🚀 go-pugleaf

"ipse dixit" <f@chance> wrote in message news:7u3t805qqt9dmnh6m4ketj40s3b53c0fp4@4ax.com...
<..>
> For the record, and to head off any criticism that I'm
> trying to assist Pearl here,

Heaven forbid!

> I've argued in the past that
> seventh day adventists, because of confounding factors,
> are a subset of people and so aren't representative of
> our population generally.
>
> [start]
> Their avoidance of baccy and booze make them confounding
> factors if the rest of us don't avoid these habits. Also, I might
> add, these figures are based on a small subset of people and
> aren't representative of the whole population. Making a judgment
> based on a hasty generalisation using an unrepresented sample is
> a logically flawed argument.
>
> Unrepresentative Sample
> AKA:  Biased Sample
> Type:  Weak Analogy
> N% of sample S has characteristic C.
> (Where S is a sample unrepresentative of the population P.)
>  Therefore, N% of population P has characteristic C.
>
> N% of the Seventh Day Adventists has characteristic C.
> C- live longer on a vegetarian diet.
> (SDA is a sample unrepresentative of the population P
> because they don't smoke or drink)
> Therefore N% of population P has characteristic C.
>
> You are trying to claim that N% of our population would
> live longer following a vegetarian diet similar to the N% of
> SDA, but you cannot because their confounding factors
> make them an unrepresentative sample
> [end] http://tinyurl.com/3ffoc

And I replied; http://tinyurl.com/2kdp9

In short;  SDA studies are also representative of the non-smoking,
non-drinking meat-eating and vegetarian general population. They
are helpful for determining the effects of diet alone, without the
confounding factors of drinking alcohol and smoking.  Studies of
the general smoking and non, and drinking and non, populations do
take those factors into account anyway.  This just makes it easier.

> So let's go back to the evidence you brought instead.
>
>      Probably the best science we have was summarized in the
>      American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in 1999, in an article
>      entitled Mortality in Vegetarians and Nonvegetarians. In an
>      enormous undertaking, twelve researchers took all of the
>      biggest and best studies to date on vegetarian mortality rates
>      and pooled all the data together. They took a decade of
>      mortality data from 28,000 vegetarians from Germany,
>      California, and Britain. And found... no survival advantage
>      for vegetarians. What about vegans though? Despite even
>      having lower cholesterol levels than vegetarians, the vegans
>      in the study didn't live any longer either. Vegans had the same
>      mortality rate as meateaters.
>      http://vegnews.org/modules.php?name=News&file=print&sid=121
>
> Knowing high levels of cholesterol generally shorten life, aren't
> you a little sceptical of the evidence presented by the American
> Journal of Clinical Nutrition on this point?

Yes.