There's No Science Like Bad Science - Live Longer with Facebook

There's been a buzz floating about today which has claimed people live longer with Facebook, the science proves it.  In fact, the only thing proven by the science is psychologists should never be allowed to touch computers.  (Science Daily:  Live long and ... Facebook?)

"Interacting online seems to be healthy when the online activity is moderate and complements interactions offline," said first author William Hobbs, who worked on the study as a UC San Diego doctoral student in political science and is now a postdoctoral fellow at Northeastern University.  "It is only on the extreme end, spending a lot of time online with little evidence of being connected to people otherwise, that we see a negative association."

- Science Daily

The good doctor failed to mention what constitutes a 'negative association' although he apparently doesn't consider any negativity in narcissism or samaritraphobia (i.e hysterical indifference to one's fellow man).

But it gets better ...

The first finding is that those who are on Facebook live longer than those who are not. In a given year, the average Facebook user is about 12 percent less likely to die than someone who doesn't use the site.  But that's the researchers' crudest measure, they note, and may be due to social or economic differences between the user and non-user groups.

- Science Daily

There you go, the Science Has Spoken and it says you're less likely to die if you use Facebook and thus we have come in the space of a few short sentences to the Best of the Worst which uses the classic pseudo-science principle of making a false assumption and then justifying it.

The assumption is using social networks means you will live longer but there's no confirmation that's the actual variable since people who live longer may seek out flaccid, no-challenge environments such as social networks and that low stress life may last longer but it would have lasted longer anyway.  However, that doesn't consider the quality of life on a social network which is often uninspired, morose, and riddled with the soul-crushing hell of mediocrity.

Those statements may elicit wise nods from Die Kaninchen but that's the same bad science as we have seen from the psychologists since most are probably aware social networks don't make people stupid, no matter how much your subjective evidence may convince you otherwise.

Ed:  oh yeah?  Then how did they get so stupid?

Did you not consider the possibility they were stupid already.  It's a forgivable mistake since the psychologists did the same thing.

Ed:  so being stupid makes you live longer?

Now you're getting with the theme since one of the best things about Bad Science is extending it so we can make more conclusions to invent more pseudo-facts.

Finally, we have the conclusion to compound the original error.

"The association between longevity and social networks was identified by Lisa Berkman in 1979 and has been replicated hundreds of times since," said Fowler.  "In fact, a recent meta-analysis suggests the connection may be very strong.  Social relationships seem to be as predictive of lifespan as smoking, and more predictive than obesity and physical inactivity.  We're adding to that conversation by showing that online relationships are associated with longevity, too."

- Science Daily

Here we have another hallmark of bad science in which multiple bad examples prove a false point.  Amazingly, when you make the same false assumption, you will always get the same false result.  They minimally approached science with the observation smoking is predictive of personal longevity and then they blow it again by considering the idea social networks do the same thing.

However, perhaps the variable is smokers don't use Facebook since such people are usually more accepting of risk taking and other dangers of modern life.  I smoke and I don't use social networks or very little and my friends also smoke and they also don't use social networks.  There we have the primary ingredients of Bad Science with a false assumption and false evidence to support it, just as we saw in the original article.

Ed:   wow, you actually have more things for which you are more contemptuous than Facebook!

Bad Science is not the only thing since there are multiple entries in the category of Things Which Elicit More Contempt than Facebook:

-  Politicians - am I right?  Of course I am.

-  Anyone in news media except news channels I like.

-  Thieves (see Politicians and News Media)

And so on ...