Tag: statistics

• The Prosecutors Fallacy – Intitution and the Miscarriage of Justice

  Imagine the scene – you are in the final round of a TV game show. To claim your prize, you select a door from a choice of three closed doors. Two doors have a goat behind them, the other one million dollars.

  You select one door – it remains closed. The host opens one of the other doors to reveal a goat and offers you the choice to choose again. Do you select the other door? OR do you stick with your original choice?

  Most people choose to stick with their original choice.

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  5 March 2026

• USA Diabetes and Obesity by State

  The Human Development Index (HDI) was developed by the Pakistani economist Mahbub ul-Haq in 1990. It was incorporated into the the United Nations Development Programme. The index is based on the following criteria: Life Expectancy; Education; Income per capita.

  The map shows the quintiles of the HD Index for the United States.

  The two tables show for each US state the: Life Expectancy; Percentage of the population by ethnicy; Prevalence of diabetes according to ethnicity; OR Prevalence of obesity according to ethnicity.

  The ethnicity categories are: Asian; Black; Latino; Native American; White.

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  16 February 2026

• Vegan Diet and Athletic Performance

  A 2007 study shows the results of a vegan diet on a sedentary group of subjects. This group is compared with committed long-distance athletes and sedentary omnivores.

  The athletes and the sedentary vegans were matched on their BMI.

  Long-distance slim athletes who ran an average of 48 miles (77 km) per week for 21 years had a blood pressure a significant 17% higher than sedentary vegans.

  The authors' conclusions are that long-term consumption of a low-calorie low-protein vegan diet or regular endurance exercise training is associated with low cardiometabolic risk. Moreover, our data suggest that specific components of a low-calorie low-protein vegan diet provide additional beneficial effects on blood pressure.

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  11 February 2026

• Validation of a Whole-food, Plant-based Diet

  Dr James Muecke is the Australian of the Year in 2020 which was awarded for his work as an eye- surgeon and his work in preventing blindness. He is trying to convince Australians to eat more meat, eggs and dairy. Australia is ranked number 2 in meat consumption, just behind the United States but in front of Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil and New Zealand.

  Muecke states that we should be eating more eggs, cheese, meat and dark chocolate to minimise diabetes, its associated blindness (diabetic retinopathy) and diabetic neuropathy.

  Muecke has declared that we need to “Declare war on type 2 diabetes and cut back on sugar” in order to reduce the incidence of blindness.

  He believes that it is the introduction of sugary drinks and highly processed foods are the cause of diabetes – not a high-fat, high-protein diet as shown by numerous papers dating back to 1927.

  Dr Muecke was interviewed by Keith Wheeler for a FarmOnline National article. Wheeler summed up his article with, “Dr Muecke faces a challenge to defeat type 2 diabetes, but if people eat more meat and dairy it would be a good start. And dark chocolate. That’s the sort of report I like!”

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  Muecke refers to a 2019 article in the Annals of Internal Medicine, Unprocessed Red Meat and Processed Meat Consumption: Dietary Guideline Recommendations From the Nutritional Recommendations (NutriRECS) Consortium to support his beliefs.

  Walter Willett, the Harvard professor of epidemiology and nutrition, called the study “the most egregious abuse of data I’ve ever seen.”

  The publications produced by the NutriRECS organisation are concerned with proving that red meat consumption is healthy – or at least not detrimental.

  In a 30 minute address to the National Press Club on 1st December 2020, Dr Muecke said the Australian Dietary Guidelines were flawed, biased at critical multiple levels, conflicted by industry funding and borne out of weak and unreliable epidemiological data that was “certainly not as robust as we have been led to believe”.

  Muecke states that “There now being over 100 controlled clinical trials to support the fact that a very low calorie diet or low carbohydrate diet works to either prevent Type 2 diabetes or to put it into remission.”.

  There are no references given to these 100 controlled clinical trials.

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  7 January 2024

• Diet and Cancer – Frederick Hoffman

  Frederic Ludwig Hoffman was an extraordinary statistician, publishing over 1300 items including 28 major works of 100 or more pages.

  Because of his leadership in cancer research, he was awarded the American Cancer Society’s Clement Cleveland Medal in 1943. He also was named a fellow of the Royal Statistical Society of London, made a member of the German Society for Insurance Science, named an associate fellow of the American Medical Association, made an associate member of the American Academy of Medicine, and made an honorary member of the Essex County Anatomical and Pathological Society.

