The question “Is coffee good or bad for your health” just got settled once and for all again, with a new answer that contradicts many previous studies, again. A new study presents a conclusion that answers everything, or nothing, or both: “Association of Coffee Drinking with Total and Cause-Specific Mortality,” Neal D. Freedman, Ph.D. [pictured […]
Tag: life
Dr. Redfield, her pink hair, arsenic life and all that
A mini-documentary about pink-haired Dr. Redfield and her take on the much-publicized claim that a form of life in a lake in California has DNA with a curious chemical composition: [HT @scicurious]
A new standard way to measure the threshold of personal tragedy
Some skilled psychologists see big consequences aborning in seemingly trivial things. Here’s an example. This particular seemingly trivial thing happens — or doesn’t happen — at online dating sites. The researchers describe it in a quick phrase: “as indicated by fewer first visits to their dating profiles“. This is big: a newly-recognized threshold for assessing personal […]
Guess Bayesian-Bayesian to invent extraterrestrial stats
Today’s convoluted statistics exercise: Use Bayesian statistical methods to estimate the probability that Bayesian statistical methods will be invented by life that arises elsewhere in the universe. BACKGROUND: The Physics arXiv blog explains everything you need to know to make this estimate: The Drake equation is one of those rare mathematical beasts that has leaked into […]