the CI. Just giving the point estimate can give an impression of false certainty. (A common problem with reporting just point estimates and p values). Anyway, the problem here was more with the press release than the paper (a short report in a specialist journal).

Mind as long as the dead aren’t coming round to bite you on the neck or doing the whole “Night of the living dead” thing I don’t see the problem myself, they can even come round for coffee

“Imagine that I’m stood” is an informal way of saying: “Imagine that I’m standing”.

NB “stood” is the past participle form here, not the past form
so your example sentence “I am gave a shit” should be “I am given a shit”

however, “give” is a transitive verb, whereas “stand” is intransitive

therefore “I am given a shit” isn’t correct as an informal way of saying “I am giving a shit”, because “I am given a shit” is a passive construction, meaning “somebody gives me a shit”

phew…
aren’t we boring

On guarana there is brief mention in ‘Adverse events of herbal food supplements for body weight reduction: systematic review’ Pittler, Schmidt & Ernst (Obesity Reviews (2005) 6, 93–111) but only few lines (and was combination preparation): adverse effects included ‘irritability, heart palpitations, anxiety and other central nervous system
events’. Review say guarana contains caffeine and used as weight loss aid….which you don’t appear to need…….

Another paper is by Subbiah ‘Guarana consumption. A review of health benefits and risks’ (Alt Complement Ther 4,212–213 (2005)) – I’ve not read

On coffee – at weekend I came across a website encouaging curious bathroom antics with coffee via a different orifice (http://www.natureworx.com/downloads/The_coffee_enema-1.pdf)‘Circling the feet and hands helps to get you through waves of peristalsis’

LL

What idiots!

Shall we agree to disagree?

Well said.

Nerd, can you point me to the data that shows that wearing a parachute increases your life expectancy when jumping out of a plane? You see, someone claimed that it is helpful, but there s nothing in the data to support this. I cannot find any reference to a double blind trial, I can’t find any peer-reviewed studies, and I cannot even find a pilot study comparing survivability with or without a ‘chute. Is it bad science to rely on anecdotal data here? If not, why not? Why is the noting of the existence of a marijuana hangover any different?

I really do hope that no-one actually involved in science makes this sort of petulant demand, misunderstanding that not every truth is only true once there is published and verified research available.

I assume that you are not a user yourself (the change in my friends who are regular users is enough to convince me that the dangers are very plausible), who is just desperately trying to convince yourself that it has no negative effects…

Well, it would prevent people from being misled into thinking that it could be used to generate a valid confidence interval around the estimate.

The sampling variance that is estimated by the SE allows you to say how precise your estimate of the population parameter is, not the statistic, as you suggest.

Given we don’t know the population, what use is any kind of estimate of ‘precision’? Precision of the estimate of what?

I know people do argue about this, so I guess there are different views. From a survey background, though, I would say that if we are working with defined finite populations, it is misleading to generate inferential statistics, especially for non-specialist consumption.