How Scammers Distort Science

So why should you care? People who are desperate for reliable information face a bewildering array of diet guidance—salt is bad, salt is good, protein is good, protein is bad, fat is bad, fat is good—that changes like the weather. But science will figure it out, right? Now that we’re calling obesity an epidemic, funding will flow to the best scientists and all of this noise will die down, leaving us with clear answers to the causes and treatments. Or maybe not. Even the well-funded, serious r...

 Quantity of Time Spent with Children has No Impact on Out...

Does the amount of time children spend with their mothers matter for children’s behavioral, emotional, and academic outcomes? The results from ordinary least squares regression models for the child sample are shown in Table 2. There were no statistically significant associations between maternal time of either type and any child outcome. In contrast, social status resources, as measured by mother’s education, family income, and family structure, was related to some outcomes. Mother’s educatio...

 Mindfulness Programs Improves Learning

This is the first systematic review and meta-analysis to summarize data available on the effects of mindfulness-based trainings for children and youths in a school setting. Twenty-four studies were located that report a significant medium effect size of g = 0.40 across all controlled studies and domains. Remarkably, the ES of studies using pre-post designs only is very similar, with g = 0.41. The effects are strongest in the domain of cognitive performance with a large and significant ES of g...

 Correlation != Causation; However, It is Often All We Have

> correlation doesn't mean causation. As a statistician, I guess I should be happy that more people are aware of this. But I also think too many people are taking "correlation != causation" superficially. I mean, almost all of science is based on significant correlational findings, especially when the traditional way to prove causation (i.e. via randomized trial) is unethical (i.e. we can't randomly assign people to be insured vs. uninsured). Along these lines, I often find people who sa...