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Chocolate Consumption, Cognitive Function, and Nobel Laureates (2012) [pdf] (jhsph.edu)
30 points by chmars on April 20, 2014 | hide | past | favorite | 13 comments



...this is meant to be funny, right?



Yes, but unfortunately, a lot of the "serious" studies reported in newspapers every day seem to follow the same formula: find an accidental correlation between two causally unrelated variables and say you've found an amazing new result.



It was published in the "Occasional Notes" section of the journal, not as a scientific article.


Feeling smugly smart as I sit here easter morning eating chocolate with my kid for breakfast!


Maybe smarter people are more able to afford chocolate.


"The present data are based on country averages, and the specific chocolate intake of individual Nobel laureates of the past and present remains unknown."


This is a joke, right?


Yeah, look at the footnotes at the end:

"Dr. Messerli reports regular daily chocolate consumption, mostly but not exclusively in the form of Lindt’s dark varieties"


correlation does not imply causality


tl;dr - should I be eating more chocolate?


If the question is "chocolate", the answer is "yes".




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