http://www.forbes.com/forbeslife/he...cout603982.html

The gist of the study is that alcohol may cause more damage to cognitive abilities in women than men. But what I really found interesting was this:

quote:

The non-alcoholics were more educated, a factor that might have marginally affected the results, she said.

Well that's just great. How exactly do we intend to measure how much "damage" alcohol has done to someone's cognitive abilities, if we don't know how good their cognitive abilities were before the alcohol? I mean, for all these people know it's just women who have poorer abilities in the first place that tend to become alcoholic.

I mean really, this whole methodology is so plainly absurd, I really can't imagine what kind of incompetent person would have come up with it in the first place. You've got 170 people. You have no idea how they would have performed prior to their alcohol abuse, much less how they're perform tomorrow when they might have got more or less sleep, or when they didn't have a headache, or in two years or two years ago. And somehow we're supposed to ignore all of that, and accept that their performance at these certain tasks is somehow a valid measure of how much damage they have sustained from alcohol use? Dear lord...

quote:

Originally posted by Arbiter http://www.forbes.com/forbeslife/he...cout603982.html The gist of the study is that alcohol may cause more damage to cognitive abilities in women than men. But what I really found interesting was this: Well that's just great. How exactly do we intend to measure how much "damage" alcohol has done to someone's cognitive abilities, if we don't know how good their cognitive abilities were before the alcohol? I mean, for all these people know it's just women who have poorer abilities in the first place that tend to become alcoholic. I mean really, this whole methodology is so plainly absurd, I really can't imagine what kind of incompetent person would have come up with it in the first place. You've got 170 people. You have no idea how they would have performed prior to their alcohol abuse, much less how they're perform tomorrow when they might have got more or less sleep, or when they didn't have a headache, or in two years or two years ago. And somehow we're supposed to ignore all of that, and accept that their performance at these certain tasks is somehow a valid measure of how much damage they have sustained from alcohol use? Dear lord...

one word, ethics.


its the best they can do. I am all for measuring cog ability and then making some people drink and some not drink, but its not in the cards.

mmmk..

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201

quote:

Originally posted by Boomer187 one word, ethics. its the best they can do. I am all for measuring cog ability and then making some people drink and some not drink, but its not in the cards.

1. make cognitive tests on a massive amount of random people
2. wait 10 years
3. make cognitive tests again on as much people of the same group as you can, make sure to know who were the small percentage that abused alcohol during these 10 years
4. analyse the results

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oh and as far as individual differences goes, as your N in your study increases (you get more people), the effects of individual differences decreases, they just wash out. 170 seems a little low to me, but anything above 200 is generally acceptable.

I feel insulted

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doctor says that a glass of wine every night is actually good for you.

that article says that at-risk women are those who have 7 or more drinks per week.

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from my limited reading of studies (pubmed and whatever's available at the local uni), i've gathered that a large percentage of them are conducted with such methodological fallacies.

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quote:

Originally posted by LuNaSeA doctor says that a glass of wine every night is actually good for you. that article says that at-risk women are those who have 7 or more drinks per week.

POWNED!


I have 50+ drinks per week.

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quote:

Originally posted by ******** Seplling don't demonstrate intelligence and educatoin - knowing does.

Well studies are hard to conduct effectively. It's difficult to find a sample of people that are very similar so that results are not a product of the differences of the people but the effect of whatever you are testing on them. The smaller the group in the study, the less the results can be projected on the general public as well. Unless studies are done correctly and effectively and use the right people the results are not likely to reflect the actual effects of whatever was being experimented with. Basically, don't completely trust studies. They are useful in providing us with general results and conclusions when done properly but I believe more often they're not.

Plus, it's common sense alcohol (excessive consumption) will decrease cognitive effect just as many other drugs would in excessive amounts. They're trying to measure the actual effect but this is almost impossible to do because the effect is going to vary because of a person's brain, previous substance abuse, education, etc. The message of the study should be "don't drink in excessive amounts if you want your brain to be in good working order." It shouldn't be "such and such group is more effected by alcohol, excessive use or not." This is the end doesn't tell you shit, all it shows is that some university is wasting money and time on things we either already know or really don't care about.

huh?

*drinks Amberbock*