Comments for Information Is Beautiful

Comment on When Sea Levels Attack by Bill Roberts

Bill Roberts — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 08:04:27 +0000

It’s a nice graphic, but putting aside the various points above about the topography of different cities, I think it misses one of the most important aspects of the risk of sea level rise. The sea level goes up and down all the time due to tidal and weather conditions. The biggest concern about rising mean sea level is that it will increase the frequency of extreme high water events, so that the risk of a damaging flood becomes much greater. Flood defences designed to protect against a one in a thousand year event become vulnerable to (say) a one in ten year event.

Illustrating this increases the challenges of designing a great graphic of course! But it would be interesting to try to bring in that element of risk or frequency.

Comment on Timelines: time travel in popular film and tv by dethchan

dethchan — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 05:37:44 +0000

Nice! Looking forward to the Doctor Who.

Comment on How I Learnt To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb (Kinda) by MdAmor

MdAmor — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 01:37:16 +0000

It’s a relief to know that we can’t destroy the world!

Comment on 2012: The End Of The World? by Antonio

Antonio — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:49:54 +0000

December 21, 2012 is not the end of the world folks, its the end of a 26,000 year cycle. Then December 22, 2012 will be day one of the next 26,000 year cycle. The alignment of the planets was marked as the end/beginning of the cycle to have some point of reference. So just because the calender end on that day does not mean out time will too. That would be like saying the world will come to an end at the end of December since there are no more pages on the office calendar after that month.

Comment on SnakeOil? Scientific evidence for health supplements by Darlene

Darlene — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 18:12:29 +0000

This is a great graphic organizer of helpful information!
I agree with the folks who have suggested tying bubble size to number of studies analyzed rather than google hits.
I’d like to know what studies show about glucosamine and it’s impact on joints/arthritis.
Thanks!!

Comment on Reduce Your Odds Of Dying In A Plane Crash by cuvy

cuvy — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 13:21:10 +0000

So, what are the stats on people dying in car crashes while driving from/to an airport to catch a flight?

Comment on SnakeOil? Scientific evidence for health supplements by Steve Walker

Steve Walker — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 12:23:03 +0000

Just noticed that the data about licorice root was relating to gastric problems and hepatitis although the bubble reads “cough”. You might want to fix that, unless there is something I am missing.

Thanks for an otherwise great little diagram (as always).

Steve

Comment on SnakeOil? Scientific evidence for health supplements by em clark

em clark — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 18:10:15 +0000

I’ve spent the last year involved with alopathic medicine due to a serious illness. My experience is that although the scientific approach they use has value in certain instances, mainstream medical science is so far off track in understanding how the human body works, that most of their treatments, in my opinion, fall under the “slash and burn” approach. Cut it out or kill it, basically, as well as the obsessive search for single substances that can alter or address an illness. The real world we evolved in, and our own body chemistry, doesn’t work that way. There are hundreds of chemical/nutritional constituents in an apple, for example. They all interact in as yet unknown ways to provide whatever it is that apples give to us nutritionally. This is the level of complexity in all foods, supplements, and in our bodies as well.
The problem with the approach most studies take, is that they try to isolate one constituent, for example, vitamin c, and administer it as a solitary substance to a group of people in widely varied states, chemically, etc. All women between the ages of 20 and 40 who have not had children and live in the US, are not a homogeneous group, chemically speaking. What has each individual been affected by, how much, how long ago- these will all affect, as an interaction, how much vitamin c will do, by itself, for any given condition.
Allopathic medicine is going to blunder past the real mechaisms of healing until it takes an integrative aproach. These large, double-blind studies, in my opinion, are not capable of proving anything more than the grossest, broadest of conclusions, such as, vitamin c works sometimes, and does not work other times. What help is that?
We need to look at the body and at healing as integrated with the complexity found in the natural world, the world we evolved in.
Corresponding with my year of dealing with traditional doctors, I took an herbal class- I have seen conditions improve due to the herbs we learned about and used, which would be a nightmare to document scientifically, controlling for all variables. Nevertheless, the herbs, which are certainly as chemically complex as apples, worked.

Comment on SnakeOil? Scientific evidence for health supplements by Dolores

Dolores — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 13:48:45 +0000

Again, very nice info graph. However, you might be getting into dangerous territory when doing something like this on scientific evidence. Really, there’s no such thing as previous commenters have pointed out. Also, by looking at RCTs you assume that this study design will always produce a reliable result. Unfortunately, that is not true. Also, RCTs are comparative and what the comparator is, matters too and they might differ between studies, questioning the ability to ‘pool’ the results into one evidence bulb.
Nonetheless, I find the graph very informative and scientists could (and should) really use more similar presentations of scientific results like you make them.

It would be very cool to do an animation when you would include the year of publication of studies, to see the levels of evidence change over the years. Then it would also become more visible how many positive / vs negative results have been published.

One note: Google hits are completely irrelevant for scientific evidence IMHO. Number of published studies or even number of Pubmed results (regardless of study design) would make more sense.

Comment on Left vs Right by B Pettersson

B Pettersson — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 07:52:27 +0000

Dont be afraid. The Maya and year 2012 is not thrue. I have study the problem and I have find that there is a question for the man who started this ideas – Calleman – said the he could find out the true by the sign that only he and his friende could translate. So now he is famous. In that very moment I am soon ready with the book I started to write in december 2009 about the lies for 2012

Its all about evidens fabrication

Professor Paul Gendrop, University de Paris (1998, s.3) has written a book called: What I know about Maya. And in this he give us very good reasons for not believe in the occult Maya trend.

Even David Stuart på Mesoamerikanska centre i Austin, Texas till CNN said: There is no one serious university doctor that believe that MAYA says any important at all.

If you go to this adresses – you will find how many so called profets – in the history – who has said that the end of the world is near:
robbano@hem2.passagen.se
http://www.2012-domedagen.se/artiklar/visa/20 Jordens_undergang_2012/Jordens undergång 2012