A cohort study of whether parental separation and lack of contact [...] predicts disease severity [...] in young peoples ME/CFS, 2020, O'Donnell et al

[Hutan]

I do sometimes wonder if these folk has some sort of Random Hypothesis Generator software

If only. If it was random, there would be a chance that sometimes the hypotheses would be useful.

 

[dave30th]

If it was random, there would be chance that sometimes the hypotheses would be useful.

True, and like the way a broken clock is right twice a day. but these people are never right twice a day.

 

[Barry]

If only. If it was random, there would be a chance that sometimes the hypotheses would be useful.

True, and like the way a broken clock is right twice a day. but these people are never right twice a day.

Yes, I overlooked that one.

 

[rvallee]

I do sometimes wonder if these folk has some sort of Random Hypothesis Generator software

And in the spirit of pseudo-randomness, it uses the same seed/question and so always gives the same results. So, yeah, spot on.


(for anyone not familiar, computers can't do real randomness without a special device so what they usually do is pseudo-randomness, relying on a "seed" that itself must vary as the same seed gives the same pseudorandom output)

 

[Kalliope]

Trial by Error by David Tuller: No Links Between "Parental Separation" and Kids' ME Severity

Yet these null findings do not seem to have fazed the investigators or dampened their enthusiasm for their theoretical constructs. To them, the appropriate response to their disappointing results is to push for a larger study and continue to search for psycho-social correlates of illness and illness severity. I guess they think a bigger pile of data will help them locate the evidence they know must be there but could not be teased out with this particular data set. Don’t they have better things to do?