What Are Friends for? A Longer Life

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/21/health/21well.html?8dpc

by robg • 17 years ago

26 11 17 years ago

nytimes.com

asciilifeform• 17 years ago

Why is no one questioning which way the causation arrow is pointing in such studies?

jnovek• 17 years ago

Well, take this statement --

"In 2006, a study of nearly 3,000 nurses with breast cancer found that women without close friends were four times as likely to die from the disease as women with 10 or more friends."

The results cited in the article seem to only imply a correlation. It seems like the author of the article implied causation to add a bit of journalistic flair. After all, it would be a much less interesting article if it simply stated correlations.

dejb• 17 years ago

"In 2006, a study of nearly 3,000 nurses with breast cancer found that women without close friends were four times as likely to die from the disease as women with 10 or more friends."

You could always argue that there was a common cause to both the lack of friends and the lack of survival. Perhaps you'd call it a 'life force' until you worked out the details. Perhaps there is a gene that manifests as both solitude seeking and reduced survival options.

Whatever the case I think a lot of people would prefer articles like this to at least mention that there are other possibilities rather than spending time on fluffy and frankly uninteresting anecdotes.

nazgulnarsil• 17 years ago

because to most people "causation" is a confusing concept in the first place.

christofd• 17 years ago

Why are all these NYT top articles showing up on here? I can read the NYT myself. Don't really need HN to mention them. Just my two cents...

mariana• 17 years ago

that, and the fact that is needed an account to access nytimes... post a free link please.

whughes2• 17 years ago

Register the account using a throwaway email address. NY Times is one of the most linked sites here, and the content is certainly worth the small amount of effort.

jcl• 17 years ago

The same can be said of many sites... s/NYT/engadget, techcrunch, etc.

If you have a particular set of sites that you don't want to see, you can use Xichekolas' Greasemonkey script to filter them out. It adds a configuration "toolkit" link to the HN page header. (http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/25039)

What Are Friends for? A Longer Life

Related Stories