This article repeats the common mistake of conflating correlations and causality. The main results are (1) that PM2.5 exposure is correlated with dementia in humans, (2) some experimental results with mice. This does not establish causality in humans. The paper is careful to stay juuuust on the right side of the line by carefully using "associated" in the right places. But the press release discards that pretense at rigor and jumps straight to full-on claims of causality in people:
> Long-term exposure accelerates the development of Lewy body dementia and Parkinson’s disease with dementia in people who are predisposed to the conditions.
I think it's entirely possible (perhaps even likely) that this is true. But the paper does not show it.
You’re being sarcastically dismissive, but this is a real possibility. The real world is complicated and disorders with environmental effects are often multi-factorial.
Air pollution might not be the direct cause, it might be a proxy measurement that is correlated with some other factor or factors that contribute to dementia risk. For example, do areas with higher air pollution measurements also have higher or lower rates of something else that is actually contributing to the dementia directly? Do they simply correlate with overall development of the area, and therefore areas with poor pollution numbers also have high levels of water pollution?
Probably not that, but it could be something else that also correlates with pollution like living in big cities, or working in a factory, walking more/less, noise levels, lifestyle, etc
Dementia is linked to diabetes. And diabetes risk is increased for African-Americans. And African-Americans live in high-pollution urban areas for entirely historical reasons.
So some amount of the causation here does go in the way opposite to what a person might naively suspect.
> Dementia is linked to diabetes. And diabetes risk is increased for African-Americans. And African-Americans live in high-pollution urban areas for entirely historical reasons
A is correlated with B. B is causally correlated with C, i.e. C causes B. (C is correlated with D.) Hence C causes A.
Let’s replace. Flowers are correlated with bees. Bees are caused by hives. (Hives are correlated with trees.) Hence, hives cause flowers.
People who are poorer and have worse health are predisposed to live in cheaper dwellings, many of which are closer to roads and thus more noisy and with more air pollution.
People who are poorer and have worse health, also have an increased incidence of dementia, seemingly independently of the number of particles in their dwellings.
I’m not sure this is a completely valid statement. Take Ontario - the most expensive places to live are in Toronto with the most traffic, the cheapest places are more rural without that heavy traffic and thus less pollution.
There might be some hidden variable at play that's correlated both air pollution that is really causing the dementia. Like street noise. Not saying it's likely, but it's not impossible.
In rural areas it's pesticides. And in urban areas it's dry cleaners and air pollution. Parkinson's Plan is worth a read for the kind of details you can't get on a single article
Why is this brought up here every time an association article is mentioned, every undergraduate that took a statistics course has covered the difference between correlation and causation.
We do population level correlation studies because sometimes a double blind study is unethical, and double blind studies is the bar for establishing causation in the medical community. We cannot give one person randomly worse air to breath, and even if it were experimentally feasible it would be ethically impossible because there is strong suspicion we would be harming the subjects.
Let’s discuss the actual data. The dose dependent result that was found is an indicator of a strong relationship. There is a clear potential mechanism of action (Air -> Lungs -> Bloodstream -> Brain). This isn’t a controversial result in the literature, it’s more evidence for what we already know —- air pollution is very bad.
You seem to be responding as if I claimed that population-level correlational studies are bad, or that I claimed that air pollution is not bad for you. But I did not claim either of those things.
What I claimed is that this press release takes a population-level correlational study and presents it in a misleading way that implies causation was established. Which this press release most certainly does.
The correlation != causation argument at large is usually a sophomoric dismal of valuable data, and I’d rather see discussion on the data or specifics to research methodology then this meta criticism.
Ultimately both exaggerating pop-sci articles and dismissive comments are contributing to public distrust of science.
Maybe the thought-terminating cliche should be posted as a comment by a bot at the top of every submission so there's a home for this sort of complaint.
> This isn’t a controversial result in the literature, it’s more evidence for what we already know —- air pollution is very bad.
It is certainly controversial for individuals whose way of life (see non-electric car-centric society) is being questioned by this science. Just look at some of the cynic answers in this thread pretending that air pollution is not bad
Just because air pollution is bad, doesn’t mean it is bad in this way. It could just as easily be that some other lifestyle thing is causing dementia AND leading to living in areas with worse pm2.5.
Especially since pm2.5 tends to be higher in areas with higher population densities, near roads, industrial areas, etc.
Hell, maybe the underlying major risk factor is actually time spent in the car. Or repeated viral exposures of a specific type. Or a specific type of air pollution.
Either way, it’s not like everyone is going to be moving out of high pm2.5 areas anytime soon, or that we’ll be able to just solve the sources of pollution right now even if it is the cause.
