this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2024
440 points (95.8% liked)

News

23259 readers
3229 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

If you have noticed a sudden accumulation of wrinkles, aches and pains or a general sensation of having grown older almost overnight, there may be a scientific explanation. Research suggests that rather than being a slow and steady process, aging occurs in at least two accelerated bursts.

The study, which tracked thousands of different molecules in people aged 25 to 75, detected two major waves of age-related changes at around ages 44 and again at 60. The findings could explain why spikes in certain health issues including musculoskeletal problems and cardiovascular disease occur at certain ages.

“We’re not just changing gradually over time. There are some really dramatic changes,” said Prof Michael Snyder, a geneticist and director of the Center for Genomics and Personalized Medicine at Stanford University and senior author of the study.

“It turns out the mid-40s is a time of dramatic change, as is the early 60s – and that’s true no matter what class of molecules you look at.”

...

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 49 points 2 months ago (3 children)

The research tracked 108 volunteers

Not enough to actually mean anything.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 months ago (1 children)

My favorite part of science discourse will always be people self-reporting how little they understand science the math behind statistics by complaining about sample sizes that have nothing wrong with them

[–] [email protected] -5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Statistics? Statistically speaking they studied 0.00000135% of the population all located in California.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Again, proving the point

I don't have the time or energy to do a full statistic course, but there's the whole thing of sampling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_(statistics)

For a very basic example, say you have 1 million people, 200 000 prefers burgers, and 800 000 prefers pizza, then say out you pick people out randomly from the group of 1 million people

How many do you need to pick out to have a 95% certainty that the ratio falls within 95% of the general distribution in the population? The answer is: 246. 246 is a big enough sample size for a 95% confidence that you are within 95% of the range of the general population distribution in this specific example

There's a lot more to this, of course, but hopefully this is sufficient to showcase that you do not need large amounts of data to derive conclusive results

Usually in a scientific context you go more the route of calculating the confidence percentage that the data you got is random, also known as null-hypothesis testing, where the confidence percentage is the p-value. So the inverse of that is the confidence that it's not random

But, again, there's so much more to statistics than this, this is just the very basics.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

I understand sampling, but the sample doesn’t represent the human population. Do the same test to 108 in Okinawa or any other blue zone and watch the results be different.

That’s like only sampling the burger people and then concluding that most people like burgers.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Assuming that people are biologically different enough between these two areas that is, or some other localized cause of aging at these years. Which I don't find particularly likely, but yes, it is an assumption

As always, bigger studies are desirable, but idk if it's much of a criticism of studies. These are for a scientific audience, after all

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

You're ignoring so many factors though. Lifestyle, diets, different genetic background, etc.
Would those make a difference, I don't know. But science doesn't operate by saying "we'll just ignore all these possible variables and make an assumption." Having a sample of people all from one US State then applying that to the entire world's population is not good science.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I nominate NineMileTower for a Pulitzer Prize

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I’ll take my Nobel Prize now.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago
[–] [email protected] 49 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Read further in that paragraph:

Researchers assessed 135,000 different molecules (RNA, proteins and metabolites) and microbes (the bacteria, viruses and fungi living in the guts and on the skin of the participants).

Also, see the previous article in Nature linked in the article. That study looked at fewer proteins, but had over 4,000 participants.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

I mean, that makes me even more skeptical. 108 volunteers tracked for that many sparesely populated vectors is 100% going to have hundreds of false positives just due to statistical noise.