Thursday, July 7, 2011

Bad Epidemiology

While in South Africa a few months ago, an irritating yet clever radio announcer, during a joke-based interlude between songs, made the following comment:

"Research has shown that insomnia leads to depression. Other research has shown that depression leads to insomnia. Still other research has shown that research leads to more research."

Seems like a great indictment of some of less-than-careful, data mining-y studies that often find their way into decent journals and on the evening new. (Note: I'm not anti-epidemiology.)

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