Wildfires are already illegal in California. As is producing a lot of noxious smoke! They even have an entire (rather large) government division (CALFIRE) responsible for stopping them.
For some reason, nature DGAF.
Or do you have some other policy proposal? Banning lightning or fire perhaps? Making trees illegal?
I was going to say something similar. Obviously I was just taking a visual look and not doing any rigorous analysis, but California certainly sticks out like a sore thumb. It has many areas in the Central Valley and Southern California with very high PM2.5 levels, but no "purple" areas with high dementia levels in the state. I also just read the article and not the study but I'd hope they give an explanation for that glaring outlier.
I'd be interested to compare the disease map with a map of average income, because at first glance the disease data looks to be correlated with wealth, and we already have tons of research that shows that wealth is one of the biggest determinants of health outcomes in the US.
I noticed this too. I do wonder what it would look like if you controlled for relocation (moving to another region and then developing symptoms), disease onset (both maps are for the same time ranges), and the types of pm 2.5 exposure.
The Parkinson's Plan talks extensively about the risk factors associated with the disease, and discussed the link between air pollution and the disease. They say that it is a trigger / cause that only sometimes works for reasons unknown (paraphrasing). Is a "sometimes cause" still causal?
It is unfortunate that the title and subheading of the article use a causal phrasing. Fortunately the body of the article does maintain the correct distinction.
(OP makes a good point, just going on a slight tangent here)
We really need a term that sits between correlation and causation in situations where data is difficult to come by. There's such a huge rift of meaning between these terms, and too often 'correlation is not causation' gets wheeled out in a room of people that already know that and are trying to figure out the nuances.
How about plausal? Aka it's rather plausible that there is a causal relationship between two things but causality is hard to prove.
"Air quality and dementia have a plausal relationship".
The bar for plausation is much lower, yet many correlates still won't meet it. "Bad air quality causes dementia" is a categorically different statement than "ice cream sales cause shark attacks", if we establish the category of plausal relationships.
FWIW, I think the wirecutter's quality for air purifiers is pretty bad, and likely more influenced by affiliate payments than science: https://dynomight.net/ikea-purifier/
I tried the cheap IKEA model and with my severe dust mite allergies the model was insufficient in comparison to calm my sixth sinus-bound sense.
My main suspicion: In my last 3 abodes with pre-1955 construction in East Coast, the pre-filter on the top Wirecutter pick needs to be cleaned 3x per carbon filter replacement in order to reduce largest particle accumulation on the carbon or HEPA filters.
The inexpensive IKEA model did not have a viable and easily cleaned pre filter as far as I could figure out.
The ikea Fornuftig has a snap-on piece of cloth covered plastic that serves as a pre-filter, a replaceable particle filter, and a replaceable optional gas filter.
I've found that taking a shop vac and leaf blower to the pre-filter works quite well to get it clean.
That said, the Ikea air purifiers only make sense if you have a room that's about the right size for the Fornuftig. Their larger purifier is worse value, and you're better off looking at something like the Squair.
Head End Power (HEP) is the electrical power supplied from the locomotive to the passenger cars for lighting, heating, air conditioning and other amenities - essentially the "hotel load" that keeps your private car functioning while attached to the train.
Power generated on a train is probably significantly more expensive than power you can pull from the grid. Most of Amtrak's network does not have power so I assume they rely on generators on the train.
It’s also called “hotel” power and is provided by the locomotive, but separate from “needed to run” power. A train can run with just air and the physical connection, hotel comes with the big “other cable” connected.
Some private cars do NOT use it and instead have their own generator. In theory you could have one with no lights, etc at all.
I’ve been on an Amtrak where it lost hotel power; nothing but emergency lighting until they got to a station where they could swap the locomotive.
But the train kept running, and the conductor had to walk the entire train announcing stops verbally; with no PA system.
It's from the loco which in the US almost exclusively used electric propulsion, just for capex vs. opex balance sheet gaming reasons mostly (except in and around NYC (tunnels) and some very recent electrification efforts (I think bright line in FL was looking at electrifying some trains? Something recently did and improved performance that way.) sourced from medium speed diesel generators housed in the loco.
Way back in the day of steam heating was via open-cycle steam and electric lighting via generators on passenger car axles with a local battery to keep the lights on while stopped.
Eventually with the end of steam they switched to electric heating and can conveniently siphon off electric lights from that.
The people doing this at this point are mostly rich rail enthusiasts. No one is doing this to actually get around. The most popular routes are the more scenic ones, like through the mountains. They’re not hitching a car into the Acela to go from NYC to Boston.
