I was ready to be blown away by some interesting data and instead I’m reminded why scientific publication is so disappointing… Some very suspect data sets and analysis going on.
Looking at the data, in the study that website links to, the mean erect length has only gone up 10%. The numbers they’ve used in that quote would mean they’ve basically taken the smallest length measured within the 95% confidence interval and compared it with the maximum instead of the mean…
This is also across the whole world. The “maximum” length in the 95% confidence interval hasn’t changed much at all, while the minimum has trended up. To top it off, the most tested “length” from the 1940’s is “Stretched” which has actually gone down over time.
I don’t think there’s a lot of useful information that can actually be derived from this study other than “people with better living conditions and who eat healthier end up with bigger bodies”, which we already knew when you look at height and muscle mass. Oceania, Africa and South America have had the biggest range (4.5-6cm between smallest and larges), and Europe, Asia and North American the smallest range (1.5-4.5cm)
Woah I never read into it at that depth but thanks for sharing!
That’s so odd they would only compare the lower and upper bounds of the 95% CI instead of staying in the middle? Sounds very strange.
But yes good point about the global aspect of the study throwing in a wrench
I was ready to be blown away by some interesting data and instead I’m reminded why scientific publication is so disappointing… Some very suspect data sets and analysis going on.
Looking at the data, in the study that website links to, the mean erect length has only gone up 10%. The numbers they’ve used in that quote would mean they’ve basically taken the smallest length measured within the 95% confidence interval and compared it with the maximum instead of the mean…
This is also across the whole world. The “maximum” length in the 95% confidence interval hasn’t changed much at all, while the minimum has trended up. To top it off, the most tested “length” from the 1940’s is “Stretched” which has actually gone down over time.
I don’t think there’s a lot of useful information that can actually be derived from this study other than “people with better living conditions and who eat healthier end up with bigger bodies”, which we already knew when you look at height and muscle mass. Oceania, Africa and South America have had the biggest range (4.5-6cm between smallest and larges), and Europe, Asia and North American the smallest range (1.5-4.5cm)
Woah I never read into it at that depth but thanks for sharing!
That’s so odd they would only compare the lower and upper bounds of the 95% CI instead of staying in the middle? Sounds very strange.
But yes good point about the global aspect of the study throwing in a wrench