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Re:Soda May Age You as Much as Smoking by tbrownaw on Tuesday October 21, 2014 @03:19PM (#8489237)
Their confidence intervals include 0 or nearly-0, their P-values are at or near the .05 cutoff, and they tested a bunch of different things and got results on a few that don't really make sense.

In related news, green jelly beans cause acne: https://xkcd.com/882/

Re:Soda May Age You as Much as Smoking by mikeyouse on Tuesday October 21, 2014 @05:15PM (#8490063)
> Their confidence intervals include 0 or nearly-0, their P-values are at or near the .05 cutoff

They ran two different models and found across all cohorts (correcting for age, race, BMI, marital status, smoking, history, physical activity levels, and education) that those who regularly consumed sugar-sweetened soda had statistically shorter telomeres -- and that this affect is correlated with the amount of consumption.

> Because of the model-based estimate in this sample of the age-associated rate of telomere shortening of 13.6 base pairs per year, this was equivalent to 1.9 additional years of aging for an 8-ounce serving of sugar-sweetened sodas. For a daily consumption of the current standard 20-ounce serving size for sugar-sweetened sodas, this corresponds to 4.6 additional years of aging.

This is good science, and treating it as less than that to set up a joke is pointless.

Re:Soda May Age You as Much as Smoking by Scientist007 on Tuesday October 21, 2014 @05:20PM (#8490098)
The "joke" points out an important flaw.
Re:Soda May Age You as Much as Smoking by mikeyouse on Tuesday October 21, 2014 @05:40PM (#8490240)
It really doesn't though.

Something tells me green-account "Scientist007", that you might not actually be a scientist.

Re:Soda May Age You as Much as Smoking by lotsofmangos on Wednesday October 22, 2014 @12:05PM (#8493334)
No, you have got it all wrong. They must surely be a secret-agent-scientist. That's why nobody understand them. They are using secret-science learned at spy-school that nobody else knows about.
Re:Soda May Age You as Much as Smoking by dang on Wednesday October 22, 2014 @04:06PM (#8494821)
Please avoid posting comments that lower the signal-noise ratio in HN threads.