And rail car enthusiast associations, which usually consist of passionate but not very rich people - they will pool money together to afford a trip like this every now and then, so usually they'll go "ok we got 20k in membership fees this quarter, where can we go with this money" - so yeah, it will absolutely matter to them.
Tangentially, someone I knew from school worked at the Franklin Mint for a while and he told me their collectibles customers were mostly moderately well-off empty-nesters who now had this money to spend but really weren't into second homes or fancy cars.
I'm not sure that is true — I mean the rich part is true, but not necessarily the rail enthusiast part. One of the times we took the California Zephyr there was a private car on the end that I understood to be some sports-team tycoon who was more or less afraid of flying.
You do see these cars up in South Station occasionally attached to the Regional. Ive always assumed more of a Boston -> DC routing for those. Entertain some guests, get business done etc.
I think the Cardinal is a popular route for a lot of those guys. It’s the scenic way to Chicago. Instead of going from NYC and sort of hugging the south shore of the Great Lakes, it goes south to Dc, then to Charlottesville and over the old C&O route over the Appalachians through Charleston, WV and on along the Ohio river to Cincinnati and then eventually Chicago.
Those prices seem in reach for a dream vacation that you save up for. You can rent railcars that are already approved. buying a custom rail car is possible but likely out of budget for normal people.
The nice ones are almost all old business cars. The business car was used by the railroads for senior executives to move around their systems, and hold meetings.. usually contain a couple of executive bedrooms, a staff bedroom (they typically carried a cook and a steward, although the roles were sometimes combined). The rear half or so of the car is an open plan lounge/meeting room.
The cars were usually built by a company like Pullman, usually from a time frame of roughly 1900 +/- 20 years.
Huge money pits, with tons of (often quite ornate) wood m, etc. then add the cost of restoration (again almost all of these cars are 100+ years old), retrofitting modern electrical systems, air conditioning. Could easily be a million dollar project.
Not really, you just need to get more people. The fanciest car holds 8, other cars hold 20 to 70 people. So if you divide the price the people it's not that bad.
The first time I realized this kind of thing was a tour of a baseball stadium. They showed us the suites. I forgot how much they cost but if you got a bunch of friends together to fill one then they were in the same range as medium good seats.
I'm confused. Usually a "natural experiment" is a chance event that affects some random subset of a population. Here, they seem to be using "natural experiment" to refer to the event that someone decides to move to a different city. But obviously the subset of people in Amarilllo, TX who decide to move to New York, NY are going to be somewhat different than the subset who don't. So isn't this confounded?
It's really strange that they just jump into the paper and keep saying "natural experiment" over and over again without any justification that they actually have one. They do eventually get to this in the "Selection effects in relocation and mobile app usage" section, but I think they really downplay the seriousness of the issue.
Thanks for pointing this out. I submitted a request to spamhaus but it's an auto-responder black hole that tells me to contact my "IT department". (My personal blog, oddly enough, does not have one.) They don't explain why this domain which has no ads, sells nothing, and never sends email would be listed.
Just to be clear, these are hidden prompts put in papers by authors meant to be triggered only if a reviewer (unethically) uses AI to generate their review. I guess this is wrong, but I find it hard not to have some sympathy for the authors. Mostly, it seems like an indictment of the whole peer-review system.
AI "peer" review of scientific research without a human in the loop is not only unethical, I would also consider it wildly irresponsible and down right dangerous.
I consider it a peer review of the peer review process
Back in high school a few kids would be tempted to insert a sentence such as "I bet you don't actually read all these papers" into an essay to see if the teacher caught it. I never tried it but the rumors were that some kids had got away with it. I just used it to worry less that my work was rushed and not very good, I told myself "the teacher will probably just be skimming this anyway; they don't have time to read all these papers in detail."
Aerosmith (e: Van Halen) banned brown M&Ms from their dressing room for shows and wouldn’t play if they were present. It was a sign that the venue hadn’t read the rider thoroughly and thus possibly an unsafe one (what else had they missed?)
> As lead singer David Lee Roth explained in a 2012 interview, the bowl of M&Ms was an indicator of whether the concert promoter had actually read the band's complicated contract. [1]
I wonder if they had to change that as the word leaked out. I can just see the promoter pointing out the bowl of M&Ms and then Roth saying "great, thank you, but the contract didn't say anything about M&Ms, now where is the bowl of tangerenes we asked for?"
To add to this, sometimes people would approach Van and ask about the brown M&Ms thing as soon as they received the contract. He would respond that the color wasn’t important, and he was glad they read the contract.
This reminds me of the tables-flipped version of this. A multiple choice test with 10 questions and a big paragraph of instructions at the top. In the middle of the instructions was a sentence: "skip all questions and start directly with question 10."
