
Don't Blame Sitting — Yet — for Shorter Lives of the Sedentary - forgingahead
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444097904577536880563432896.html
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pessimizer
Step 1: Flurry of fearmongering articles that appeal to the prejudices of the
target audience with logical hole large enough to drive a freight train
through (usually correlation=causation/post-hoc reasoning or statistical
silliness.)

Step 2: sell tons of papers, products, and ads to the credulous.

Step 3: point out logical flaw.

Step 4: sell tons of papers and ads to the incredulous.

Step 5: profiles of the people who were influenced by the original story,
painting them as crazies (or are they visionaries? You, the reader, decide!)

Step 6: sell tons of papers and ads to the gawkers.

Final disposition: People get stupider as a result of reading the paper than
they would have been by completely avoiding it, and they completely dismiss
everything they read, relying instead on their prejudices and what they heard
from a guy once.

edit: I've noticed the successful garbage health panics seem to be structured
like sympathetic magic (like-with-like, metaphors, symbolic connections.) For
example, "Study Finds Depression Causes Death in Close Relatives" won't work,
but "Study Finds Depression Causes Heart Disease" does. I think of this one as
"Study Finds Standing Up Prevents Lying Down."

~~~
Produce
Step 1: throw all your newspapers in the bin, cancel your subscriptions and
point all of the major news sites' URL's to 127.0.0.1.

Step 2: start reading scientific journals and other high quality sources of
information.

Step 3: call all of your friends idiots for not doing the same.

Step 4: begin to hate your life more and more because you can't identify with
the appaling ignorance that surrounds you.

Pessimistic step 5: throw yourself off of a tall building.

Optimistic step 5: build a rocket ship and fly to the moon.

Final disposition: you are no longer a part of society at large.

~~~
a_bonobo
Uncritically reading every scientific paper you come across and taking the
information in there for absolute truth is dangerous and a problem many
untrained journalists have.

You need to have a background in sciences and a minimal understanding of
statistics to properly judge the results - is the sample-size large enough, is
it varied enough, did they use the correct statistical test for correlation -
lots of papers out there are absolute crap (either unrepeatable results or
missing mountains of needed information), published just because someone was
friends with the editor or all peer-reviewers were asleep that day.

Note: Even the mythical Open Access doesn't help with this problem, as there
too are editors deciding in favor of their friends and peer-reviewers gone
fishing.

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gpcz
The WSJ previously wrote an article titled "Sitting for More Than Three Hours
A Day Cuts Life Expectancy," and now they backpedal by writing an entire
article summarizing that correlation does not necessarily imply causation.
Unfortunately, the damage is already done. The Illusion-Of-Truth effect (
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implicit_memory#Illusion-of-
tr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implicit_memory#Illusion-of-truth_effect)
) is a cognitive bias that states people will believe familiar statements,
sometimes even after being told they're false.

~~~
reinhardt
Speaking of correlation, it would be interesting to see if there is one
between the publication of these two WSJ articles and the sales of standing
desks.

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Alex3917
These studies on sitting on completely overblown. One of the most consistent
findings that holds true across all cultures is that the more years of
schooling people have, the longer they live. If sitting was really all bad for
you, this wouldn't be the case since not only is schooling a highly sedentary
activity, but people with more schooling are also much more likely to have
sedentary jobs.

~~~
graeme
You're ignoring the possibility that sitting is bad, but the negative impact
is outweighed by the other advantages accompanied by education.

(Not saying that's the true explanation)

~~~
Alex3917
"You're ignoring the possibility that sitting is bad, but the negative impact
is outweighed by the other advantages accompanied by education."

I mean that's basically what I believe to be the case. Even if sitting is bad
for you, which I'm not convinced of but which wouldn't especially surprise me,
I'm sure that for many people the good effects of sitting can outweigh the
bad, not just in school but all throughout life.

~~~
dllthomas
Those aren't "good effects of sitting", they are good effects of other things
which typically involve sitting. The place most people I've talked to went,
when seeing the original article, was talking about standing desks. If it is
in fact the sitting-as-opposed-to-standing that is having an impact, that
would be a good way of having the benefits of a desk job without the sitting.
I don't think anyone read it and said, "Oh, I'd better quit my cushy desk job
and become a coal miner."

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aimatt
I made my own standing desk and I've been using it for a year now. I won't go
back because just by doing that, I have more energy through the day. Who cares
what the flip-flopping WSJ keeps saying.

~~~
tptacek
You are very possibly harming yourself far more with a standing desk than you
would by sitting. Sitting is correlated with fat metabolism issues, but
standing for periods of just 10-15 minutes is correlated with vascular
disease; standing was shown in studies to correlate with increased stress
hormones and increased blood density.

You are better off setting a timer and, every 20-30 minutes or so, getting up
and moving around (you don't have to exercise strenously; just walking for a
couple minutes from one spot to another seems to do it).

~~~
vwoolf
_Sitting is correlated with fat metabolism issues, but standing for periods of
just 10-15 minutes is correlated with vascular disease; standing was shown in
studies to correlate with increased stress hormones and increased blood
density._

[Citation needed]

This isn't meant as a threat, either: I'd be quite interested in a
comprehensive literature review of this stuff.

It reminds me a bit of the brouhaha around barefoot running: some decent
evidence suggests barefoot is "better," while some suggests that forefoot
striking is really the key. Expert opinion is split.

~~~
qu4z-2
I always thought the main argument for barefoot running was that it makes heel
strikes and other things noticeably unpleasant, thus encouraging proper
technique (forefoot striking).

Source: I don't run, but I read an article once.

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rwhitman
Isn't it obvious that sitting for prolonged periods of time is completely
unnatural? We have evolved to run, jump, climb, not spend 8 hrs a day
compressing our spines - it is only in the last 100 or so years that sedentary
occupations have become the norm

~~~
sliverstorm
How can you say it is completely unnatural?

First, have you ever seen cheetahs? Even in their natural environment, they
laze about almost all day.

Second, we are intrinsically lazy, and not because "the modern world has
corrupted us".

Notice I am not claiming that our bodies were in fact designed to sit forever,
but can we really declare it is "obvious" that sitting for a long time is
against our nature?

~~~
nhebb
> Second, we are intrinsically lazy

From an evolutionary standpoint, it makes sense that we would preserve energy.
Food wasn't always plentiful, and unnecessary calorie burning would work
against survival and propagation of the species.

~~~
sliverstorm
Precisely.

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RageKit
Wow, that viral campaign to sell standing desk begins to get really weird.

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DLWormwood
This is the same old “correlation is not causation” thing that the press never
seems to understand.

Move along; nothing to see here…

~~~
joe_the_user
This mis-characterizes the article. "Correlation is not causation" can be said
about anything. The article has a number of specific findings which weaken the
original finding.

Just about every strong and weak scientific finding involves correlation.
"Correlation is not causation" comes into play most strongly when a
correlation seems assign causation to something with no clear underlying
physical mechanism - leap years and stock market behavior, etc. But one could
imagine a number of plausible physical mechanism whereby sitting could be back
bad for one. That still doesn't prove it but it different lines of reasoning
could appropriate.

~~~
pessimizer
But the obvious correlation is that of the million situations that could cause
someone to sit more, more of them lead to early death than extended life. For
example, asthma, arteriosclerosis, and obesity are known to lead to both
situations.

When a study comes out that exhaustively controls for at least all of known
factors that cause both situations being correlated, give me a call.

