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Originally Posted by sapiens
Also, I disagree that you can prove that almost anything "holds water" with statistics (and that it's a problem with statistics):
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All points taken, and I've learned a lot from what you've said. My only point was that statistics is part math/science, part art... and the art (interpretation) part is where I get suspicious. You're right that in a peer-reviewing journal, at least it's all out there to be examined... but your average layperson is not going to know how to examine it. They are just going to say, "Look at this study, it says that this is true!" Hell, even though I've taken a few grad-level stats classes, clearly I'm still clueless about a lot of it!
Statistics aside, I was just reading about the small community in the Westman Islands of Iceland, where there was 80% infant mortality until the 1840s. They sent a woman abroad to be trained as a midwife, and infant mortality went down significantly after that point. 80%!! Yay for freebirthing.