  He was a member of the American Economic Association, the American Academy of Social and Political Science in the City of New York, the National Institute of Social Sciences, the American Sociological Society, the Southern Sociological Congress, the National Conference on Charities and Corrections and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

  He was the seventh president of the American Statistical Association.

  Frederick Hoffman was the author of a 749 page book Cancer and Diet, written in 1937, demonstrating that:

  “That overnutrition is common in the case of cancer patients to a remarkable and exceptional degree, and that overabundant food consumption [of red meat] unquestionably is the underlying cause of the root condition of cancer in modern life.”

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  22 April 2023

• Changes to our Health Indicators

  Many of our health indicators have become worse over the past few decades (2000-2020). There has been a decrease in the United States in life expectancy. Below are some of the indicators that have been reduced, resulting in a society that is becoming increasing unhealthy and is placing an unsustainable burden on the families and health care facilities.

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  27 May 2021

• Lessons from The China Study

  Colin Campbell was a nutritional biochemist at Cornell University. In the 1960s, he was involved in nutritional programs in the Philippines to help families provide for their critically undernourished children. Peanuts were one of their preferred sources of protein. It is a legume— great for improving the soil, easy to grow, and is nutritious and tasty.

  At the same time, children younger than 10, were dying at alarming rates from liver cancer. Normally liver cancer is an adult disease— and the children dying from the disease were from the most affluent suburbs in Manila. These are the families that could afford the best housing and the best food.

  Whilst in the Philippines, he read a paper in an obscure medical journal. Rats were fed aflatoxin— one of the deadliest carcinogens known. One group of rats was given a diet of 20% protein —and they all died of liver cancer. The second group was given a diet of 5% protein— and they all lived. 100% deaths compared to zero deaths. They were all fed aflatoxin— but only those rats that had a high protein diet died.

  A 20% diet of wheat protein, gluten, or pea protein did not result in liver cancer deaths whereas casein, which comprises of 80% of the protein found in cow’s milk, and albumin, which is found in egg white, did result in liver cancer deaths. Plant-based diets are often considered to be lysine deficient. However, adding the amino acid lysine to the wheat protein to match the level found in casein also resulted in cancer deaths.

  Significantly, peanuts and corn in the Philippines were often contaminated by aflatoxin— and the wealthy ate Western-style diets, one rich in protein.

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  1 March 2021

• Japanese Diet, Cuisine and Health

  Japan is at the top of the list for life expectancy and health. There are strong regional variations although the diet in recent decades has become more westernised and the variations in diet are becoming less distinct throughout Japan.

  A wide variety of dipping sauces accompany most meals. Udon is a thick wheat flour noodle and yakisoba is a buckwheat noodle. Soba is the Japanese name for buckwheat.

  Despite the increase in dairy, egg and meat consumption in recent decades, Japan (according to the National Health and Nutrition Surveys) still consumes a predominately plant-based diet.

  Hookaido had the lowest percentage of plant-based foods at 74.5% in 1980 and 82.2% in 2012. In 1980, Kanto II had the highest percentage at 78.2% with Hokuriku topping the list in 2012 with 84.5%.

  Australia and the US consume approximately 30% of their diet from plant-based sources.

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  18 August 2020

• Information About Breast, Endometrium and Ovarian Cancers

  There are hundreds, if not thousands, of papers in peer-reviewed medical journals dating back to the mid 1980s relating to the causes and preventative of breast, cervical, ovarian, endometrial and corpus uterine cancers. Unfortunately, this information is generally not read by medical practitioners, specialists or health support organisations.

  For example, a 1982 paper (more than 4 decades ago) states that "the concept that hormones can cause human cancer, is most developed for the four hormone-related cancers which are breast, prostate, endometrium, and ovary".

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  18 February 2019

• Belief versus Truth

  Stephen Colbert defined a new word: Truthiness, The belief or assertion that a particular statement is true based on the intuition or perceptions of some individual or individuals, without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts.

  A number of popular commentators write that we should trust our intuition (without explaining what that may be) rather than relying on what we read. Most of these commentators have written many, many books to tell us that we do not need these books.

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  24 November 2018