Phrasing something a different way can flip its apparent meaning. Here’s an example. A press release begins by saying this:
“Adults over 50 who sleep for five hours or less per night have a greater risk of developing more than one chronic disease…”
Now re-phrase that — in a way that is equally true — and its apparent meaning, suggesting what causes what, seems to become almost opposite:
“Adults over 50 who have a greater risk of developing more than one chronic disease… sleep for five hours or less per night…”
That press release, and that study
That press release, dated October 18, 2022, is headlined “Golden slumbers: shorter sleep in later life linked with multimorbidity“. It concerns a study published in the research journal PLoS Medicine.
The study, the subject of the press release, is: Sabia S, Dugravot A, Léger D, Ben Hassen C, Kivimaki M, Singh-Manoux A (2022) Association of sleep duration at age 50, 60, and 70 years with risk of multimorbidity in the UK: 25-year follow-up of the Whitehall II cohort study. PLoS Med 19(10): e1004109. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1004109
How it plays out in the press
You can see how this plays out in news reports by doing a little googling. Or closely reading the New York Times report., which says: “a recent study found that adults over 50 who slept for five hours or less each night had a greater risk of developing chronic diseases than those who slept for at least seven hours.”