Question 10 was: "check 'yes' and put your pencil down, you are done with the test."
Because it would end up favoring research that may or may not be better than the honestly submitted alternative which doesn't make the cut, thereby lowering the quality of the published papers for everyone.
It ends up favoring research that may or may not be better than the honestly reviewed alternative, thereby lowering the quality of published papers in journal where reviewers tend to rely on AI.
That can't happen unless reviewers dishonestly base their reviews on AI slop. If they are using AI slop, then it ends up favoring random papers regardless of quality. This is true whether or not authors decide to add countermeasures against slop.
Only reviewers can ensure that higher quality papers get accepted and no one else.
I expect a reviewer using AI tools to query papers to do a half decent job even if they don’t check the results… if we assume the AI hasn’t been prompt injected. They’re actually pretty good at this.
Which is to say, if there were four selections to be made from ten submissions, I expect that humans and AI reviewers to select the same winning 4 quite frequently. I agree with the outrage of the reviewers deferring their expertise to AI on grounds of dishonesty among other reasons. But I concur with the people that do it that it would mostly work most of the time in selecting the best papers of a bunch.
I do not expect there to be any positive correlation between papers that are important enough to publish and papers which embed prompt injections to pass review. If anything I would expect a negative correlation—cheating papers are probably trash.
Doesn't feel wrong to me. Cheeky, maybe, but not wrong. If everyone does what they're supposed to do (i.e. no LLMs, or at least not lazy prompts "rate this paper" and then c/p the reply) then this practice makes no difference.
The basic incentive structure doesn’t make any sense at all for peer review. It is a great system for passing around a paper before it gets published, and detecting if it is a bunch of totally wild bullshit that the broader research community shouldn’t waste their time on.
For some reason we decided to use it as a load-bearing process for career advancement.
These back-and-forths, halfassed papers and reviews (now halfassed with AI augmentation) are just symptoms of the fact that we’re using a perfectly fine system for the wrong things.
I have a very simple maxim, which is: If I want something generated, I will generate it myself. Another human who generates stuff is not bringing value to the transaction.
I wouldn't submit something to "peer review" if I knew it would result in a generated response and peer reviewers who are being duplicitous about it deserve to be hoodwinked.
Maybe they have some light to show if they're on. But is everyone supposed to just know that? Pointing a video camera at everyone you talk to is an... interesting social choice. Glasses like these should be designed with a physical mechanisms to cover the cameras.
(author here) This wraps JAX and JAX's version of NumPy. It would surely require some development to keep up, although it's quite short and simple (only 700 lines), so I don't think it would be a big burden. That said, I should be clear that my goal here is just to show that this is possible/easy, and possibly inspire existing array packages to consider adding this kind of syntax.
I like your alternatives! I agree that having to write
X = dp.Slot()
before assigning to X is unfortunate. I settled on the current syntax mostly just because I thought it was the choice that made it most "obvious" what was happening under the hood. If you really want to, you could use the walrus operator and write
(X := dp.Slot())['i','j'] = ...
but this cure seems worse than the disease...
Actually, doing something like
X = new['i','j'] = ...
could simplify the implementation. Currently, a Slot has to act both like an Array and a Slot, which is slightly awkward. If new is a special object, it could just return an Array, which would be a bit nicer.
From the title, I read this expecting another lame observational study which I would probably distrust on the basis that it doesn't show anything causal. It's not that! Rather, if I understand it, they (1) took mice and introduced leukemia cells and (2) took human leukemia cell lines. In both cases, they found biomarkers related to leukemia growth.
(I welcome corrections to that understanding from experts!)
Personally, this seems far from convincing evidence that taurine in energy drinks is actually causing cancer. But it is suggestive and it seems like one might reasonably avoid taurine out of an "abundance of caution".
The inverse of this study, in which a nutrient that helps cells grow, including cancer cells, is the cause of cancer is that every substance they find that kills cells, but is slightly more likely to kill cancer cells than regular cells is suddenly the cure for cancer.
The paper (an extremely difficult one to comprehend, reminding us how complex this field of research has become) only glancingly mentions energy drinks because apparently they are sometimes used to offset the effects of chemotherapy. That is, the context in which they are mentioned is people who already have leukemia. The entire rest of the paper is about how taurine produced by the body's own cells contributes to the advancement of the established disease.
Taurine deficiency has been claimed to be a driver of aging [1]. The claim from the news article about it possibly being related to cancer seems like it needs a much stronger justification.
It's not published yet, but already a classic. (Might be more intermediate than beginner, though.)
For something a bit more gentle, I also recommend chapter 29 of this book: https://www.inference.org.uk/mackay/itila/book.html
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