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GidMK's profile
Health Nerd
Health Nerd
Health Nerd
Verified account
@GidMK

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Health NerdVerified account

@GidMK

Epidemiologist. Writer (Guardian, Observer etc). "Well known research trouble-maker". PhDing at @UoW Host of @senscipod Email gidmk.healthnerd@gmail.com he/him

Sydney, New South Wales
theguardian.com/profile/gideon…
Joined November 2015

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    1. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 9 Oct 2019

      Health Nerd Retweeted CNN

      This study has gone a bit viral because apparently puppies are going to save our lives Sadly, that's pretty unlikely to be true 🐶🐶🐶https://twitter.com/CNN/status/1181558654044119041 …

      Health Nerd added,

      CNNVerified account @CNN
      Dog owners are 24 percent less likely to die for any reason, but the life-prolonging benefits are even higher for anyone with cardiovascular disease, according to two new studies https://cnn.it/2B4MjsN 
      6 replies 7 retweets 24 likes
      Show this thread
    2. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 9 Oct 2019

      I should stay at the start - dogs are amazing, we don't deserve their love BUT Facts are still importantpic.twitter.com/UTslm6eU9g

      1 reply 2 retweets 11 likes
      Show this thread
    3. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 9 Oct 2019

      Study is here: https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/CIRCOUTCOMES.119.005554 …

      1 reply 0 retweets 2 likes
      Show this thread
    4. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 9 Oct 2019

      The researchers did what's know as a systematic review and meta-analysis, looking at all of the studies on dog ownership and health that they could findpic.twitter.com/d6M7e9Xpzu

      1 reply 0 retweets 2 likes
      Show this thread
      Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 9 Oct 2019

      They then pooled the numbers from all of these studies into a meta-analysis, which showed that owning a dog was associated with a 24% decreased risk of death, overallpic.twitter.com/J72bvsJGgQ

      2:41 PM - 9 Oct 2019
      • 4 Likes
      • JW "Good news is good, bad news is bad" Oliver Carolyn Parsons 🇦🇴🇵🇹🇺🇸🏳️‍🌈🖌🐄🔬 Christina Carolyn
      1 reply 0 retweets 4 likes
        1. New conversation
        2. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 9 Oct 2019

          So why am I not going out to corral every dog I can find? Well, there were a few significant issues with the studypic.twitter.com/Jjx2YE3zBX

          1 reply 0 retweets 5 likes
          Show this thread
        3. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 9 Oct 2019

          First up, we have what's known as statistical heterogeneity Basically, this means that the studies that the researchers found and analyzed together were very different, making the analysis less reliablepic.twitter.com/hJwm6VVoLV

          1 reply 0 retweets 5 likes
          Show this thread
        4. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 9 Oct 2019

          How different were these studies? Well, a commonly-used measure to assess heterogeneity is the I^2 statistic. A value between 0-50% is considered "low" This study found I^2 between 96-98% (except for one subgroup analysis)pic.twitter.com/h078Q4zngn

          2 replies 0 retweets 4 likes
          Show this thread
        5. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 9 Oct 2019

          This makes sense, because the studies that they found were VERY DIFFERENT For example, one study looked at ~everyone in Sweden~, while another looked only at elderly women with hypertensionpic.twitter.com/ar19xXbniu

          1 reply 0 retweets 6 likes
          Show this thread
        6. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 9 Oct 2019

          But that wasn't the biggest issue The biggest issue was that this piece of research didn't look at confounding factors At allpic.twitter.com/z7jrTWYspY

          1 reply 1 retweet 8 likes
          Show this thread
        7. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 9 Oct 2019

          Now, I bang on about observational research and the problems with causality, but that's usually in well-controlled studies where residual confounding might potentially be an issue

          1 reply 0 retweets 3 likes
          Show this thread
        8. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 9 Oct 2019

          Here, we have a piece of research that didn't control for any factors other than dog ownership ~at all~ It's not hard to see how this might make the results a bit problematicpic.twitter.com/9ZY2Jp6csH

          1 reply 1 retweet 6 likes
          Show this thread
        9. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 9 Oct 2019

          Essentially, it means that this study just looked at a simple association Dog owners die a bit less than non-owners That's it!

          2 replies 1 retweet 6 likes
          Show this thread
        10. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 9 Oct 2019

          Dog owners are often very different to non-owners in important ways From the Swedish study I mentioned above, owners were more educated, married more often, more likely to have kids, etcpic.twitter.com/LmYkqrlFuE

          1 reply 3 retweets 7 likes
          Show this thread
        11. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 9 Oct 2019

          What this means is that there are literally hundreds of explanations for dog owners being more healthy than non-owners that have nothing to do with the dogs Funnily enough, that's something that the authors noted in the studypic.twitter.com/BWzTi99vJs

          1 reply 1 retweet 5 likes
          Show this thread
        12. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 9 Oct 2019

          Basically, healthy people might be more likely to buy dogs Thus, dog owners die less Association rather than causation

          2 replies 3 retweets 14 likes
          Show this thread
        13. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 9 Oct 2019

          And the mechanisms of dogs saving our lives are a bit flimsy. Some minor reductions in blood pressure =/= lifesaving

          2 replies 0 retweets 3 likes
          Show this thread
        14. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK 9 Oct 2019

          So...puppies probably aren't saving our lives They're still great tho, you should definitely get one Adopt, don't shop!pic.twitter.com/n0a6UOHvZf

          1 reply 2 retweets 9 likes
          Show this thread
        15. End of conversation

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