Ellen came out with a new book at the end of last year called The Mindful Body: Thinking Our Way to Chronic Health, which is about the physiological, the health benefits of mindfulness. And it’s very interesting, she has a lot of studies, right? This is very data-based, and some of the results of these studies are kind of amazing. ... You can think of it as kind of like the placebo effect. You take some pill that really isn’t anything at all and your mind coaxes your body into getting better.The comments are mostly negative, and a statistician responds:
I don’t think the data are there. To be precise, some relevant data exist, but, from the published papers, I don’t see these data providing good evidence for many of the claims being made.I would not be too hard on Carroll, as this is out of his expertise. I just post this as a public service, in case you think that you are getting hard science from the podcast. Carroll must know that the podcast is nonsense, as comments to him explain it.More generally, statements such as “This is very data-based” and “the data are there” are nothing but empty hype if you can’t point to the actual data and their relation to the (justly) controversial scientific claims. Otherwise, you’re just bullshitting. You could just as well interview someone about the Loch Ness Monster or whatever and say “This is very data-based” over and over and hope your listeners don’t go and check.
I do criticize him for many-worlds, as that is in his expertise, and there is no data to support that either.
No comments:
Post a Comment