Bad news for couch potatoes
The Dom Post (and other news papers) report about an Australian study. Published 12th January 2010 in the journal Circulation undertaken by Baker IDI the study has found that watching TV can shorten your life span – irrespective of what you actually die from.
Now this is firstly one of those articles that makes me angry for the lack of useful information. Then I just laugh at the continued abuse of statistics and think the study can’t really say that – can it?
So what does the Dom Post say?
Each hour of watching TV increases your chance of early death by 11%. Even if you are a super fit decathlon champ, you still run the same risk. Unless you get up now and then to change the channel manually instead of using the remote control. Hmm, not good news. Not sure about the motivation to partake in any health/fitness activity if not using the remote control is more conducive to a longer life.
Except they are talking about any seated/sedentary ‘activity’. Eeeekkks, err, what can I do at work where there isn’t a TV I can change the channel on???? Or while I’m driving, sitting on the train, reading a book, eating dinner or indeed sleeping? Let alone writing a blog entry.
Still good news for Nintendo Wii users, who aren’t sitting down all the time to play computer games.
My problem with the Dom Post article? <rant on>
- Each hour over how many hours?
- How much of an earlier death? a second, a minute, an hour, a day, a week, a month, a year, a decade – there’s a very wide margin here dammit..
- Should I not get on international flights of nine hours or more, since my chance of early death is then increased by at least 99%?
- Watch four hours of TV per day, and you’ve got a 46% change of early death compared with those who only watch 2 hours per day. – err I thought it was 11% for each extra hour? That’s 23% for each extra hour.
And that’s just the start..
Just because some people watch more than the average amount of TV, doesn’t actually prove a ’cause & effect’ correlation with death.
You can bet that 100% of those who suffered premature death also;
- Drank water
- Breathed air
- Slept
- Ate meat or vegetables
So there you go, if you want to avoid a premature death you should also refrain from eating (while seated!), drinking, sleeping or breathing. - oh, err, well perhaps if you did that you’d be dead a lot sooner than watching TV. So therefore I have conclusively proven that watching TV is better for your health than not breathing. taa daa!!
<rant off>
We have to dig around and find the same news story on the WSJ before we discover that;
The hours of watching TV was recorded on a questionnaire at the start of the study (1999), & never verified during the six year study.
hmm…
The hours of TV watching per day they are comparing is <2, 2-4 & >4.
“Premature death” is actually, did the person die during the six years of the study? Irrespective of how old they were (random sampling so that’s okay) when the study started.
During the study 284 out of of some 9,000 people died.
How does that compare with average mortality rates for Australians? Aussie Govt statistics indicate a general mortality rate out of 100,000 people of 853 for men & 552 for women. In the study population of 9,000 that would equate to ~124 deaths.
So on the face of it, if you can find out what all those people were doing with their lives during the study, you might be able to answer why more than twice as many of them died as you would statistically expect.
The study split people into three groups based on hours of TV watched. <2, 2-4, >4. Smokers or former smokers were 41%, 48% & 57% respectively of the study participants. Hmm, could there be a correlation of smoking to premature death??
Once you read the study, yes I did since I’m always keen to go back to the source material instead of relying on the integrity of the media process, you can also find the following;
(highlights only since I just didn’t understand the academic article, which is fine, I’m not a cardiac specialist)
The ‘all deaths’ mortality rate for those watching less than 3 hours of TV per day, was less than the national average. {p5 table A}
All of the statistics have a 95% confidence rate.
Translated into English that means a 5% chance that they’re wrong in their conclusions. While with a lot of stats that’s a fairly good result, if you’re suggesting to people they change their behavior you need a higher confidence level. And you need to check whether the information people are giving you is accurate.
If the bank only had a 95% confidence level that you were going to pay back your mortgage, they wouldn’t lend you the money! Still, if the bank doesn’t verify your claimed income before the lend you $1m, then what do they think is going to happen? Anyone heard of liar loans recently??
<rant off>
So there we go. An article I shall ignore for the moment. Time to get up and change the channel on the TV.
Related posts:
- Blog Update: Immigration News
- The IAA is in the news again :)
- Seals clubbed to death in New Zealand??? What the hell???
Comments
One Comment on Bad news for couch potatoes
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Avalon on
Fri, 15th Jan 2010 9:59 pm
The ‘all deaths’ mortality rate for those watching less than 3 hours of TV per day, was less than the national average
Actually that means we need to watch TV everyday – but for less than 3 hours a day, and then we are less likely to die 
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